k r i s a n d r o

After a long rest, I finally started on my training again for the Adidas Sundown (half marathon event) in May and for my 1st full marathon at the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2010.

For me, running is really quite enjoyable and all I need is to start in order to get the momentum going and I did it on 19th Jan. I have since ran 7 times and I am slowly building up my mileage like any proper training schedule.

I absolutely love to measure and record various numbers I can get out of everything and running is no exception. It serves as a great way to check my progress, adjust my schedule accordingly and of course to stroke the ego of mine whenever I see myself improving.

As you can see, comparing the 1st, 4th and the 7th run which I just completed hours ago, I have not only increased the distance I ran, I also ran faster and still managed to reduce the effort that my heart had to make for each run.

I do know that because I just started, it’s easy to have vast improvements but it’s still pretty interesting to have all the data recorded like that and compare it down the road.

Can’t wait to hit 10km and beyond in 3 weeks or so.

Boy am I such a running geek.

I am alive!

And I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. So bad that you ought to have me on your lap so that you can give me some good spanking. But we both know that you don’t want that to happen so let’s just pass.

Work and life has been keeping me really busy and I really find it hard to update this space of mine. I won’t say ’sorry’ because I don’t owe you guys any updates and I won’t promise anything because I probably won’t fulfil any as well.

Some PR agencies have probably given up on me as well because I’ve been attending events and have not been sharing my experiences even though I enjoyed most of it. So much for being in the social media scene and not practising what I preach. Even KuKuNehNeh nags at me about those posts.

My health has been really bad for the last 2-3 months and it pretty much killed the biggest event that I was looking forward to for the year. I had to give the Standard Chartered marathon a miss as my fitness level was not up to mark with all the flu and cough that plagued me like no tomorrow. I have however not given up at running my first marathon and I have signed up for next year’s Adidas Sundown marathon for the 21km event to prepare me for the Standard Chartered marathon at the end of 2010.

I am in the midst of stabilizing the priorities in life and deciding on the next big thing. There is something quite unsettling about turning 28 this Christmas and wondering why I haven’t been able to say, “This is what I want to do for the next 30 years.” My laid back personality is probably the cause of this uncertainty and I’d like to think that it’s high time I find what I want to do for the next chapter in my life before I can confidently ask someone to spend the rest of her life with me.

“Good things come to those who wait…”

So… happy waiting for my next blog post!

Meanwhile, catch me on Twitter and Plurk where I update much more frequently!

I usually start off my runs with lots of enthusiasm and energy and by the midway mark, I would usually lose steam and from then on, it is usually a struggle to the finish and my timings for the run would be called a positive split. That is if you section the run into halves or many parts, the earlier parts of the run are much faster and they get progressively slower as distance and time passes. Find this familiar? I am guessing that most people actually run this way as it is probably the most natural thing to do.

Of course the best way to run is to run even splits whereby one races at a constant pace throughout the length of the race but that is quite hard to do unless one was on a treadmill or has extreme running discipline.

It was with extreme interest when I discovered that many top athletes & coaches around the world train and enforce negative splits in their runs which is to run the 2nd half of the course faster than the 1st. The theory behind this is that by holding back during the first half of the run, the glycogen in your body that acts as fuel is reserved better for the latter part of the run. It is also said that it takes a couple of kilometres for the runner to get over the inertia and running too hard from the get-go wastes too much energy. Another very important aspect about running negative splits is that the picking up of the pace during the 2nd half of the race will have you overtaking other runners and this brings a lot of mental strength which is so very important in a long distance run.

So much for the above in theory but I actually put it to the test at 12.30am on Sunday morning for an 11km long run. The last long run I had was a week ago on a Thursday and it as at a 10km distance with a pace of 6mins 29secs per km and that run was a struggle from the halfway mark and it was like any of my runs before, a big positive split.

Now, to help you guys visualize better on how a negative split run looks like, here is the breakdown of my run on Sunday.

Despite running for a longer distance on Sunday, I actually improved my pace by 6secs per km! You can see how the negative splits work by looking at the columns highlighted in yellow. I aimed to run my first half of the training at a 6mins 38secs pace and the 2nd half at a 6mins 14secs pace and as you can see, I mostly ran faster than what I set out to do. I was actually struggling to hold back my speed at the start of the run. But by the time I hit the halfway mark, I realized that I was so much comfortable at this point then previous runs. Pushing up my speed for the 2nd half was hard but comfortable enough which was almost impossible to do if I stuck to my old way of running. And at the end of the 11km run, I felt that I still had some gas left in the tank compared to feeling spent for previous runs.

There is still a long way of experimenting on this tactic for running and I will update you guys as I go along my training for the marathon at the end of the year. For those runners who are interested in trying negative splits without having equipment like Nike+ or GPS watches like Garmin/Polar to track your pace and distance, you can either try running around the track where you can plan & track your lap timings or do like what I advised KuKuNehNeh to do for her 10km run for Adidas Sundown that happened on Saturday; run the first half of the race slower than your comfortable pace and try to push your pace up at the halfway mark. The race results are not out yet but I think she improved her timing by at least 10-15mins and experienced a more comfortable run to the finish. Read about her experience here!

These are some links to read up on negative splits.

The Positives of Negative Splits

Examples of Negative Splits That Worked

Calculate splits for runs here

I had a nice running session yesterday, doing something called a Fartlek. Yes I know how horrible sounding it is but it’s not a condition whereby one passes air uncontrollably. It is actually “speedplay” in Swedish and when I am doing it, it looks as though someone is chasing after me with 10-inch dildo every other kilometre.

KuKuNehNeh had a 4-5km run to prepare her for her 10km run over this weekend at Adidas Sundown and after ending our sessions and a dinner afterwards, we plonked ourselves in the car, preparing to drive off and head home. By the way, she drives and I don’t. Times have changed. *wink*

She released the handbrake and proceeded to look out for traffic as her left hand reached out for the gear stick and she found my sweaty right knee instead.

Half laughing and half trying to drive, she and I started one of our fake quarrels which involve bad Singlish and the raising of ones voice with an irritated tone to it.

“Wah lau! Leg open so big for what?”

“Leg open big cannot meh? I got Dua Lumpa what!”

“WAH LAU!!! LUMPA SO BIG FOR WHAT?”

And then we both break out in uncontrollable laughter. Life is full of great little moments.