About 2 months ago, after about a year of abuse, my Nike Free 3.0 has finally given up. There was a tear on the shoes’ upper. I also noticed that that the shoes had lost its form for awhile.
I’m a little bit dissapointed with the longevity of this shoe, especially when my Nike Free v2 is still going strong.
Now on to the subject of getting the next shoes, given that I have been accustomed with Nike Frees - I was thinking of getting another pair of Free 3.0.
After a month of hitting the gym and following a diet very loosely based on Paleo, I’m now here to report the result.
I just read Robb Wolf’s book - The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet. While I don’t think I am sold on the “why” of Paleo, but Rob’s explanation on how the body functions especially on how hormones interact with each other, is really good read.
Few weeks before the race - I had a serious doubt about this race. I was dealing with an inflamed heel two weeks before the race, this has resulted in a less than optimal training.
But it turned out to be the best race that I had this year.
City 2 Surf 2012 is the most memorable C2S for me thus far - not so much because I had PB’ed by shaving 11 minutes from my time last year, not so much of the gloomy weather - in fact not so much of the race itself but because of what happened after the race.
Just a random note on how my training has been going for the last few weeks.
For the past two weeks or so - I had been in a funk. I felt tired and sluggish most of the time, consequently my running sessions were fewer and slower. I had to take more day offs just to allow my body to recover - recovery is another thing, it took my body a longer time to recover from the fatigue. I haven’t ran short run slower 6:30 pace for awhile - but last week two of my sessions were slower or close to 6:30.
Thank God, I think I already passed that period. Yesterday, I decided to do a 800 m intervals and it was a good session. It was a nice change to the usual hilly and tempo run sessions.
A side note on the weather: this year, winter is very noticably colder compared to last year and it came earlier, around mid-May. Thankfully it is also finishing earlier, it’s getting warmer now with the average temparature of 18 degrees Celcius. It’ll be perfect weather for the race season in August and beyond.
Body-wise - both of my ankle are quite stiff at times. I am not sure that they are achilles tendon related, the pain is a little bit different to achilles tendonitis pain that I had before. Mentally - I feel that I don’t have the same intensity and drive as before. Distance per month total is my main motivation to get out - the aim this month is to achieve 130km, I’m up to 88km with 12 days to go, I think I can do it.
Last Sunday, I did the the Suncorp Bank Sydney Harbour 10km race. It was my first 10km race and I think I had a good one!
Training has been good so far. I have clocked in 89.5km just 17 days this month. My body has been healthy so far - no injuries - I guess keeping myself from playing soccer helps! Another good news is I feel stronger in my running (especially on flat) - my average pace is way faster compare to last year (although to be fair I was battling injuries last year).
With the increased of length, the introduction of back to back runs and hill repeats - my body started to protest. Last week particularly I felt pretty beat up - for the whole week! I didn’t feel like that I was recovering well. So last week, I let my body took a three days consecutive break (the longest consecutive non running days since April).
This year I don’t follow any pre-made training program, rather I go by the feel and just making sure that I have enough volume in. There are several key runs that I make sure to do weekly:
Noticeably ommission is the long run - in a way family duties and weather have again prevent me from going long on any given run. So I decided to do a long tempo - with distance hopefuly 10kms and above - with target pace under 6:15 min/km. Having said this of course if there’s a chance for me to go for a long run, I’d take it.
My hill repeats training is kind of question mark at the moment. Question mark because I don’t see any noticeable improvement on my hill climbing ability. So I am wondering whether I am not doing enough of it or maybe I am not pushing myself as much as I should? I do one session of hill repeat weekly, maybe I should increase that?
Goals for this year City 2 Surf for me are:
Yesterday, I did a 10km trial at Centennial Park. I knew I have gotten faster the last few weeks - thanks to the higher volume of running, but I didn’t expect to break under 1 hour barrier.
My last 10km trial at Centennial Park was 64 minutes and this was on December 2011. So I was over the moon yesterday when I did it under 1 hour - 59:26 to be exact. Two weeks before hand, I did a 5km trial, and I did it in 28:14.
One of my chief goals in life is to simplify ehm.. life. And this morning I realized that my running has been a lot simpler than it used to be and it’s been great, for sure there is still room for further simplification too.