Running

Conquered my second marathon last Sunday. My experience last year was great and I was looking forward to this run till my friend pulled the plug on the full race due to his sore throat. It did not help when I had a less committed training programme this year. On average, I trained up two to three times a week. For each run, I only did 6 to 8km. Despite not being in the pink of health, I persisted.

Well, you see I had a cunning plan up my sleeve! Putting on a brave smile, I pressed on with my strategy. It was a simple plan actually. To run my first 21km at one go, then follow by walk-and-jog for the next 21km.

At the starting point, I did a quick warm up as the race has began. This time I was way back due to an even bigger crowd than last year. The organiser has flagged the participants at 0530 hours but it took me almost 15 minutes to step on the start mat. As usual, I started the quest slowly. For some reasons, I was experiencing discomfort in my left knee. Felt wobbly. This was no good, I thought. Hence I took it easy and perhaps too lightly for the first 10km that resulted in a deplorable finish time.

For the next 10km, I stepped up on my efforts marginally for fear of early time-out. However, my knees felt better and I started to run fervently. I must say running with this strategy this time has helped me to pace myself for the rest of 21km. Truthfully, I was quite surprised I could manage the walk and job consistently. In fact, I even sprinted to my last 2km.

Unfortunately, the final timing showed that I was 15 minutes slower than my marathon. Guess life is fair to those who do not work hard. Overall, I am happy that I have completed my race and hope to do a better run next time. Join me?