Seputeh-Kerinchi-Federal Highway Run – 3 April

Distance: 9km (on the dot!!!)

Timing: 49:56 min for 5:33 min/km pace (hah! noticed the 56 in the timing? It was the same as yesterday's!)

This was supposed to be a recovery run for me and a comeback run for Kenny after his ankle problem. It was far from it!!! I thought we were aiming for a 6 min/km pace (my standard timing for a slow, easy run) and instead Mr Tan kept pushing the pace. Ordinarily, this would have been fine except I just did a 19km the previous day and my shins and calves were tender to the point of achy. Yes, the el-cheapo in me decided to save the $ and got a half compression tights and was paying the price for it. Oh wait...compression tights doesn't work on me. What am I rambling about???!!! Hah! This is what happens after nearly 30km of pavement pounding!

Kenny and I explored a new route - Seputeh running across Old Klang Road (via the pedestrian bridge la!) to Abdullah Hukum and Kerinchi (yup, those places I always hear announced on the trains) before turning into Federal Highway passing Mid Valley on the return journey. It was a relatively flattish route (the first and last 3 km; elevations along highways and roads not counted!) and the only (and probably biggest) hurdle was the 1-1.5km climb at the Kerinchi settlement. Tough! It is somewhat similar to the Taman Desa climb and it felt so so so so so so so so so so so hard; apart from the screaming shins (and they were screaming at the top of their lungs; yes, shins do have lungs...in my world), the rest of the limbs and organs aka quads, lungs, breathing etc were holding out OK. Ok, not great but at least they weren't threatening to collapse.

I was so glad when the downhill came at the Taman Desa people's apartment and even more so when we turned into Federal Highway. Then frightening thoughts came - what if Kenny decided we should take a tour of Brickfields to add on the mileage??? PTL, he didn't! Flat as pancake Federal Highway didn't cut it with the shins and I was so ready to be done. Oh forget the 10km, I'll even take 5 or 6 or 7km. So when the offer came for an extra mile (i.e. return via the Hyundai showroom + apartments), I declined. Was there any other way? ;p

I made my way to Richard's for a 90-minute class to stretch out the quads, hamstrings, calves, hips and everywhere else! I can't emphasize how important this is! My hip flexors always thank me if I do it E.V.E.R.Y. T.I.M.E.

Now that we have the stretch out of the way, we up the ante (or continue where we left off yesterday) with hanging around in compression tights and re-fueling.

If only I didn't have to go into the office tomorrow...