Hill Training – 28 February 2012

Route: 2 laps around Taman Desa Seputeh

Distance: 2 * 4km = 8km (Garmin: 8.03km)

Timing: 43:29 for 5:24 min/km pace

My brain is obviously not on my head. Can someone please help screw it back?!?!? Think I have the usual screwdrivers, cranks etc somewhere in the house. Tell me why did I agree to do this when I was shuffling (and still was when I woke up this morning!) around the office yesterday? Apparently DOMS decided to extend the “party” from the calves to the hammies and topping it up with shin splints.

Warm up: House to train station (390m; 2:39)

Kenny’s neighbor sure do have very alert and fierce dogs! They were barking their heads off as I warmed up along the street while waiting for Kenny. For one blip of a second (longest ever second in my life!), I heard the barking, I saw 2 dogs running towards me. Cardiac arrest. Turns out it was Kenny’s dogs. Never do that to me again! You hear me, ok!

Right, back to the run. Short warm up – typically it takes me anything up to 2km to get into the groove. Ok, that’s a blatant lie because 99% of the time, I don’t get into the groove even after we finish 20km. Roll with it, will ya.

Lap 1 (3.325km; 18:12)

We were running side by side, not much conversation going on but hey, at least the legs were holding on ok.

Lap 2 (3.348km; 17:35)

Still joined at the hip or maybe trailing Kenny for 2 steps until the downhill portion at the end of the first km of the lap. Did I ever mentioned I love rolling down the hills? This was where I sped up and from then on, tried to speedy up the slopes. The giant slope at km3 didn’t seem as daunting (on both laps; now perhaps that's another blatant lie!) as it used to be when we started training on them. Times have indeed changed. Come to think of it, this could be my favourite route among our usual options. Blatant lie!

Finishing mile: Train station to and around the furniture mall loop (961m; 4:59)

Feeling good, legs were still ok-ish. Sure they were sore and the shin splints were nagging but they didn’t make me miserable. Blatant lie! Are you kidding me?!?!?! In fact the only thing that bugged me were the stones; see el-cheapo moi used an older vintage the-should-have-been-discarded KSO which has a tiny-and-now-morphed-into-bigger hole…ya know the rest. Nope, I don’t need an FOC reflexology. Yes, I did try to land as “lightly” as I could and yet still ended up with some ripped skin. I'll spare you the details and pics.

I finished up with a short cross training on the elliptical before hitting the showers. Ooopppsss, where’s sanity vis-à-vis sore legs and shin splints?

Terra Plana seems to be de-rigueur around the office these days.

Today’s Bento Box Challenge: sandwich, baby carrots and Sharon fruit