With big thanks to Crowd.com.sg, I joined my first 8km race since moving back to Singapore: the Mediacorp Hongbao run 2014.
With my partner, Singaporean driver for the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, Yuey Tan, we prepped ourselves over a month and a half, especially since Yuey had not run a distance greater than 5km from his army days more than 10 years ago. 2014 started off with new motivation for me encouraging Yuey and for him to begin his fitness journey.
Running usually a 44min plus, we smashed our own Personal best by 3minutes and ran comfortably past the line in a 41:18mins and I came in 35th overall for the female category.
We hydrated properly the night before and ate a meal of lean meat with a balance of some carbohydrates. Up at 5am and at the start line by 630am, we met familiar faces and their partners, such as Cheryl Tay and Kelly Latimer. One funny similarity, all girls had talked their partners into the run! Others I bumped into Joakim Gomez and Joshua Tan!
Thank you to my sponsors Puma Singapore
HOW CAN U BE PART OF THE FUN?
Here are some key points on what you can do , on your step to joining a fun run or competition, which hopefully makes it a lot less daunting and overwhelming!
RUN WITH A PARTNER
This works both ways. As someone who runs regularly, this was a great way to pass on some knowledge and evaluate my running skills with a newbie runner, making sure that I too don’t repeat the simple mistakes.
I have always been used to running alone, but this time around, I trained with Yuey, which allowed me to help encourage him to go from 3km to 5km to 8km, in small increments.
Getting up off the couch can take two hands, and giving each other a high five at the end of the finish line, is a wicked feeling of group achievement, that you worked on together! Sometimes we all need encouragement to push that last 400m.
Don’t be afraid to ask those you know or forums on running tips, it’s safe to say we generally all have internet access and there are plenty of credible websites for useful information.
KNOW YOUR BODY
One of the biggest mistakes relating to injury that can occur the next day, week or month, are people joining 5km runs and going all out without progressive training, feeling great the next day, but suffering for the rest of their lives.
The longer the run, the more prepared you need to be for your body to recover and repair. Being an unseasoned runner at the time, I made a mistake 3 years ago , running the Perth, 21 km City to Surf and giving myself only a month to train. Till today I have suffered knee pains from that run which required medical attention.
If anything, know your body. Know your strengths, weaknesses and do not over exert. Be smart about your personal achievements and live not to regret!
MOTIVATION
The question of “Should I or shouldn’t I?” is a frequent float about in my mind. I suffer the daily procrastination to stay motivated. Yes it is hard, but yes I have overcome it.
Firstly, you have to throw all reasonable excuses out the window. Make time! I know people who hold down full time jobs, have a kid and family to look after, and have to travel with out a personal car, plus part-time studying.
Secondly, don’t think too far ahead and over think external factors which might cause you to find an excuse i.e. weather, running route, traffic, people, drinks, no make up on, messy hair, wrong underwear.
Thirdly , just get on with it. If you plant the seed of doubt on your head, it’s too late. The moment you think “should I?”, make it a positive , get changed straight away, get laced up and just get out that front door. Your body will do the rest for you .
What was great to see with training with Yuey was his confidence grew with every kilometre he racked up , the more training he had, the easier it became mentally.
TRAINING
The longer the distance you should be more prepared.
Running a mid distance of 8km, is a great way to work your way up the motions of a longer distance to run.
I broke our training into smaller runs, from 3km to 5km and a final run of about 7.8km, that was quite impromptu 4 days before the race, but only proved that we were comfortable together to run.
Using the RunKeeper app, it was easy to keep track of the distances and our goals, and I verbally tricked Yuey into longer runs by telling him we were at the 2km U-turn point, but really we were at 2.5km, so mentally he wouldn’t think about how far we were running, causing distraction.
From running down Orchard in one direction and making stop starts of intense bursts, instead I lead him on a more fluid route and I taught him to keep at a slower pace, rather than smashing it out and dying at the last 2km.
By tracking my per Km timings, if we smashed out our first few kilometers, we always almost consistently fluctuated in the latter half of the run.
By running at a pace of 5:40 min/km, rather than a 5:10min/km ,we always ended up with a similar end timings, because of the consistency throughout every step we took, and ending the run without huffing and puffing!
In the end, we consistently kept a faster pace throughout the race, smashing our PB!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Looking forward to my next goal and step it up!
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