THREE O FIVE

I did badly in the SCKLM yesterday. It was my bread and butter race and we didn't get to run last year due to the haze. This is also one of the very few well organized and high quality local marathons that I would join every year so no matter how much I didn't prepare I would still run it. This time I came unprepared again. I was down with dengue one month ago and suffered from flu a few days ago. I didn't train enough too. The longest run I did was the TM Fan 21km and others were merely a few 10~14km runs. However I felt that I was OK to run. My plan was to pace Michelle and hope I could keep up with her. Not sure if I overestimated myself or I wasn't really aware that I wasn't fit enough to handle this, I didn't expect it to be easy but I also didn't think that it would be so tough. The whole situation just didn't cross my mind. At the starting line, haha! Our plan was to run the first half faster. 5:00 pace for the first half and 5:15 for the s...

Fitness went down the drain after dengue and had to run this race 2 weeks after discharging from the hospital. Despite knowing that I wasn't fit enough to run any good result, I still planned to run my best effort. My plan was to hold on to 4:30~4:35 pace but 3km into the run, I knew this was going to be very tough. The HR was still on point but my body was contradicting itself. It was getting heavier and heavier so I decided to slow down. William and Masaaki slowly left Michelle, Aiden and I for dust. Aiden started to speed off too after 8km. It was fun running with Michelle, the women first runner up of the race, so proud of her! It was the first time running with her actually. We had a long 21km gossip session and she still decided to run another 9km after the race to complete her 30km LSD! What?! It looked so easy for her! We were running at quite a fast pace, she talked and made fun all the way and she continued to run another 9k. After all this, she could still win 2nd plac...

This is what dengue plus 8 days of no running did to my running fitness. I keep a very comprehensive running logs and from time to time, I will analyze my performance to see how much I've improved/regressed. So this is what happened. I have been absent from the running scene for the past 2 weeks due to dengue fever. The last run I did was the Par series 2. I was still OK during the race in the morning and I'd actually planned to run a LSD later that day. However, my body started to feel quite unwell. At first, I thought I'd pushed too hard during the race which led to the soreness in my body but later that night, I got a very high fever. No surprise, a few days later, I was diagnosed with dengue and got admitted to the hospital. I was actually in the middle of preparation for the SCKLM. Par series 2 was actually already at week 14 and everything was going on pretty smoothly until dengue hit. Based on my past experience, 8 days of no running won't actually cause a dr...