6 days more at time of writing to my 9th marathon. I will be participating in the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM 2019). (Stats: 4 Sundown Marathons, 1 Gold Coast Airport Marathon and 3 SCSMs since 2015).
This year I cut down on the physical races due to budget and to a more conscious effort to reduce carbon footprints. I ran more though with more free virtual challenges and virtual races with 42race and Spacebib – no medals, no tees, just digital badges and virtual pride.
I have already run 1491.55 km for the year, a record for myself.
Medical scares and injury struck a few times, in April and in August. I switched from daily runs of shorter distances to non-daily ones of shorter distances. And when I somewhat recovered a fair bit in late September I switched to non-daily and longer distances.
Just when I was down with Plantar Fasciitis (PF), TyreLady asked me if I could join as Low Carbon Zero Waste Runners for SCSM2019. I still love medals and want to PB with sub-6 hour. (Okay, I did plan to donate all medals for recycling before I expire.) And I was still rather green with Green Initiatives so I was hesitant. And I wasn’t sure how long I will take to recover from PF. The list went on. But I said yes in the end. After all, I had been running the SCSM as a green ambassador in the past and I have already registered for the FM.
Most of my training runs are done with bare minimal ie a singlet and shorts and a pair of socks and running shoes. Add a recycled bottle for hydration for the longer runs and a gel if I go beyond 1.5 hours. I just used the Park Connector nearby so it’s really low carbon and zero waste in a sense. I made sure to trash the gels after consumption each run into the proper bins along the route. These are some snapshots taken recently of the almost daily route.
Luckily for me, the PF on my left foot recovered in mid-October, despite me continuing with my running but with some of my own ‘healing’ routines.
I squeezed in two 32 km races two weeks apart to test out my pacing strategies about 5 weeks before the race. I must say this is probably the most structured training I ever put myself through in preparation for a marathon.
I feel a bit excited and also slightly apprehensive. How do I taper properly, was there something more I should do etc, I guess the normal jitters pre-race. I don’t know how I will fare on that day given that Marathon can be quite unpredictable. I have executed what I can plan. I have the pace that I will stick to in mind having tried out the various combination in training so far. It will be slower than the last 32 km average pace of course. The rest is up to that day’s condition and performance. With God’s Grace, it will be a good day to run my best marathon yet. In the meantime run free (carbon and waste-free too), run safe and run happy. By the way, I should be coming back after the marathon to do the 10 km for breakfast too! Appreciate if all runners, at the minimal, would bin the paper cups and gel waste into the trash bins provided! And I am also still running for the SCS to support the fight against cancer.
Note: I also made use of the Medium platform to share some thoughts on running too, so if you are interested, you can find me on https://medium.com/@kenjoe.
