To Run Fast, You've Got To First Run Slow

The racing season looks to be making its comeback for the year with lots of races to choose from for everyone. For me, the Brooks half in two weeks time will be my second race for the year. Initially I had plans to 'attack' this race and make up for last year's horrible run bogged by a mid race injury flare up but now I'm using this race as a gauge to set up the next step in my marathon preparations.

My recent knee injury that had me seeing some down time for the month of January kinda scuttled whatever training plans I was cooking up. In hindsight, the injury was a good thing cos for one, I was forced to rest up completely and also had me take a step back to look at my training programme. The training plan I had cooked up was truly for a man much younger than myself and sticking to that would have been a nice setup for even more injuries.

The realization that I needed to tweak my plans to suit my age and capabilities coupled by the timely arrival of the 'Hansons Marathon Method' book came to the forefront of my mind. The book provided some very insightful reading, especially for someone who thought speed and pace was everything.

'To run fast, you've got to first run slow' 

Those words in general was what stood out for me from the book. I have totally tweaked my training methods and will implement them properly right after the Brooks half which I'm going to use to gauge my current fitness level and work from there.

I'm nowhere near my best yet. The past month and a half has seen me being very cautious with my training. Things have been kept easy, the miles have been reduced and a lot of attention has been placed on the knee to look for signs of a recurrence. And my current weekly mileage averaging less than 30k a week is nowhere near to running a fruitful half marathon in two weeks time.

I'll be treating the Brooks half as sort of an LSD training session for me, which mind you, will be the first time this year that I've run anything close to that mileage. I've been keeping the mileage really very low for the moment, not wanting to take chances with the knee. The furthest I've run in the past month since my injury is 13k.

If things go well (fingers crossed), my training proper is going to start right after that. The key race that I'm targeting to see my hard labour pay off will be the Standard Chartered KL Marathon at the end of June. Goals and targets are already set, albeit a conservative one and all my training will be geared towards achieving it.

The current weekly Gold Coast training sessions organized by Jamie is a nice addition to my training plans. Though Jamie has some pretty 'torturous' after run additional workout sessions, I've been enjoying the group runs considerably. It's always so much less mentally challenging running with a bunch of like minded people than running alone.

With the right training and commitment, I believe I'll be able to meet the goals I've set out for myself this year. But if I don't, hey, no big deal, I'll just have to try harder. With that said and done, anyone planning to run with a slow poke for the Brooks half is always welcome to run alongside me ... LOL! See you all at Brooks!