A New Chapter

With the new year slowly settling in, it's time to start hitting the drawing board and making up a new training programme. With my main race for the year, the Gold Coast Airport Marathon, all paid and accounted for, all that needs to be done now is train for it.

While it's still slightly over 6 months away but some kind of training plan needs to be started now to slowly ease into things. That's where the problem lies though. I don't have a proper training plan, at least not one that makes a semblance of sense. 

The 'training' currently has been get up, lace my shoes and just run. No method to it. There are days when I do easy runs, days when I feel like pushing myself, days when I question my sanity or even days when I just feel like going to the nearby shop, have a nice roti bawang and just screw the run.

It's really been hard to get back to a proper training phase. I had a decent time goal planned for GCAM this year but with the recent unexpected results in Chiangmai, I need to revise those time goals a little and in doing so, a proper training plan matters a lot. 

I'm trying to recreate my training, which was really non-existent, for Chiangmai and tweak it for GCAM. I must have done something right with that plan so in theory, if I keep doing what I did then, that should be enough, right? In theory anyway. 

The only positives are that I have encouragement from the wife who believes in my limited abilities and a group of equally running mad friends that I can count on to help better my goals and push me out of my comfort zone at times.

Where do I go from here?

I don't intend to sign up for many races this year safe for a few key ones that will aid in my marathon preps. I'm still identifying those races. My only spur of the moment race which I'm regretting signing for is the Nuang Ultra Challenge in March, something that I will just have to do with the least possible whining. Serves me right for signing up!

But there is a HUGE possibility I will DNS the event, what with the recent cementing, yes cementing of the trail path leading up. Whose bright idea it was to come up with that hare brained scheme needs a hard knock on the head!

Training will take precedence over all else though. Once I finalize what I'm going to need to do to achieve the time goals I've set for myself, things will shift into a higher gear. At my age though, I've just got to train smart and avoid injuries at all cost. This old body and legs take all that much longer to heal these days.

Emphasis will specifically be placed on honing the speed and building up the endurance but above all else, I'll need to keep the training consistent. With life and work to also be content with, that might be a stretch.

That said, I'll be looking forward to my morning runs that will alternate daily between solo runs and runs with the wife and also the longer weekend group runs with the gang. Here's to a good running year ahead!