As we approach the ticking last few seconds of the 2009 year, many people would be pulling out pieces of paper, opening their dust covered diaries or logging into the blog that they have not visited for the last 10 months to pen down their Resolutions for the 2010 year. Vividly I remember writing New Year Resolution for the year of 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2006.
I dare to say that I did not manage to resolve any of my resolutions for any of these 4 years. In fact, it’s only this month (Dec 2009) that I managed to achieve one of my 2006’s resolution... which is to run my first Full Marathon. Coaches, mentors, teachers, friends, relatives will always ask during the New Year season, “What do you want to achieve in this new year?”, “What’s your goal for the next 12 months?”, “Have you achieved your goals for the last year?”
Sometime back, I concluded that it’s too difficult to achieve and attain the goals set and resolutions are basically existing to ‘motivate’ you but doesn’t help you in reaching the destination desired. And of course, with that attitude, I stopped making any more resolutions and decided that it’s too much for me to handle the fact that I’m always an under-achiever and am lousy at reaching my goals! And at every New Year count down party, when asked of my resolutions, I would simply answer “What for? 99% of people do not stick to their resolutions and I’m one of them! WIthout resolutions, I have been surviving for the last year of my life at my work and my family.”
Ahah... The key word in my statement is surviving. Do I want to barely survive and hang around and be satisfied with the status quo or do I want to excel in what I do and make a difference in my life, or even the lives of a million other people? Without pondering much into these questions 4 months back when I came across an online advertisement for participation in
Standard Chartered Marathon 2009, I swiftly signed up and paid $57.25 (including a 15% discount as Standard Chartered Credit Card Member). I have to say that was a very very bold move and I did freeze in my seat thinking whether I would be throwing the $57.25 away. I hate to waste resources, especially money. Not wanting the money to go to waste, I started my research on how to go about training for marathon on the internet... googling through all possible sports websites, running websites and marathon specific websites, I downloaded several different training strategies and program and tried putting together a decent training program that I hoped I could adhere to.
I also started sending messages to my friends from high school, army, universities and anyone whom I know is a good runner and have completed long distance running before, soliciting for buddies to train for the race together. After much searching around, I found a friend K who signed up immediately after I encouraged him to. He has never ran a marathon before and we used to cycle during the wee hours or really early in the morning like 4am! A close friend LP who have completed the marathon in 2008 was extremely reluctant to sign up for the 2009 marathon. That scared me a bit as I thought to myself whether the full marathon could be a far fetch for me. Since I haven’t been running regularly and routinely since year 2000 and I’m not exactly the tone and fit type. I’m FAT and weighty. I have bulging tummy, flabby arms and thighs and even man’s breasts! My close girlfriends would make fun of me that I have bigger cup size than them!
Not giving up on running the
SC Marathon 2009, I furthered my research on how I can run effectively and efficiently to help me achieve my goal. Fortunately, I found
Racers’ Toolbox and worked with Scott Larsen in helping me plan for my training. Before the planning actually took place, I had to take a physical fitness test comprising
Fuel Efficiency and
Lactate tests. Basically, I had to run on a thread mill with gadgets hanging over my head, connected to a sophisticated computer system which would then analyze my body and conclude on my Heart Rate zones required for training to achieve different objectives like burning fat, increase strength, improve lactate threshold etc.
My fat burning zone was 111 to 121 heart beats per minute(bmp). I was told to run at that heart rate but I had to literally brisk walk for about 3 weeks as when I started to pick up pace by even a slight bit, my heart rate would cross 140 bmp. And at 140, according to my graphs and tests results, I won’t be burning any fat at all, but I would be burning carbohydrates which isn’t the ideal case. It took me a while and much reading to know the difference between burning fat and burning carbo. After 3 weeks of brisk walking, I actually lost 2kg. After 3 months of training, I lost a total of 4.5kg.
I was extremely shocked by the results. There was no super difficult or tough physical training that I had to go through like those days in the army. Each running session was easy to complete and I started feeling very good, both physically and mentally as endorphins are released into my brain. I used to dread running and hated every physically running tests. But now, I’m starting to enjoy it. Finally on 6th December 2009, the big day came. I woke up at 2.30am to take a bus to the starting point of the Marathon. The run started at 5.30am and I completed the run in 5 hours 21 mins 23 secs. I have to admit that the run was not an easy feat and it took a lot of physical endurance and mental encouragement to push on and reach the finishing line. Even though I started running alone (K decided not to run eventually as he didn’t train for it), I met friends along the way who encouraged me and pushed me on to complete the run. Today is the 31st of December and we are less than 24 hours from the countdown for the New Year 2010. I’ve yet to make any resolutions, but I’ll definitely make some before the day ends. And I’m going to achieve them!
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