The registration is completed for Borneo International Marathon 2012 which will be held in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah which incidentally is my second time where I had to travel by plane for a race. Although among the hardcore runners whom travel far and abroad for their races, I am somewhat a slow beginner as I tend to be contended with local races which does not pose much logistical nightmares to me. Also, this is my first half marathon in as many years since I had injured myself back in 2005, where I had limited myself to 10K runs from then on.
The main thing that I had to concentrate now is how to train for this 21K. It is understandable that 21K’s are actually a staple for most of the marathon runners however for someone like me whom had not ran a half marathon for more than 5 years, it may take some getting used to especially on the distance. Training wise, I believe that one still have to go back to some of the basics ie strength training and mileage runs however the approach may have to be in a much more manageable level. My training methods for 10K had been working well for me where I usually do only 70% of the distance (ie. maxing out at 7K) during my training runs and I am looking at repeating this training schedule for to my 21K distance. However, there will be something that I will be looking out for and that is the my rate of healing which is the most important aspect of training that any runner should always look into. Progressing from a 10K to a 20K entails increasing my running distance by more than 100% (ie I had to run twice as far just to cover the basic minimum training mileage) and I think I may have to stagger the training in stages and it should look like:
Week 1 and 3 of every month.
Sunday – 15K
Monday – Rest (with compression recovery)
Tuesday – 5K
Wednesday – Rest (with compression recovery)
Thursday – 7K
Friday – Rest
Saturday – Rest
Week 2 and 4 of every month.
Sunday – 15K
Monday – Rest (with compression recovery)
Tuesday – Rest
Wednesday – Strength training (Hill repeats – 100m x 20)
Thursday – Rest (with compression recovery)
Friday – Strength training (variable tight turning paths, stair case, 100m all out running – COMBO)
Saturday – Rest
In the month of April, I will increase the mileage to a twice per week 15K runs if my legs can ever take such punishments. Here’s to the Borneo International Marathon 2012!











