30km training run

The reading from my Suunto showed 30.05km after I completed another three more laps around the Bukit Aman car park. That's the end of my training run after a grueling 3 hours 37 minutes.

The Saturday morning started early and I reached Bukit Aman car park just in time at 5.15am. Lam and BP were already there. We started our run as usual by making a loop around the Bird Park. This loop is about 2.85km.

From the Lake Garden then we made our way to Seri Hartamas via the hilly Bukit Tunku. This is about 9.8 km away. Along the way we crossed path with a lot of runners, including those familiar faces from the Pacesetters and Der Pacemakers circles. I guessed they are training for the SCKLM 2009 also. When we reached there. We made another two loops of 2.3km around the housing area. Then we made our pit-stop at Petronas Petrol Station before we made another 2.3km loop.

From here, we headed back to the car park at a slower pace. Learning from our experience from last week, the aim was to complete the 30km without too much suffering. Unfortunately, at 24km mark going uphill, we started to slow down to walking pace. Once one of slowed down, the rest also followed. But we decided to run again. Lam and BP were ahead of me as I felt pain on both of my feet and decided to slow my pace considerably. At 27km mark, the pain was getting too much and I decided to walk for about 1.5km. I have no problem with my calf muscles this time round, but the feet was getting stiff and painful.

Finally at the last 1 km to go, I decided to run again, when I reached the car park, I could see Lam and BP already changed their shirts and were waiting for me. I knew from my Suunto this point was 29.2km, little short of 30km. I decided to do a few laps to get to 30. At the end of the run, I was quite exhausted but the feeling was better than last week (when we did 28km).

My feet recover quite fast after the run, but my right knee was still painful on the inner side. I guess all that uphill and downhill really put a lot of pressure on the knees. I hope I can find a solution to mitigate this.

Next Sunday, it will be the Bidor half-marathon. I heard that the course is a hilly one also. BP & I will be there with WW. This is going to be our first half-marathon. I will treat this as a training run and enjoy the scenery.