Weekend long run training

After the Bidor run, I did two recovery runs of 4km each on Thursday and Friday. The Bidor run was really an over-reaching effort. My right knee was sore. I know very well that I cannot sustain the same pace if I were running for the full marathon. Therefore the important part of my marathon training is to find a pace that I can sustain for the whole 42km.

BP and I were training again for our weekly long run yesterday. The target was to complete 7 long laps around Taman Bukit Jalil in 3 hours. Each loop was about 4km.

We started the run at 5:30am. We paced at 7:30 per km for the first lap. But on second lap, BP excused himself and went into the toilet. I had to continue alone. Running alone in the dark was not a good experience. We started our run with no people in the park and in the dark for most parts of the trails.

I continued to run on my own for the rest of the training as BP was apparently struggling even after coming out from the toilet. I would only saw him maybe an hour later from distant. He pacing quite slowly. We crossed path again on my 5th lap. At the time, the sun was shining quite brightly and there were already many people in the park.

As the 3 hours target was approaching, I reached the end of my 6th lap only to find BP waiting for me. I actually decided earlier to stop at the end the lap because I was getting tired. At that time, I had already run for 23+ km on an empty stomach.

BP was complaining of a stomach problem and had decided to stop at 5 laps. I could see that he was not at his best. We chatted for a while with two veteran runners from Taman Bukit Jalil running club before leaving.

We are running short of time for our training. We will need to step up if we want to have any chance of finishing the SCKLM 2009.