Terence's SC Marathon race report

Boon Pin really gave new meaning to "Amazing race" and marathon. Will upload his report onto crazy2tri blog for archival.

I, too had my own magical moment. As I prepared for this year marathon, my target was to beat my last year's time of 5:06hr by breaking 5 hours. Frankly, I thought 5 hour was hard to beat because I ran quite hard last year and the weather was really cool. Beyond my wildest imagination, I clocked 4:33h. For me, the biggest satisfaction is not the timing but that of a mental block removed, with the surge of "you-can-do-anything-now" energy.

Unlike the previous two marathons (05 & 06), my game plan this time was to go at a pace at 6min/km for the first 30km and then get myself to the finish line, even if I have to risk stoning out after 30k.

My splits was 21km - 2:08h, 30km - 3:20h, 37km - 4h. At the half-marathon U-turn along Nicoll Highway, only 2 elite yellow-tags (half-marathoners) passed me (unlike previous years - rocks, man). 20-25k stretch : I found myself "clinging on" to this lady with a great running pose (chi-running?), going at 11km/h. Roger Chow passed me around 25km - he went on to beat his target of 4.5 hr (4:23h). The last 5km, after Stadium link, was PAIN, felt like I have legs of Transformer.

Mark Chang asked me for the training plan and I didn't really have one, roughly one 30k, one 25k, two 20k long runs and several short runs as fillers. Three weeks before the race, I bought the Chi-running book, read it and decided, against conventional wisdom, to adopt what I read for the race. I find the "steel and cotton" principle useful. The biblical truth for this is "His yoke is easy and His burden is light" which I meditated whenever my brain was "on".

By the way, "steel and cotton" means maintain your form with your core muscle and make your legs go "limp" or soft, so that you minimize the use of leg muscles and feel "light". Lean forward to go faster - let gravity does the work.

Another difference : due to lack of time, I didn't really taper this time. On the week leading to marathon, I ran on day 1-3-5, 7km, with average speed of 10km/h - my targetted pace.

Signing off.

(At Beijing, -2 degree C)