A Quarter of First

The first quarter of 2011 has gone by. It has been a rather interesting start to the year with a few ‘firsts’. But first (oops) some stats.

Running mileage took a backseat as I went for more fun and interesting runs instead of clocking up the miles. Total distance ran for the quarter was 433.9 km which works out to a miserly 144.6km a month or 33 km a week.

Instead of counting distances, I had more fun running than I can remember for a long long time. We kicked off the year with an Eastside Run followed by the Brokie Smell Flower. Then we did the Team Fatbird annual Eastsider CNY Run and it was fun getting to know new friends and meet old friends.

This was followed by the first/new The North Face Trail Run series, a monthly trail run by TNF Singapore where we get to run various different trails in Singapore. Most who had participated in the past 2 runs enjoyed it and I had double the fun as I am one of the run leaders and we had the pleasure of going to recce the routes so we ran twice insteadJ And that was how I managed to did my first run at Lorong Halus.

  

And instead of stressing myself over races, I only signed up for 1 race – the NTUC OMB Challenge and it was my first time racing stairs. While it was tough, nevertheless it was worth the ‘torture’ as otherwise I don’t think I have the guts to sign up for a full vertical marathon.

My barefoot or minimalist running went into a higher gear as I clocked up 60 km on the Tyr Watersocks and 18km barefoot. Then I got my first pair of real minimalist shoe – the Terra Plana Evo and clocked up the longest single barefoot/minimalist run to date – 12km! Short by most people standard but slow and steady is how I like it.

Apart from just running around, I took some time off weekend running to return something to the running communities and ended up with 3 volunteer stints so far. Not a bad start to the year I must admit.

And finally I sold my first event tee (yeah!); went for the first time to the gym at Tampines Sports Complex and got my first pair of neon green shoe!

But all good things must come to an end and sadly on my very last 2^nd run of the quarter, while doing a short and easy 8km run, I developed a pain in the arch of the foot and now have to take a longer than planned break from running. My first running ‘souvenir’ this year. Hopefully it is not plantar fasciitis.