Kancheong Time

K. So I am a wee bit kancheong now. It is just slightly under 3 months to the longest race I going to do so far. And I have barely  started training for it. The haze  of course didn't help. 

It all started last year when I decided to run a 50km race to celebrate my 50th birthday. But I left things a bit late and somehow the year slipped by and I didn't sign up for anything. So I did the next best thing. Sign up for one this year. Nevermind that I have not run a full marathon for the longest time. To make it worse,  this is a trail race not merely a road run and the cut off time for it is a whooping 15 hours which means it is probably going to be tough as hell.

To kick off the training, I went and did a 25km trail race in Thailand in January. That turns out to be relatively easy but after that, the momentum was not maintained and the weekly mileage continued to stay at 30 km, definitely not something that is adequate for the purpose. But last week decided to use the Muar Cross Country Run, which was a half marathon semi-trail race to relaunch the training. But the haze kicked in and I lost 1 more week. And with lots of races and photoshoot assignment coming up in the next few weeks, plus the haze, I really don't think I can prepare sufficiently for it.

And how do one train for a trail race of 50km when Singapore is all so built up and the only trail we have is MacRitchie and Bukit Timah which while we called the latter a hill is just a small little mound in comparison.. There  going to be a climb of at least 1.5km with total ascent of 3.5km. Where to find such altitude to train in here?

Anyway, the next few weekends, haze permitting, will see me traversing Bukit Timah and MacRitchie and at least once every week I will be at Mt Faber trying to make the best of whatever we  have, for what it is worth. Anybody care to join me?