Week 3 to IMWA: Probably the Last Hard Week

Yesterday was probably my last big 200km ride plan. This coming weekend I will be away in Johore for a working weekend. All is not lost apparently. Resort is supposedly to be well equipped with treadmill and cycling machine and even an olympic sized pool. But this will mean that the weekdays will be jam packed with at least a couple of 100km bike rides, followed by runs.


I will soon need to start packing my equipment for the race. Maybe after I come back from Johore.


It was a great morning today. Family woke up late so I sneaked out to run in the cool morning. The kids slept late because they had a Halloween party with their Speech & Drama school - yeah, 1 week late but better than not having it.


Coach gave me the plan of 2km warm up, 4 sets of 7km with 500m walk in between for today's session. As I was running, I asked myself what was with the walking. I suspect the main reason is to get the muscles to rest a short while so that the legs could go on a harder bout thereafter. I was always on increasing HR training sessions - started with relatively gentle set and end with a hard round. Its like a negative split kind of training. Not too sure of the science behind it, but I think this logic made some sense. At least to me?


I felt good on the warm up. Did a 5:49/km pace. The main sets were covered with paces of 5:44/km, 5:24/km, 5:30/km, 5:28/km. I was not at East Coast on flat terrain as I was back pounding on Thomson to Mandai. Almost hit the entrance of the zoo but did not as it would be beyond 16km one way. So it was a rolling terrain and probably explained the difference in pace. But the HR for the last set was in Zone 5.


Couple of guys I know will be going for IMWA. Enrico, Coach, Wilson, Benjamin and Kevin. There could be others but I am not sure who they are. Will be there to find out. Also read that a 26 year old guy called Leonard Ong will be attempting it as well. He had gotten into an accident and climbing out of his injury with this race. Good on you, mate!