virgin no more

yesterday i went for my first ever track training in my entire life of 21years and 6months. 

and it was a good hurt.

a REAL good hurt, may i add.

the day before the training, i went for a 20k run. fatigue and muscle soreness from the previous day's exertions really took its toll on me, especially during the the latter part of training - speedwork. *shudders*

training took place at MOE's CCAB. Sham (coach), trisha, bryan, ee chuan, jill, weeling, gene and myself made up the attendance. met a few familiar faces and a handful of local running legends who are also training at the track! 

we started off with a 20min easy jog before proceeding to the warm-ups. coach told us that we'll be doing a 1-hour run, which will be the FIRST part of the training. followed by, in his own words, a TEDIOUS speedwork session.

the hour-long run started off well. i felt good enough. but soon, we were berated by the coach for taking an easy pace hence eugene kicked up the speed and started leading the run. it was still rather manageable as we were doing a 5.30min/km pace. 

training in a stadium environment doing laps proved a good test of one's mental strength as you'll tend to tire easily due to the monotonous setting of the track without minimal external distraction. hence, maintaining your focus is crucial and yet hard to achieve in long runs, as compared to an outdoor run.

upon completion of the the hour-long run, coach assessed each of our running styles (with video evidence no less!) and where we went wrong. mine was WAY off. 

way off.

stiff upper body, improper kick-back, awkward landing, no "punch" in my strides. same case: wastage of energy! gene also corrected my tendency to bend my arms too much during runs.

then hell came in the form of speedwork.

15reps of 150m sprints/striding. with 250 run-down in between.

my gosh, that really took the mojo out of me. especially from the 12th reps onwards where lilo & STITCH came a-visiting! =x

nearly died but i survived.

after a hearty dinner at Mr Prata, gene and i went into a pre-ORD mood and burst into NS song a-la pierce brosna in mama mia, only less gay and better sounding. on our way back, we talked and shared stories of how our normal sane friend view our passion for running. i guess you will never get it unless you're one of us. 

it takes a special kind of crazy to do what we do.

had a huge athletic hang-over in the form of pure fatigue the day after, hardly had the energy and drive to do anything. but, along with V, i still forced myself to hit the gym where i did some core and upper body strength training.

oh yes, i think manda, V and myself are the only idiots who will skip class, after 5 minutes into the lesson. and yes, we were already seated in the computer lab prior the decision to bounce. -_-"

sidenote:

manda says my life all about running now.