Eventually....

Yes, eventually, after 18 months I will enter into a running race and tomorrow will be my "debut" of this new running life as Master Runner..…

Time flies incredibly fast.
My last race, I was still 39 and with the 2nd kid on the way … now I am already turning 41 and he is already 18m, ravaging the house as a sweet active toddler...

It is a 5k race in HK organized by my club in memorial of a prematurely deceased club member who gave a big contribution to the local community.

The fun of the race is that the classification is done using the WADA age conversion tables, so everybody has a shot for the overall victory regardless of the age ! It will be fun and my coefficient is around 0.92…

If "Uncle Yip" (former WADA world champion) shows up with his 88 years old he can kick butts since he can still run 30'-35' for a 5k...

On that course I have very good memories because I won a race OA in 2007(report) and 2nd in 2008 with my PB of 15'51". Tomorrow I just go there relaxed without any objectives, I will push hard and see what comes out. It is already a great satisfaction to be back racing and "feel the thrill".

The past 7 days has been quite a decent streak of solid training, nothing special but good consistency

SAT 15th: Hong Kong. 11km run. I felt a bit tired from Friday's longish run but I tackled a hill near home

SUN 16th (HK): bike ride... I will write a specific post on the matter, but anyway It was my first ride after an unsuccessful "cleat fitting" session... I felt awful on the bike, the feet felt awkward... I had the plan to do hill intervals, but I gave up and went for an easy spin. 30km in total

MON 17th: (HK): GREAT run session. the sky was cloudy, so the temperature "only" 25C. W/U 20' easy run + dynamic stretching + drills then 5x1000m intervals along the rowing course in Shatin with 2'15" standing recovery.

I did not have any specific pace in mind, so I just went by feel to push the pace in a confortable way.
3'23" (felt like jogging) / 3'20" / 3'18" / 3'16" / 3'11" (I passed by the 500m in 1'38" and than pick up the speed for the last 400m). Then it was already late and I headed home (to fetch my daughter to the schoolbus... our ritual)

Really amazing, I could not believe to be already in the 3'1x" range and I could have go on for more intervals if not because of the time..

TUE 18th: (HK) 15km easy recovery run. Some slight tightness in the legs

WED 19th (Dongguan): bike ride 1h with cross bike... pushed hard on the small hills... the feeling of going off-road with a XC bike is unique... you can really push fast also off-road and the bike is very responsive. It is really different from the MTB.

The drawback is that the bike is also very responsive downhill, so you must really take it easy...

THU 20th (Hong Kong): I overslept, so only 8km RUN but I pushed the pace around 4'00" and felt very comfortable. It was right after a huge thunderstorm, so the air was clean and slightly cooler

FRI 21st (Dongguan): very hot, 27C/90%Rh already at 6am. I went into the forest for an easy run. I wanted to make a comparison between Garmin and Polar, so I had 2 watches and 2 foot pods (only 1 HR band though...). Report on the experiment in a later post

Got chased by a dog which got close enough to almost bite my shoe even if I was sprinting ... the good thing is that I did not need to add strides at the end of the run because the "neural activation" was already enough. I ended up with 11km @ 4'30" pace and 1.5L of lost weight in sweat. Felt a bit tired, more than I expected.