Week One

Technically it's not Week One of my training for full marathon.

But i'm now reading this hilarious book and i thought i should follow the recommendations and tell everyone i know (Step 5) for accountability sake - so that i will think twice about quitting, so paiseh mah, lol

So why do i want to do a full marathon?

i started running when Ewan was 2, so that's 6-ish years ago. i've never entertained the thought of a marathon until about 2 years ago. Even then it was a romantic thought, i have 10,000 reasons for not being able to run a marathon and none to support that i can, lol. i run twice a week only, each time about half an hour, sometimes one hour if it's not too hot and when i don't feel lazy. Then some time in Dec last year i began to think of my impending 40th birthday in March. i wanted to do something to mark the event. i chanced upon a run that will be held in March, which offered 5 km and 16 km routes. i thought 5 km is no challenge lah (actually it was more like i only need to pay a little bit more for the 16km run, more worth it, LOL), but 16 km is a s-t-r-e-t-c-h cos i think the most i ran then is probably only 7 to 8km. i cut out the advertisement from the magazine and mulled over it. The significant other encouraged me to do (largely to shut me up cos i just can't make up my mind, LOL). i bounced the idea off my cyber friends too and finally decided what the heck just sign up and train for it.

i trained about 3 months for the 16km and did just fine - didn't need to crawl to the finish line, lol. But hoh, (a lot of) confidence built up from that race. i thought doing a half marathon (21 km) which is like 5 km more, at the end of the year shouldn't be any problem.

i don't know about you but when i feel restless about a decision, i know something is not quite right. i'm not sure if i want to spend 3/4 of the year just training for an extra 5km challenge. i read up about training for a full marathon (42km) and gave some serious thought (see, it's not an impulsive decision ok?) Then came the launch of the Singapore Marathon some weeks back. i decided again, what the heck, just sign up and train for it.

Truth be told, i'm not confident of finishing it :) Some days i just don't feel like running. Some days i ask myself what i've gotten myself into, lol. But most days i stick pretty close to the weekly targets.

A friend thinks it's an utterly stupid answer some mountaineers give when asked why they want to climb mountains : because the mountains are there. LOL.

So why do i want to do a full marathon? Not because there is 42km of road to pound. i just want to do it lor. If that is not a good enough reason to tell myself when i'm struggling/crawling along the route and feel like giving up on race day, then this is it:

Because i want to celebrate the achievement at the end of it.

PARRRRRRTY!

:)

Week 1: 10km @ 1:05 hrs & 2 hrs continuous run