6.44 km run (4 mile) w/ Strides on 4th August [Workout 21/64]

Made it to Week 7 of my 16-week beginner marathon training on RunKeeper (although I skipped the first 2 weeks as I just finished my half marathon). Another 3 more months to go! I choose the beginner marathon so that I would be "over-prepared" for my 32 km Newton Run in 74 days. After resting for about a few days, I will have to decide what training to plan to follow to get prepared for my Standard Chartered Marathon

Training Results
Started at 9:30 pm after playing some Dragon Age Inquisition Multiplayer with Brian. Didn't feel particularly great, ran my 6.44 km (supposedly at a conversational pace) at my usual 5 km pace (6 mins/km). If I can manage to keep this pace for my half marathon, I can finish in close to 2 hours! hmm... but this will take me a lot of training to able to hold this pace over the half marathon.

I started the 4 x 20 seconds strides and 2 mins rest period after the 6.44 km. Managed an average of 4 mins/km for the strides. I did some calculations and found that one of our best Singapore marathon runners, Soh Rui Yong, who won the 2015 SEA games gold for men's marathon in 2:34:56 ran an average of 3:40 mins/km! This is faster than my almost all out sprint. These people are at the top of their physical fitness. Impressive!

Short run, hence the look isn't too shag!

Next Step
As I am one day late behind my training (I went cycling for my first time with John last Friday, which caused some posterior pain. I postponed my long run from Saturday to Sunday night), I will probably have to do my training on Thursday, Friday & Saturday to catch back up.

Next training will be 9.7 km negative splits. According to the training program, I need to do the following

• 1.64 km / 1 mile slow
• 1.64 km / 1 mile @ 6:30 mins/km
• 1.64 km / 1 mile @ 6:25 mins/km
• 1.64 km / 1 mile @ 6:19 mins/km
• 1.64 km / 1 mile @ 6:13 mins/km
• 1.64 km / 1 mile slow

Difficult part will be figuring how to measure my pace with all the negative splits and the mile breakdowns. I don't want to reconfigure runkeeper to miles, and I'm not familiar with what is an acceptable time for mins/mile. I could do the calculations of course, but perhaps I will reconfigure my RunKeeper to give me splits over a 10 km run and try to pace myself from there, something like

• 1 km slow
• 1 km @ 6:30/km
• 1 km @ 6:28/km
• 1 km @ 6:25/km
• 1 km @ 6:23/km
• 1 km @ 6:20/km
• 1 km @ 6:18/km
• 1 km @ 6:15/km
• 1 km @ 6:13/km
• 1 km slow

I tried running negative splits in my Osim Half marathon, starting a snails pace before reaching my usual pace at the 5th km. However, I could not hold my pace from the 18km onwards, and was basically ambling along until the end. So far the furthest I ran at a similar pace was today: 6.44 km at 6 mins/km. Hopefully I can manage this 8km without too much pain.