It’s been one year since my first running race event – Nike City 10K We Run KL 10-10-10.
It was all begun at early of September 2010, my colleague Keong was asking me whether I was interested joining a race organized by Nike (It was actually organized by HiVelocity), without any doubt, I told him YES. I was working too hard last few years and didn’t really spending time on exercise, and I’ve planned to do some jogging at that moment. After signing up for the race at September 9th, 2010, I started my training by running around my neighborhood with my old badminton shoes. At first I couldn’t even run more than 5 minutes (I think not more than 1KM). Everything is difficult at the beginning, I understood that since long time ago, so I just keep on training day by day, hope to complete 10KM race that coming in not more than 1 month. Slowly I could run for 10 minutes non stop, 20 minutes non stop and finally 25 minutes non stop. So I completed my first 10KM race, at 1 hour 8 minutes 8 seconds, and what I got was a plastic toy XD
However, it was a very good start, since then I was addicted with running. I keep on training to make myself run farther and faster. Things get organized after I was given an iPhone 4 by my wife as anniversary gift. I installed App like Nike+ GPS and RunMeter to keep track my progress of trainings. At the same time, my college buddy Michelle Looi has invited me to train with her and introduced her Sifu Tony Quay to me. Tony is a very patient and friendly person, I’ve learnt a lot from him and got improved fast.
Everything was going on smooth until I got injured during Malakoff 12KM run at December 2010. My knees hurt bad and I need to get pain killer injection with 1 day off from work.
I’ve stopped from running for a while, resting my knees while seeking for solutions to let me continue running. I’ve bought myself a pair of Asics Nimbus 12 after getting bonus at beginning of 2011, hoping the thick shoe soles could minimize the impact rush to my knees. However it wasn’t work, my knee pain still struck back once a while. Then I came across a book called “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall. It mentions about minimalism running, so I decided to give barefoot run a try at end of February, and worked well for my knee (but did very bad for my foot sole with painful blisters). With the forefoot landing experience I gained from barefoot run, I survived my first half marathon at Bareno Run around March 2011, on Asics Nimbus 12. But I felt Asics just too heavy for forefoot landing, so I decided to get myself a pair of Vibram FiveFingers, as mentioned in the book “Born to Run”.
Introduced by Michelle Looi, I’ve got my first pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSO from Crossroads Online, one of the few US online stores that ship to Malaysia. However my first pair of VFF KSO was too small for my feet, after consideration, I decided to get another pair of bigger size VFF KSO. It was delivered one day before the Jogathon Warisan, and I had good run with it. My knee pain problem had been eliminated since then.
With continuous running and training, I have transformed from unable to run more than 5 minutes until now I could run 20KM LSD at least twice a month, running not only brings me healthy body, low heart rate and stronger feet, but also precious friendships. Runners are friendly, everyone could make friends easily in race events, and I have been making new friends from various events.
Coming years, I have no concreate plan what will I heading, I am not a good planning person and never plan to be one, just like I never planned to pick up running 1 year plus before. I might continue running and conquering marathons and even ultramarathons, or I might pick up swimming and start training for triathlon, or I might quit running and dive into futsal that I just picked up recently, let’s see 🙂
Little statistic:
Total milage recorded in 1 year: 680KM++
10KM best time: 51 min 45 sec (Siemens Run 2011)
21KM best time: 2 Hour 0 min 32 sec (Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon 2011)
What is your record now? I started running after KK and now keep running just like crazy! hope I can catch up with u on your speed and learn from you. 😀 hope to see you in coming events as well.