The road to May 1st. Week 1.

After running the marathon last January 9, 2011, I finally felt like I was ready to start again. Training, that is. I have had my share of rest, you know, to recover, for about a week, and then I thought, I cannot do this any longer. Resting, that is.

As you may already know, I registered myself for an Ultra-marathon the very day that I finished my first marathon. This one is being organized by Jonel Mendoza and is titled “frontRUNNER’s Labor Day Coast to Coast Ultra-marathon ‘ONLY THE STRONG’”. It’s a race starting from Balamban, Cebu and ending at the Cebu Provincial Capitol, via Transcentral Highway. The time of the race is May 1, 2011, 4am to 2pm. Yes, about 60KM in 10 hours!

With barely 15 weeks to race day, I was in the search for a suitable training plan. I browsed the Internet for one that would be best for me. But, I was out of luck. I could not find any for the 60KM distance. And then I thought, how about if I would just use my old one? Yes, the one that I used for the marathon. So I did. I am using it now. I made some modifications to it though. I added 50% more to the Long Run distances. Now, I think I am ready. To train, that is.

I do Intervals on Mondays, Tempo on Wednesdays, and Long Runs on Fridays or Saturdays. When I was training for the marathon, I found it to be effective to train only 3 times in a week. So, I thought I’d do the same this time.

Last Monday, I did 1600m warm-up, 4 sets of 800m runs with 2-minute rest intervals, then 10 minutes of easy cool down. I did it in the night, after work, because I was too lazy to get up and hit the road in the morning. You know, those days when the bed just get the better of us runners. It was one of those. But, the bed may have won the battle at 5am that day, at least I was able to redeem myself in the evening!

Wednesday, I did 1.5KM of Easy Tempo, 9KM of Long Tempo, and ended it with another 1.5KM Easy. I must say I must still have a little hangover from my last race as I had difficulty maintaining my pace during this workout.

On Friday, I topped the first week with a Long Run to Busay. It’s been so long since the last time I was in this route, and I must say I missed the feeling of going up and running down this hill - or mountain. I met with Ultraman Joel C., Coach Boying M., and TurboAx at JY before heading up. I enjoyed this run very much and I consider it a privilege to train with these awesome elite runners. Later that day, I joined the Ungo Night Run as a recovery, which was a very nice experience for me. It was the first time that I joined such, and I must say I very much enjoyed it. All in all, I logged in a total of 26KM that day, which was below my target of 28KM, but I thought it was okay for starters.

Now, I would like to mention and thank my wife for being so kind and for understanding my passion for running, for letting me join these kind of races when even the thought of it would be insanity for some. You and our son are my inspiration. I will run and finish this race for you. But of course, I will keep the same promise I did during my last race.

I also must thank Mr. Sun for being so kind, and showing up on my scheduled days of training.

And, as always, I thank God for all the blessings, especially for good health.

Now, on to the next week of training...