Race or easy run?

After my 20k LSD on Thursday, I had total rest on Friday and Saturday. I ate heartily at every meal and drank plenty of water and sports drinks to ensure that I was properly hydrated and reenergised for Sunday's run.

My aches had almost completely disappeared by this morning with all the rest, proper eating and ice treatment on my joints. Before starting my run this morning, I had already decided to take it easy as I did not want to risk injury and throw a spanner into my marathon training.

The weather was great and the crowd was not as big as I thought it might be. Before I knew it, we were allowed to start, and as planned I kept to a pace slightly slower than 6min/km. As expected we hit the hills right from Bank Negara and it remained that way for the rest of the run.

I took the liberty of walking (taboo word for runners) at one of the hills... the steepest one of them all (I'm sure those of you familiar with the route will know which one). It's not that I could not run up, I was just plain lazy today! What I realised though was that my walking was getting me up the hill as fast as most runners were with their slow run... hmmm that's something to ponder about, however when I mentioned this to some runners later, most had the opinion that it wasn't befitting for 'true runners' to walk!

Anyway to cut the story short, I completed the run in 58m21s (my watch time), and my position was 272. If all 10k races were to be run in this kind of hilly conditions, I would opt to skip them altogether. Later I met up with some of the Pacemakers including Richard (pm36) and Newton (pm18) for the first time. I also collected the new year's running bibs from Ronnie for Albert, Peter, Kam and myself.