My season for 2011 started January after the New Year celebration. I signed up for china ironman and Aviva 70.3. My main goal was to try to qualify for Kona world championship before I go into the next age group, 25-29. I drew out my training plans and followed according to it. I had no coach. Just simple routines everyday and progressively increasing my mileage for the endurance weekends.
12 weeks into training, it was Aviva already. I’m already clocking 120km on bike, running 25km and swimming up to 3.5km on most weekends. Aviva was schedule as a time trial towards my china ironman. Turned out, not only did I shaved off 15mins from my 70.3 PB, I was ranked 1st as local female overall. Sweet victory!!! The finishing line was awesome, i was greeted by a few of my best buddies who had been there for me during the recovery of my accident. This meant so much for us and i did it for the team.
A few weeks after aviva, china ironman got cancelled and I was given Korean ironman slot which was 4 weeks later of china ironman date. I managed to schedule an OD distance on the date for china ironman for a time trial to peak my training. It was fun to do some short distance again. I came in 1st overall and got myself a getaway weekend in malaysia. :)
After the OD weekend, I had 2 weeks of good training and 2 weeks of tapering. I am super nervous and excited in becoming an ironman finisher. FINALLY!!! With a couple of my training buddies, we headed to Korea.
The race week was crazy. It was raining a lot in jeju. i only managed to go for a easy ride, run and swim on the race course 2 days before the race. I remembered i only managed to sleep 4 hours the night before the race. @@ Stress!!!
On the race day, lucky things turned out fine. I was able to race hard for that day. I have not run any marathon for the past 3 years, was actually very nervous about the run. In the end, I managed to win my age group and ran a 4.07 marathon. Total time11.25hours!!!
With that, I won a slot to KONA world championship 2011… :)
I had a week holiday in Korea, Seoul, after the ironman race. It was a well deserved break after 7 months of hard training for my first ironman. Back in Singapore, I took an extra break of 2 weeks before going in my Kona training.
Here we go again!!!
To be continue...
2 years ago, just 3 weeks away from 70.3 world champion, I got hit by a car while cycling alone. I broke my left femur bone, right ankle, tore ligament on my right knee, fracture my tail bone and because of my helmet, I managed to only have a small blood clot in my brain. Initially, I was totally demoralized. Doctors telling me there’s no way I can run with the damaged ankle and knee I got. I had the hardest 3 months of my life.
I remembered on the 3 months review, the doctor gave me a green light to start swimming. So I started swimming 6 days a week while I’m still on crutches. I actually signed up for kapas swimathon just 6 weeks into coming back of swimming. I trained very hard for it. I can’t bike or run, so I just swam everyday.
There comes the 6 month review and the doctor allowed me to start walking again. That was a week before I headed up to kapas for the swimathon. So I was pretty glad I did not need to bring my crutches along for the competition. I did very well and came back 10th in position. I was so proud myself.
The moment I got back to Singapore, I signed up for Philippines 70.3. I had 4 months to train for the 70.3 and I actually only just started to walk. Deep down, the 70.3 world championship is still an unfinished business for me. For the start, I did a lot of cycling and swimming. Most of my cycling sessions was done at home. All I did was just easy spinning, progressively to make my body use to long distance cycling again. There wasn’t any running for the first 6 weeks.
But the time when I was back 3 weeks cycling on the road, I started jogging again. Very short sessions like 3x10mins and slowly going up into 45mins run. I only managed to do till 16km just before the Philippines 70.3. I was going into Philippines not knowing whether I would be able to finish it.
Thank god, the swim and bike turned out well and I jogged my way to the finish line. Finishing at a time of 5.40hours and winning my group age. Well, it was a very hot day and the girls in my age group were walking. I managed to secure a slot to the 70.3 world championship which I'm supposed to go a year ago.
I went on and completed the race in 5.20hours. In the end, it took me an extra year to complete this race. it was the best experience of my life racing in the world championship. I took a break of 6 weeks after the world championship and started my 2011 season on an ironman mission.
To be continue…
