Faster! Faster!

Went for a run with ct yesterday before breaking fast, feeling inspired by Sukaimi of the roadburners. Sharon de Costa from The Straits Times actually contacted Sukaimi, wanting to feature the roadburners' blog in a weekly column like what they did for Miyagi's, but for reasons best known to himself, he turned it down.

We planned out a 5 km route and started the run at about 6:10pm. That should give us more than enough time for a very slow jog, just in time for us to cool down and break fast.

As I've laid off running for more than a month, I decided to jog at ct's pace, also taking into consideration that this is the first time I'm running while fasting. About 2km into the run, I was beginning to feel pain in both my knees, but I told myself that as long as the pain is not too unbearable, I will not stop. Then ct suddenly slowed down and showed me the 'V' sign. Turned out it's not for 'victory' but for 'wanna pee'. Alamak, why didn't do it when I reminded her so before we started off 10 minutes ago? 500 metres later, I waited for her for about 5 minutes outside SAFRA country club, trying not to let my body cool down too much.

She contemplated taking a shortcut. I told her to go ahead, but then still find her jogging slowly behind me. For the next 2.5km, I was able to pick up my pace after my heart rate and body temperature went up again.

Quite happy that after a long layoff, I was still able to finish the run with just some minor pain in the knees. I started very slowly and was still able to almost sprint the last 100 metres without feeling too tired or breathless. I think ct picked up her pace too towards the end, coming in only a few minutes later. But then 35 minutes to run 5 km is rather slow, we need to improve on our pace! Let's see, for myself, my personal best timing for 2.4km was 9min 21sec. So, for 5km, I should be doing it in about 20 to 25 minutes.

That means given 35 minutes, I should have ran another 2.5km more!