My wife and I went to Ipoh International School to collect her BIB last Saturday. Incidentally, we attended a talk by Dr Ron Hill on his running experience.
This averaged-built and soft spoken 67-year-old Englishman is the first Briton to complete a marathon under 2:10 - a feat he accomplished by clocking 2:09:28 during the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Wow! What is he doing in such a small race like KRI then? Apparently, he aims to run in 100 different countries before he turns 70! Double Wow! Sound familiar? Yes, I hope The Running Couple can do that too!
I picked up a few tips from this legend during his sharing:
1) High weekly mileage - the longer the better. He did more than 250km per week! No wonder he has been running EVERYDAY since 1964.
2) He has got achilles tendon injury before. And what he did to his injury? He continued running...SLOWLY. Eventually, the pain went off! That really excited me and I'm looking forward to my running again.
3) No cross training is required. His method is a pure running.
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RACE DAY
I started very slowly at 6:02 for the first km. Gradually, I increased my pace. By the 3rd km, I was back on track - 15:38. But there was no panic button to press as I took this "race" as my normal Sunday training run. I cheered and motivated the fellow runners especially our friends in PACM.
At the u-turn in the mid-way point, I finally saw my wife in front. She was running very well this morning. In fact I was supposedly pacing her. But now I trailed her!
After the u-turn, I ran more seriously. At the 6th km, my time has dipped below 29 minutes. At this point, I overtook Dr Ron Hill - the winner of 1970 Boston Marathon. With due respect, he has run very well in his age and in this hot and high humidity country like ours! Furthermore, he didn't aim to win the race. Otherwise, a small fly like me has got no chance at all!
With about 2 more km to go, I caught up with Khee Meng and Mr Yee from Seremban. Both told me my wife was just in front. I nodded and tried to catch her.
With about 500 metres to go, I caught up and said hi to my wife. I increased my speed a little so that she could overtake a girl in front of her. I paced her until the entrant of the finishing point at the football field. I stopped and checked my watch. To my surprise, it showed 47:56!
No medal for the pacer, yet I was very satisfied with the work-out. By the way, my wife got second in her category in 48:30 unofficial time. Well done, dear!
1 comment:
wah, John! I'm so envious! You got to talk to Ron Hill! He was a mad fella running crazy mileage! You should read his history. My impression is that he was a world class runner who performed well but usually faltered because he was overtrained many of the times. Still, I think anyone of us would love to have Ron Hill's running career.
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