Being lazy on the blog

Ok, I'm not actually being lazy but catching up with work and family after the long trip to Sandakan.

Just a bit of update, I've finished my 5K run and have registered for Brooks Half Marathon 10K run on 3rd March. I was tempted to go for Half-Marathon in the beginning but thank God for some cool headed advice from my dad. Looking at the training plans out there, I doubt I could actually make it at all and end up burning myself  up.

So instead of setting such a high goal for myself, I've decided to just go for 10K and most importantly, enjoy the journey toward the Marathon milestone and not rush myself into it. Things will only get better as long as you learn to enjoy the journey there.

In terms of gears, there's been a few changes as below:

I've gotten a Merrell Road Glove to use as a form trainer. I HAVE to say, a 0 drop non-cushioned shoe is ABSOLUTELY and TOTALLY different from the Skechers GoRun. 4mm made a lot of difference. My calf ache every time after a run in them. Hopefully I'll get better as I continue to train in them.

Merrell Barefoot Road Glove

I think I am now pretty sure what type of shoes that I like. Both the Merrell and the Skechers disappear from my thought as I run in them. It doesn't get in the way of feeling what's under the feet, it's light and it provides my toes flexing spaces. Seriously, it's liberating to be running in these shoes.

I've also gotten myself a technical shirt from Salomon. I usually run in any plain old cotton T-shirts but I've found them getting more and more uncomfortable as the mileage increases and the T-shirts get heavier, wetter and clingier. Seriously, they feel like they've just came out of the washing machine. -_-''' I've done 2 run in the technical shirt and I'm happy to say I love the feel. My first run was aborted due to sudden rainfall. SO I had to run back in the rain with everyone driving looking at me like I'm a dunce, but it was fun to run in the rain XD. I reached home soaked through the top. The shirt does cling to me but not in an icky sort of way, instead it stretches and conform to me when it needs to and hang lose when it can. It also got freaking cold when it clings to you as the water start being wicked away.

Check out the wickedly cool design.

The 2nd time was helping a friend to train, running a relatively "easy" 5K. I wasn't too sweaty and the shirt isn't too wet this time round, but even then, when the shirt comes in contact with you, it feels cool. I guess this is because the shirt kind of promotes evaporation. This was proven quite true when I washed the shirt. It dries super fast compared to my other shirts. Of course the color scheme of the shirt's a killer ;)

I've also gone out to grab myself a running jacket for the rainy season so that I can continue my run. I've had to move my run outside as the pool area walkway is roofed and it's surrounded by 4 tall buildings, thus the GPS signal is terrible. I'm currently using iSmoothRun to capture my data and even though it has an accelerometer mode, it's not overly accurate yet as it relies on previous data to do some calculation algorithm. It is however a wonderful app as I can have all sort of integration with it.

Be that as it may, I'm planning to go shopping for more shirts, shorts and a water bottle to facilitate my long runs on weekends so it's "Ho Ho Ho" for the shop owners and "ouch ouch ouch" for my wallet.