Nuking March...

By Frank

Those who grew up as gaming teenagers in the late 90s will mostly have played and remember the game Command and Conquer: Red Alert. And if so, you would have remember the awesome theme from the game,  Hell March. As March nears each year since I began running the Comrades Marathon in 2012, I will always listen to it via YouTube to get the mood ready cause that is what March is all about!

With March 2015 over now, so is the tough training. I was worried that I may not be able to meet training expectations for this month as the total time and distance required to be spent on the road and legs are just too demanding this time round. Besides, like last year too, this month proof to be an emotional ride for me. Feeling dejected, I was confused. And even a friend mention that this month brought the "monster" out of me too by training till I lost my self consciousness. I am not sure if that happened to me and hence leave it to you all to judge me. And I guess it's through this that I went running to cast things aside. And traditionally, Twilight Ultra Challenge at the last weekend of the month will help with this, but this year saw the addition of the Gunung Nuang Ultra in my regime. And thus, things were made just a little easier.

Unlike last year, was pretty lucky that the haze did not return and there was no water rationing. I managed scored a perfect 100KM or above weekly mileage for this month too with the help from Zijill and the the Malaysian Gold Coast Marathon (GC group) group led by Jamie and Nick for training, just like last year. With my speed and tempo being done during the weekdays, I needed the long distance on weekends. However, unlike last year, the GC group were not entirely into long runs on the weekends for this month and the route chosen wasn't exactly favorable due to the terrain factor. Despite still joining them, I had to find an alternative to this and am glad Zijill who is going to run her first Comrades came into the picture. We both needed the distance and of course the hills, and hence we supported and help each other by going for our runs together, at places with a lot of hills!

In terms of running, March was in fact not a tiring month but instead a time consuming one. Weekends saw me lose my sleep to awake early for my runs. And I am still very grateful to the GC group for without them, things will be absolutely be very tough and I will continue to seek their assistance for the month of April.  For now, I am glad that yet another month of March is finally over. All I have to do now for the month of April is just to carry on with the momentum with a slight reduce in intensity and to improve on the areas I can improve on. Oh and yes, it's a total of 453KM covered for this month of March with a perfect week of 100KM or above per week giving a total combined distance of 1,013KM since the start! Nuked it for the fourth year in a row!