Stamina - Field Training

Try to set some target for yourself. Let's say you start off today with running around the field for 10 rounds. Do it constantly for 1 week. Try to improve your time day by day. It will be good if you know the distance of 1 round of the field…so that you will know what's the time per km that you run. Let start with something light. Put it around 5km of training per day. And also set your target…..maybe 4mins 30secs per km. Do it everyday until you achieve it. If 1 week is not enough, do it for another week and so on. I know this will be a much more boring training…..but bear in mind, doing the same thing everyday will make yourself immune to the stress. Once you achieve, you can now increase your distance target to 10km. And try to make yourself maintain the time of 4mins 30secs. 10km is always the base since we don't have much marathons going on in Malaysia. When 10km with 4mins 30secs per km target is achieved, switch to time improvement again. This time, target for 4mins per km. Again, practice until you achieve. This is how endurance will produce stamina for you. If you are ambitious to go further, repeat until you achieve 15km and then 20km.

How to Cure Ankle Injuries

There's no fastest way to cure ankle injuries. It needs time to heal.

But if insist to go on to compete (not recommend to), try to take some painkiller or steroid type painkiller (more efficient) to reduce the pain. Try to ice the pain area….but not for too long (frostbite). Do it on and off….as often as possible to reduce the inflammation.

And finally, when going to compete, rub some menthol based cream (eg.: counterpain…etc) and wrap the ankle as tight as possible to subdue the pain as much as it can when running.

The final advice is not to compete…..to prevent further injuries.

Training for 10KM, 21KM and 42KM

Normally, the basis training for my juniors is at least 10km everyday. This is always the base for all the runs therefore, I set this in. The goal is always to be prepared for 10km runs all the time that is to be ever-ready. Eventually, they will be the expert in 10km runs…..and what they will be trained next is more on their speed to improve the time. Most of them can now run under 40 mins for 10km runs.

For 21 and 42 km…..that takes a lot of time to train. Because we need to adjust our pacing again to endure the distance. That means, the training is considered to be started from the very beginning all over again but it won’t take long to adjust to the new pacing if you have the 10km base. Of course, I won’t advise you to skip to 21km straight away from 10km. That’s a 100% increase in distance. This will only make you feel exhausted to continue on the next day.

What I will do is to increase the distance by 20% a week. That’s the most optimum…that is an additional of around 5 weeks to reach a 21km training. And around 10 weeks to reach a 42 km training….which means, to train for a marathon, we need at least 3 months time.

Abdomen Pain During Race

Abdomen pain? It’s because the muscle around your stomach (abdomen) is not fully develop yet. And in fact, it’s not pain…..it’s what you called “lesu” and it’s excessively “lesu”, therefore causing you the pain-like feeling around the abdomen. Once you have trained yourself well…..the pain won’t appear anymore

Warm up and Breathless

I normally spend around 10 to 15 mins in warm up.

Breathless during sprinting in early stage….that’s normal. warm up is for your muscles. Your heart is also a muscle but is not warmed-up during your warm-up session….unless you make yourself exhausted which is not recommended to. So, the breathless sensation will go away once your heart is comfortable with it hard-pumping. What you need here is to train for the speed you need to break-up from the rest during your early stage sprinting. This is the most difficult part. Don't worry about the breathless thing…….its the speed that you want.

Never rush in your run…..because the distance is so long, and if you feel that you can beat the guy in front of you, times will come when he will slow down and let you overtake him. So, there’s no rush… because if you rush, your heart will pump faster due to adrenaline caused by anxiousness and nervousness and these are major factor for “puncture”.

Nutrition and Breakfast Before Run

No breakfast before my runs. But I took a lot of salt waters before runs….just to prevent cramps. It depends on individuals whether to eat something first or not. If you drank it overnight before you sleep, you must have urinated it out in the morning right before you start the race. Salt quickly dissolved in our body.

The rest of the supplement, I would say, it’s not necessary. Just eat your meals as per normal….that will be fine. I don't take special supplement...just one capsule of multi-vitamin a day.

Banana, it will provide your body with water and energy.

Muscle Strength, Heel and Toe Running, Knee Pain

Slow pace, using your whole foot and run up the slopes. This helps build up more strength in your muscle. Once you are comfortable with this, then only you train for your speed. And one more caution, runners don’t go to gym to build up more “leg” muscles. They can only work on their upper parts of their body in gym but not their leg. If you build more muscle in your leg, you need to train more on the roads to strengthen it. And it is muscles aches that pulls us down and make us ‘puncture’ and it needs more oxygen to releaves to aches on our muscles. So, theoretically, the less muscles, you won’t get pulled-down so easily during runs.

Toe running is normally used when you want to pick up your speed. So, if you use it on slow pacing, I would say, it's rather wasting more energy as it bears more pressure on your toe. Heel running (not use using heel, but the whole palm of your foot), is rather the best to be when training for normal pacing. To use only your toe (the front side of the palm of your foot), it takes a lot to train especially if you want to maintain your speed on ascending slopes as what you are doing on flat ground. And for fast runners, I would say, almost 80% of them are using the front palm of their foot in all their runs whether it's on flat ground or ascending slopes.

Slope runs whether it is going ascending or descending puts a lot of pressure on your knee. Therefore, try not to push yourself too hard on this. You should do it bit by bit to build up the muscle strength above your knee. Once the muscle above your knee is strong, you will be able to do a long run on ascending slopes then. Never force your body to work. If it feels like resting, put it at rest. Muscles can be torn if overstretched. And that will make you stop for few months with no choice.

About the knee pain when runned down a descending slopes, it really depends on individuals. And I am one of the person that was affected by the same effect. It depends on individuals’ knee cartilage condition to cushion the impact. When running down a slope, our knee needs to support three times our body weight. So, to reduce the pain, try to reduce the pacing. And try to run with with his foot in “V” shape….This is one of my major wekanesses in my running. But the question comes again, how can I make this weakness into my advantage? When you reduce your pacing, try to make up the energy and recover ‘ASAP” so that when you reaches the flat ground or ascending slopes, you can make it up back to where you are. And never use knee bracing or knee guard. Using this type of assistance will make your muscle flex lesser and thus, making your muscle “lazy”.