Love Life Live Strong

  The thing about sub3 december 29, 2020  by  francis yeng 26th Feb 2017, Himeji Castle Marathon, was my virgin sub3 experience. Clocking 2:59:45, I finally came to taste the exhilaration of breaking 3 in my running life. Bitter sweet experience. After that, it took another year of laboring through trials and errors in my quest to consolidate and substantiate a workable methodology for a better and consistent sub3 performance. In the process, I discovered a lot of gems and pitfalls of training which I have shared extensively in my posts and social media. In sum, it was down to 80/20 method with emphasis on a solid aerobic base and high mileage of more than 100km per week. Of course there are also the roles of LT training and speed work, but the part that significantly made a huge difference in my results was the aerobic base build-up. End result? Subsequent events culminated in a PB of 2:51:14 in Gold Coast (July 2019). With the advent of newer apps & gadgets, fa...

  Gold Coast 2019 july 10, 2019  by  francis yeng Lest I forget HIs Mercy and Grace. #GCAM19 was probably my 5th or 6th Gold Coast Marathon. Lost count after a while. I think I skipped a year or two since 2012 for some reasons. Nevertheless, weather-wise, this one has got to be the least conducive of all compared to previous years. We came into it with threats of high wind and showers. Lo and behold, the threat finally materialized 10 minutes before the race started. As 6 thousand odd runners gathered at the FM starting pens, it poured. Talk about a “shower party”. Personally, this GC experience was also my fiercest struggle. Looming in the background was an injury sustained 5 weeks earlier that was just gnawing away at my confidence. The nagging pain whenever I ran just reduced me to a fretful wreck. Did all I could with physio and treatment but it was just not budging. To top that off, I was beginning to doubt my training. 80/20 and high mileage laid a good foundation, ...

  Seoul Marathon 2019 march 19, 2019  by  francis yeng A mere 28 days. And the count down starts in less than a minute. The cold still air of Seoul was as chilling as it promised to be. Hearts were racing. The excitement was palpable. Looks like one of those defining moments poised to go down in history. For better or for worse… 28 days. That was HK a short while ago. What was racing through my head was not the debate of whether or not there was enough recovery. That is already a foregone conclusion any rookie would be able to tell. No, I was only concerned about two things. Would I be ready to do my best? If so, what IS my best? Post HK euphoria of 2:53:52 ended with the realization that it’s only a figure that I would have to go on cracking. Not that it has to be that way but since I don’t plan on hanging up the shoes, then the logical thing to do now is to be like Dory: keep moving forward. And see what I can discover along the way. So, training took on a modified form...

  BLAZING SCHKM 2019 february 18, 2019  by  francis yeng It’s one of most improbable of outcomes. But dreams, they say, are often made of these. SCHKM has become a default event. For lack of choices?? (or too lazy to explore other options), this has become almost an annual pilgrimage. Shy of 2018, 2017 topped all my SCHKM experiences. Thoroughly enjoyed the run and managed to clock the event PB of 3:04:09. That being the case, it would seem fair to deduct that SCHKM would realistically set you back your MT (marathon time) by a margin of ~5 minutes. The key factor being its sheer hilly terrain! This held assumption was based on the fact that a fortnight after SCHKM 2017, I finally clinched my first ever sub 3 hours at Himeji Castle Marathon. In light of this, my latest PB of 2:55:25 in Osaka (Nov 2018) would seem untouchable. No measure of positive thinking could convince me to shift that paradigm. In order to break that 2:55 in HK, it would not only require a gigantic eff...