NUS Running Route

2010 is well and truly here! I started running this week after a super-long break. I have no one but me to blame for this period of lethargy!

I moved to on-campus accommodation a couple of weeks ago. I did a run this week around campus. I am planning to do this run on alternate weekdays. I have mapped the route here, it is ~4.3K. However, it is just as tiring as my 6K runs around Pandan Reservoir since a lot of this is uphill. But, the campus atmosphere is greener, cooler and definitely better than the Pandan.

If these runs go well, I might run at the nearby Kent Ridge Park on weekends. This (has already been and) will be a tough year on me. I hope these morning runs can give me the strength to get through life, like they always have.

 

GNC Pro Performance 100% Whey Protein

For the past 2 years I have been using Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard. It came recommended by friends and at Strong Lifts. And I have been very satisfied with it. It dissolves very easily, just a few shakes are enough. And it tastes very good.  (How tasty can a protein shake be? Okay, just good).

Last week, I was at the GNC store to pick up my tub of ON Whey and they did not have it in the strawberry flavor in the size I wanted. Not wanting to lug a bigger tub, I decided to try out a different brand for a change: GNC Pro Performance 100% Whey Protein.

The results sadly have not been good. This home brand of GNC does not dissolve well. I had protein powder floating around even after vigorous shaking. They did not seem to dissolve no matter how hard or long I shook! And the taste, oh God, it is horrible! It tastes like ingesting a cup full of bitter tablets in liquid form! I felt like puking several times while drinking it.

GNC Whey is only a little cheaper than ON Whey. But, given its horrible taste and lesser protein content (20g/cup compared to 24g/cup by ON) I cannot wait to finish this tub and never ever again buy it!

 

Gloves are off!

[ My gloves which are falling to bits now! ]

I have been working out at the gym for about 1.5 years now. Only this year have I been somewhat regular (3 times/week). In fact, since the gym is not affected by rain, (but running is) I have been more regular at the gym than at running. At the beginning of the year, I bought a pair of gloves to use at the gym. I am happy to report that they are now well worn out and torn in several places. However, I have decided to no longer use them and will work out with bare hands from now on.

I bought the gloves due to 3 reasons: (1) my hands sweat pretty easily (2) I thought the glove surface would grip harder than my smooth palm (3) they look pretty cool. I recently read this StrongLifts post about 7 Popular Gym Equipment Accessories You Don’t Need. Gloves is one of them. After reading the post I decided to check this out for myself. I found that I could actually grip better without gloves! This did not have anything to do with the smoothness of the palm, but with how close my skin could get to the metal. The gloves had not been helping since it added another layer between the skin and the metal.

However, gripping without gloves will cause some calluses. I can already see that my palms will undergo a bit of roughening up without the gloves. Also, I will now need to deal with sweat. I initially plan to just wipe my palms on my gym towel to get them dry. If that does not work out, I may have to resort to liquid chalk, since chalk is not allowed at the gym.

 

Muscles, Reflexes and Locomotion

An friend who is into athletics and fitness shared this book with me when I was looking for information on interval training. The book Muscles, Reflexes and Locomotion is written by Thomas A. McMahon, who was a Professor of Applied Mechanics and Biology at Harvard University. The book is very technical and gets into the mechanics, biology, mathematics and chemistry behind how muscles move, twitch and work. I was able to grok only a small part of the book, Chapter 2: Muscle Heat and Fuel.

A lot of the pertinent information I read from the book matched well with what I had learnt from the talks by Prof. Kunalan and Mok at the RUN NUS 2009 Running Clinic last week. Some of the information from this book:

• Aerobic glycolysis and anaerobic glycolysis are the 2 ways in which energy for muscles is produced. Glycogen is the input fuel and ATP is the product which is used by muscles to work or move.
• Lactic acid (produced during anaerobic glycolysis) takes more than an hour to dissipate from the muscles. Muscles with lactate work at degraded performance and it also causes physical discomfort. For these reasons, it makes sense to delay the anaerobic glycolysis and onset of lactic acid.
• The maximum aerobic rate of energy expenditure can be increased with regular training. This also depends on the ability of the cardiorespiratory system to transport oxygen to the muscles via blood.
• Interval Training: Training in short intervals of strenuous running followed by periods of rest reduces the accumulation of lactic acid and increases the total distance an athlete can run.
• Carbohydrate Loading: No matter which of aerobic or anaerobic glycolysis is used by the body, they use the glycogen reserves stored in the muscles at the beginning of the exercise. This glycogen content in muscles can be increased by 1.5-3 times by adapting a carbohydrate rich diet for a few days.

 

RUN NUS 2009 drowned in rain!

RUN NUS 2009, which I had eagerly awaited for so long was cancelled today morning due to rain! It felt really disappointing since our race was to start in a few minutes when it began to rain. The Running Clinic, held last week had really amped me up, what with triathlon winner Mok helping with training information and all that!

I arrived with Harish at the NUS tracks at ~0815 for our 12K NUS Mens race, which was to begin at 0900. I stood in the baggage deposit queue, which was long and was moving slower than a snail. The 12K Mens Open had been flagged off at 0800 already. At this point, ominously dark clouds moved in, turning day to night and the skies opened up. My heart sank and we took shelter in the grandstand at the side of the tracks. Our hopes of the rain passing by faded with time and at ~0930 the organizers announced the races cancelled due to inclement weather.

Not one to give up so easily when I had been so close, I waited for the rain to stop. It petered down to a drizzle at ~1100 and Harish and me decided to run the 12K route on our own, to fulfill our satisfaction of having finished the run. But, Nature was not on our side this day and after ~2K the rain turned up the knob to hellish again and we had to beat a hasty retreat. All in all, a dull day!

 

SCSM 2009!

I did something crazy last weekend … signed up for the full marathon at the SCSM 2009!!!

A full 42K?!!! It is crazy for sure considering that I am almost done for at the end of a 21K. I realized that I had been putting the full off for too long. It had to be this year. My friend Manja will be giving emotional support since he is running in a NYC full marathon in November. And there is also Shub who has done the same crazy thing as me at SCSM 2009.

 

RUN NUS 2009 Running Clinic

The running clinic for RUN NUS 2009 was held last Saturday on 22 August. This is one week before the run. There were 2 talks, one by Prof. Kunalan (NTU) and another by Mok, a NUS athelete. After the talks, there was a Q&A session with the speakers followed by a 5K recce run.

Prof. Kunalan

Prof. C Kunalan deals with physical education and sports science at NTU. In his youth, he was an athlete and even represented Singapore at the Olympics! His talk titled The Science of X-Country Running dealt with the science of the body when running.

Muscles in the leg (and anywhere else in the body) use ATP to contract and expand. ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate) is the currency of energy in the cells. This ATP (currency) is produced in the mitochondria, which can be thought of as mints that make this currency. Enzymes in the mitochondria (mints) use oxygen to oxidize glycogen and produce ATP. This is known as aerobic respiration.

The glycogen for this conversion is derived from glucose, which we get from eating food rich in carbohydrates. (Hence, the need to carboload before long runs.) The oxygen for this conversion is obtained from blood. Blood absorbs this oxygen from the air we breathe at the lungs. The blood from the lungs is pumped all over the body by the heart. This conversion is called aerobic respiration since it uses oxygen (which is obtained from air).

Anaerobic respiration is an alternate form of producing energy in the body, which does not require oxygen. This produces lactic acid as a side product.

Another factor in endurance is VO2 Max. This is the volume of oxygen that one can utilize while running (or any physical activity). A VO2Max of 90% would mean that the runner at his best is utilizing 90% of the oxygen he breathes in. Oxygen is utilized for the production of energy as explained above.

Prof. Kunalan stressed on the importance of increasing the VO2Max and aerobic system for long distance runners. It can be increased slowly by regular running. During a run, after the aerobic system runs out, the anaerobic system kicks in and it produces lactic acid. This causes stiffness in the days after a run for which we did not prepare well.

Mok

Mok Ying Ren is an NUS undergrad and winner of both the SEA Games 2007 triathlon and the recently finished AHM 2009. He was earlier into swimming and has now moved onto running. His talk on training for running was lively and was very well presented. In the former half of the presentation, he shared his training statistics over the last 4 years. With consistent training, Mok slowly ramped up his endurance to contest winning levels.

In the latter half of the talk, Mok explained how to train for >5K distances. Much like Prof. Kunalan, he too stressed on the importance of aerobic training. Using graphs, Mok explained how for a run of 10K, anaerobic system contributes a mere 3%, while the rest is derived from aerobic. He also explained how to use the Jack Daniel charts to train and improve oneself.

Q&A

There was a Q&A session with the speakers after the talks. Audience members asked questions about nutrition, time of training and other topics.

Recce Run

About half the attendees stayed back after the talks for the recce run. We were broken into 2 groups and we did a recce run of about 5K of the 12K race course. This was at around 1630 in the sweltering Singapore Sun and was quite draining. Maybe this should have been held a bit later in the day.

All in all, I found the RUN NUS 2009 Running Clinic to be quite useful. The talks were especially informative. Looking forward to a good run this Sunday at the RUN NUS 2009!

 

Born To Run

I saw this fascinating interview of Christopher McDougall on The Daily Show. He is the author of a new book named Born To Run, about the Tarahumara, a tribe of long distance super runners in Mexico. The interview also brings to fore another issue which has been on my mind a bit, which is that running barefoot might be better than in expensive running shoes. I am not about to throw my shoes out, but I will be keeping an eye on more news about barefoot running.

 

Safra Army Half Marathon 2009 Results

The results are out for the Safra Army Half Marathon of 2009. As I had expected, my time was 2h:24m. AHM used the Championchip this year for timing and their results were given through RunPix, which has lots of statistics.

I had registered by mistake into the Men’s Closed category (which is for SG citizens) instead of the Men’s Open. The gun time can be ignored since I started the race 21 minutes late!

6 min 51 sec per km. Definitely could have done better if I had been training.

As the graph shows, I was at my fastest in the beginning 10K and just continually declined after that.

 

Go!

I started running in the middle of 2007 and started working out at the beginning of 2008. I hope this blog becomes a good outlet for my experiences in these activities.