New Year, New Goals...

2009 was a banner year for me in terms of being a multi-sport athlete. I have seen and actually felt my endurance getting better and better the longer and more frequent I trained and joined races, whether these were marathons, duathlons and triathlons. My resting heart rate dropped from around 70 to 56, proof of my better physical condition. Though I have yet to go sub-2 hours in a half marathon, I have now consistently averaged 5:45 min/km in runs longer than 5K, and have improved my 5K average from 32mins to 26mins, a shade over my 25 mins, 5:00 min/km target.

A lot of friends and running and cycling buddies have congratulated me for my Camsur 70.3 finish last August 23, 2009. Though I was really happy with that achievement, I believe I could have done better. Looking back, I could have slashed more than 10 minutes off my time in the swim portion of that event. With the scrapping of the swim cut-off time, I thought it was okay to just survive the swim portion and completed it in 1hour, 14mins. My average 2K swim during trainings in pools is 52mins.

I could have done better as well in the run portion. After seeing a teammate cramping up on the last 11K of the run, I decided to stick with him and egg him on, when I still had enough in the tank to run the 21K in 2hours, 30 minutes. Though I am proud of having crossed the finish line with him, I now believe that just making sure he'd finish would have been enough.

2009 was all about joining and finishing. I was new to multi-sports and never gave myself a chance to compete. All I wanted was to finish every race I joined.

2010 will be different.

As evidenced in my last Duathlon back in September 20, 2009, in order for me to compete, I have to get out of my comfort zone. I was always cautious about cramping or "bonking" in a race that I always checked on my pace, my heartrate and over-all physical condition. I was always afraid of not finishing that whenever I feel something going wrong, I would slow down and take it easy just to make sure I'd finish. This will not be the case in 2010.

In 2010, I will compete.

After watching my Ironman videos again, I realized what competing means. Competing separates the "athletes" from the recreational sports people. Competitors give it all, participants are just in there for the heck of it. I now understand why people DNF or bonk in a race, it is the "competition" that drives them to exert effort more than what their bodies could handle. These are the athletes, those who finish with fresh looks are the participants.

With whom am I going to compete?

Myself.

Then, the others.

My competition will be my previous PRs. I will train for races with the end goal of having a better finish than my previous races. In doing this, I hope to move up my age-group's ranking and the over-all rankings as well. I have seen my finishes bring me to the upper half of the finisher's list. Now, it's a matter of breaking into the top 40%.

I will now choose my races more wisely, starting off the year with the Condura Run 42K to have a base time for a full marathon. Then an aquathlon for another base time establishment.

This year will be the first time I'm competing in a race abroad, the Singapore Sprint Series, doing the Sprint Duathlon, a 3K-run, 15K-bike, 3K-run race which may be really short but I'm sure will be really fast. I thank my brother, Russel, for registering me in such event.

The other races I have lined up this year are repeats of what I did last year, with the exception of Subic Int'l Triathlon and the White Rock Triathlon. In all these races, I hope I don't bonk or DNF en route to a better PR finish.

My first multi-sport race wouldn't happen until March 14 this year. But to be in better condition, I started doing the legwork as early as the last week of December 2009. I hope that with my "uplifted" interest in competing, I race all my races in personal record times.

Everything went well in 2009, and I hope everything goes better and faster this year.

Happy new year everyone!

Deo P.