A Morning With Mini LSD

It has been quite long time since I last did a Long Slow Distance (LSD) run. I can't even remember when was the last time I did it. Perhaps the 21km run during Desaru Long Distance triathlon back in August was the last long run I did. And that was in a race environment, not a training session.

Being in the off-season mode, which to me means that I'm not entering any competition at this moment, I still do some maintenance training. It depends on the available time I have, as well as the itchiness in my legs. So, once in a while I still do one or two 5km-ish run per week, and lucky enough if I can also clock some short distance cycling mileage during the weekly Wednesday night ride in JB.

And as you know in the month of Syawal, open houses were everywhere, every weekends. That provided an easy excuse for not going out to run during the weekends. Oh ya, at least I was able to do two sessions of trail running. First at Gunung Nuang, the second time at FRIM. Trail running is fun.

And that's how I've been living in my off-season mode.

For me, LSD training is something on it's own. I think only those who are going to do a half or full marathon race will have to do few LSD runs, to enhance their endurance capabilities. LSD is tiring, it's hard and it's definitely boring to be done alone.

But this morning I woke up early, for not knowing what the main reason was, took my trusty Adidas Adizero LT shoes and headed to Kiara Park. I set in mind to run from Kiara Park, to Petronas station at Hartamas and make a u-turn there.

And that was what I did this morning. A good mini LSD run of about 14km, ran in a slow time of 1hr20min.

It was boring to run alone. I used to run this route together with Kash few months ago while we were preparing for KL International Marathon and doing up to 25km or 30km with a training buddy was still bearable, and doable. Not sure if I can run that long alone. Anyway, I felt a good sensation for having completed the run alone. Ironic huh?

And as my fitness level is not at it's best level now, I had to do few walk breaks along the way, especially when attacking some climbs. I also felt a glitch of pain on my calves, nothing serious. That's normal. No big deal. I know I can handle it.

It was fun to be running on the road again. Equally fun to be seeing many other people at the park putting the effort to exercise, living a healthy lifestyle.

Yeah, now I remember. To have a healthy lifestyle was the main reason why I woke up this morning to run this mini LSD.