I started swimming because in the past I didn’t want to run too much but want to maintain my fitness, and I’ve got addicted since last year I joined the OW swimming groups regularly. As in the past, I believed that my swimming was not as good as my running (judging by 1:4 ratio for distance covered by swimming:running for the same time), so I trained intensively in swimming last year and earlier this year, and I have become a marathon swimmer since I completed a 13 km swimming race in July.

In August, I did an aquathon at the perfect ratio, 1.5 km swim and 6 km run, which I expected that I should complete both legs in roughly the same time. However, my swim time was faster than my run time by about 2 minutes, that meant my swimming ability had already caught up and started exceeding my run ability. As I originally did swimming as a form of cross-training to my running, I considered it’s time to resume my run training, and wanted to do a half marathon as a motivator. Now, my longest swimming distance is 13 km but my longest running distance is only 10 km, which is even less than my swimming distance (by 1:4 ratio, if I am doing both at the same level, I should be running 52 km already), so I want to push my run distance further.

Yesterday, I registered for a half marathon running race on 17th November, about 6 weeks from now, and also a 10 km race in between as an intermediate checkpoint for me to better plan my training. My goal is to complete my first half marathon on 17th November within 2 hours, a somewhat challenging but still achievable goal. That’s equivalent to keeping at least 10.6 km/h speed, or 5’41″/km pace. My best 10 km time was 0:48:34, about one and a half years before, but since then I had basically stopped running apart from running a few orienteering races per month, just resumed last month running with Tritons Triathlon Club on Bowen Road Wednesday evenings. I believe that by using a proper training method, like what I did for my first marathon swimming in July, I can achieve my goal next month.

In the coming 6 weeks, I plan to run for 3 times a week in the initial weeks, and 4 times a week after the 10 km race except the last week before my half marathon, which will include a session of short intervals (i.e. intervals of no longer than 800 m on a track at faster than race pace), a session of long intervals (i.e. intervals of about 1 km – 4 km at about race pace), and a session of long run to build up my endurance. I will build up my weekly mileage gradually from about 15 km to 30 km before the race, and do a long run of about 14 km (about 2/3 of the race distance) followed by 10 km (nearly half of the race distance) on 2 consecutive days probably 2 weeks before the race, similar to what I trained for marathon swimming in July, but in a shorter time frame.

I hope that I can get my goal done with proper training without injury.