A worthy early Sunday morning run

Today the first hill run was on. We met at 6am at the juice bar. First part consisted of 4 big rolling loops (a 2km) in the Botanical Garden (BG) followed by the 5k uphill walk/run to the top of Penang hill and the bone crushing decent back to the BG. Total elevation gain is 700m. The uphill section was quite ok. Mixing walking with running will be a key element in the Eco 100k, so I better get used to it :-) Running downhill will be another important element to finish the 100k and I need getting used to this even more. The final stretch today was the run back home, 6k which I averaged running @ 5:30min/km pace. Below is the overview taken from the Garmin Connect.

The Fenix gave reasonable HR readings today, as you can see. As a consequence, the VO2max went up to 46. I don't rate this value as important since it is only calculated. To get a real measurement, I would need to get on a treadmill with a tube attached to my mouth in order to measure air intake, Oxygen content, etc. Which I will not do, of course. The other observation is that my race time predictions changed. Still, not very reliable, because some days back I did a 5k in 20 min and my HM/M multiplier is more like 2.3 than 2.1.

The group was really great today. All kind of runners joined and we had a lot to talk about.

The first group reached Penang Hill.

All there, ready for the bone crushing decent.