I was young, fit, and much lighter at around 62kg then.
I'm now much older, at 70kg
Though the requirements for IPPT was gradually reduced as one gets older, the dynamics of the body aging and fitness decling faster than the IPPT standards meant that it will get tougher to score gold as one ages.
There was a period when my fitness had dropped below the Gold standards for a good few years
I always had the assumption that I was fit and could finish full marathons, so it is a taken that I should score Gold for my IPPTs.
Well, this did work all the way till 2009, and was eventually broken in 2010.
When I met my first Silver, I was in a state of denial.
"Perhaps it's just a bad day. I can still finish 42km runs"
My 2nd Silver in 2011 was due to me putting on too much weight, and I could not finish the 9th chin up for the Gold standard. Subsequently didn't put in too much effort to clock <10:14 br="" nbsp="">
The 3rd Silver in 2012 was a rude wake up call.
My 2.4km run is now officially non-Gold standard after 3 tries in 3 years.
"A bad day in office" is no longer a valid reason for not scoring Gold anymore.
2013 was a good year.
I started challenging for the half Ironman in late 2012, and had to take the IPPT during my ICT. Did surprisingly well and managed to clock 9:47 for the run, and regained the Gold standard.
Now, the window for clearing my IPPT for 2014 is almost over, and I have to face the challenge of trying for the $400 in Gold.
Facing my fears
I had always avoided facing my fears for training specifically for the 2.4km IPPT run.
Speedwork training run has always extremely uncomfortable.
Doing the Long Slow Distance (LSD) run is a much easier training in comparison, and incidentally, I always chose to do the LSD for most of my trainings to avoid doing Speedwork.
This, in fact, is me running away from the reality that I needed to do Speedwork to properly train for a Gold 2.4km run.
The way that I trained in the past, is to keep clocking LSD runs, and pray hard that I can accidentally do a Gold 2.4km run during the test.
WRONG METHODOLOGY!!!
Training for specific requirements means a proper training has to be adopted.
Training for 2.4km by using the training plan for a 42km race is not the correct way to prepare.
This is especially pronounced as I got older, and it gets tougher to translate one class of physical fitness into another class.
Drawing on confidence
Things changed for me when I started participating in Triathlons.
It gave me a different challenge and impetus to change my overly simplistic training methods which I had been using for years for marathon trainings, which is just simply "No pain No gain, run more gain more"
This may have been working for me in my younger years, but my physique changes as I age so and I have to adapt.
What gave me really good confidence was from my swim.
Before I started doing Tris, I could barely swim 100m in freestyle without busting my lungs, so swimming was the discipline which I feared the most then.
Taking on my fears, putting in the efforts, has enabled me to improve my swim tremendously, to the point that today I'm equally confident in my swim and run.
If I can do it for my swim, where freestyle sprints are still lung bursting but already accepted as a norm in my trainings, I should be able do it for my sprint runs as well.
The mantra of "No pain No gain, run more gain more" still holds true, but now I will have to add a "Train smart Train right" to complete the mantra.
I have managed to clock a 10:07 in my own 2.4km test run this week, so putting in more sessions should place me in good stead to score Gold again this year.
