William Chong

I’m excited to be running regularly again. It’s actually one of my most beneficial times when I can think on my own, listen to music and podcasts, and get ideas going. And it’s a great way to keep active particularly when your full-time job is mostly spent in an office chair.

This week’s long run started off relatively short at 12.9 km (it builds up to 29.0 km before tapering off a few weeks before November 1). The highlight would have been running past my house at halfway and picking up my bottle of water, which tastes much better when your mouth is dry and you are sweating profusely over the pavement.

What’s my training programme? Well, I’m currently working off two training schedules: one from the Rotorua Marathon site, and another from the New York Times Run Well widget. I like the NYT widget as I can keep a record of my runs and see if I’m on target. The Rotorua one is also pretty helpful for its variety of running activities (e.g. Fartlek, hill runs, strideouts, endurance runs, recovery).

One week down, 20 more to go!

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I’m getting my running shoes on again – this time for my first full marathon on November 1, 2009.

What? You’re crazy!

Yup. You can keep track of my thoughts, observations, training regime here. And there’s an open invite for running buddies as well – I would really benefit from some company on some of the runs, particularly the longer ones.

I’m also running for a new charity this year – Habitat for Humanity. From their website:

Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand is a not-for-profit Christian organisation that works in partnership with people of goodwill and families in housing need, to eliminate sub-standard housing by building, renovating and selling simple, decent houses on an affordable basis.

The first New Zealand house was built by our Franklin affiliate (now part of the Greater Auckland affiliate) in Pukekohe in 1993. We now have 12 affiliate offices throughout New Zealand, and we have helped give over 300 families a hand up into their own home.

I’ve watched their proactive, unselfish work from a distance for a number of years now, and felt that it would be good to support them this time round.

So if you’re not able to come on training runs with me, you can still show your support by going to my fundraising page and donating to Habitat for Humanity.

I’ve thrown down the gauntlet – let’s get it started!

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