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If I could have it my way, all weekends would look like this:
You wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a nice but painful hilly bike ride.
You get home in time for lunch, have a nice warm shower, get a little massage.
You drive down to the city to meet a friend for tea and have a spot of shopping while you’re there. Your friend buys you tea.
You have dinner with the folks.
You have a girls’ night out with your girlfriends, at home, and share lots of thoughts/jokes/gossip over a bottle of bubbly, cheese, and crackers. And your parents are hip enough to join in.
I’m only glad tomorrow’s Friday, and all it means is that the weekend has not yet arrived.
Image taken from Amazon.com
I’m not big on sports books. I believe that hands-on coaching is far more effective than its visual counterpart. I have never perfected running techniques nor swim strokes from pictorial instruction and it takes far too much time (and not to mention brain power) to read the book, understand the picture and rationale behind each movement, and convert all of that into brainspeak for my arms and legs to understand.
But if there’s one book that I’ve ever figured out, it’s Joan Pagano’s Strength Training For Women.
It not only has a comprehensive series of pictures to display the sequential actions of each workout, it also tells you where you should be feeling the stretch so you’ll know if you’re doing it right or wrong.
I’ve tried weaning myself off the book hoping that I’d remember the routine, but I’m becoming more dependent on it instead. It’s a great book that I highly recommend to anyone, especially if you’re starting out on strength training and don’t know where to begin.
You can purchase the book from major bookstores like Amazon.com, Kinokuniya and Borders.
Ever since last week’s killer swim training, I’ve been on a self-declared week-long hiatus from all forms of training. Last week’s training consisted of lots of sprints and long drills, so it was no surprise that yours truly, still physically exhausted from the previous Sunday’s race, couldn’t hack it and copped out halfway for a breather.
It was then that I decided that I needed a break. I shelved my runners, tucked away the swim-suit, my bike’s not been touched and I rolled my dumb-bells under my bed. The rest of the week involved lots of earlyish nights, carb-intensive meals, vitamin Cs and water. The most exerting activity I’ve done since was to meander through crowds and boutiques on Orchard Road for 4 hours last night with a girlfriend.
It was a superb, well-deserved break, but I’ll be back in the thick of action again this week. It’s time to get down to drawing up the next training plan.
Forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter. Well, I had some of the fruit tonight and damn, it tasted *SO* good.
Then again, so did my garlic toast and pastrami sandwich.
If this was déjà vu, then this must be the Jman’s worst nightmare come true:
Image taken from phdcomics.com, Piled Higher & Deeper
Sorry hon, I couldn’t resist. 
Sent to me by the Jman. This sounded uncannily familiar.
Image taken from phdcomics.com, Piled Higher & Deeper
Image taken from the Triathlon Association of Singapore
I am suffering from a post-race high. It’s a syndrome whereby you’ve barely finished a race alive and you still feel like you’ve nailed it. All notions of pain and suffering are but mere recollections and the nagging soreness in your muscles are slowly fading away. Other possible symptoms include amnesia.
Call it delayed endorphin-rush, never-learn-your-lesson, or whatever you wish. But for the whole of today I’ve been toying with the idea of attempting the Olympic Distance (S1.5/B40/R10) at this year’s OSIM Triathlon, instead of the Sprint Distance (S0.75/B20/R5) that I’ve already signed up for.
Reason? I’ve attempted the NUS Sprint last year and with the duathlon now behind me, I’m feeling the itch to push the limits a little bit more and sign myself up for an extra dose of pain. So what’s stopping me? Based on my race report, I suffered greatly during Sunday’s duathlon (has it only been 2 days?) and my swimming is junk.
The swim coach thinks I can make it for the swim (he can’t comment on the bike and the run for obvious reasons), but after some consultation with the pros and calculations, coupled with the fact that it is only 9 weeks away from race day, I think I will settle for the Sprint eventually, because it’s better to finish the race alive and well than to stumble out half-dead and in pain. Even if I don’t compete in distance, I will race myself for time instead. I vaguely remember telling Dad yesterday that my body isn’t ready for the OD yet. He, too, concurs.
As you can see, it’s race season now. This blog will be peppered with lots more training and race details and my alter ego, the one with shopaholic and domestic inclinations who’d browse Valentino and cookbooks over Zoot any day, will not be making appearances as often as it did. But just as there’s a time and place for everything, I’m sure you’ll see her again soon.
Now that the heat has somewhat subsided (it is already 8pm in the evening) and I’ve had (a) enough sleep, (b) enough food and (c) enough time to recover from the trauma of it all, I figured it’s time I sat down and wrote my race report, if not for inner reflection then at least for posterity’s sake.
Anyone on the little red dot would attest to the fact that yesterday was possibly one of the HOTTEST days in our calendar. It also happened to be the day of the Oakley City Duathlon, as well as the longest race distance/time I’ve ever attempted. So while everyone else was battling the heat in air-conditioned rooms, a few of my colleagues and I and 1500 other people were battling it in the furnace of Marina Bay. Even when we arrived at the race venue at about 7.30am, the morning sun was already heating up the ground.
By the time we were flagged off at close to 8.30am, the sun decided it’d wake up to an early start. The sun’s rays were beating hard on our backs, I could practically feel it wrap its tentacles menacingly around me and robbing me of any breath of fresh air I was gasping for. In the meantime, I prayed for cooler weather and then the occasional breeze would sweep past me. There would be spots of shelter and a few trees to provide brief respite but the sun would rear its ugly head again. And yet despite the heat, I was off to a good start. I started off slow and finished off at 1:04, my best 10km race time to date.
The next leg. 40km on the bike at 9.30am was nothing short of pure torture. I might’ve possibly taken the first 10km run a little too fast, but I didn’t expect that I’d bonk out this early either. The first 10km on the bike was still manageable but I started to feel myself lose steam gradually. I shoved a pack of energy gel down my throat at the 6th km and took the opportunity to hydrate myself as much as I could before it came too close to the last 5km run. I thought it’d power me up for the rest of the journey but as I did my first U-turn (out of the 4 loops), my left calf seized up in a monstrous cramp. I dismounted, stretched for a good 3 minutes before I was able to hop back on the bike. Even then, the muscles just refused to cooperate. Every now and then I’d have to stop spinning, stretch out the calves while on the bike and continue. It happened at least 6 other times throughout the bike leg which slowed me down tremendously.
By the time I hit the 30km mark, I was just cruising on survival mode. I could no longer muster up enough strength to actually race (against myself), and I settled for finishing it up alive instead. Still battling bad cramps, overheating and dehydration (even after all that hydration), I made it through the final lap of the bike leg with a deep, searing pain in both legs. At transition, I took the opportunity to recuperate. I sat on the grass to catch my breath (minutes steadily slipping away through my fingers), hydrate and fuel up. I tried to chuck in another energy gel but it was so hot, and with my body screaming bloody murder, I’d have gagged. So I took it along with me to have on the run and stumbled out of the transition area and started out on the most painful run I’d ever done in my two+ years of racing.
It must’ve been almost 11.30am by then. The sun wasn’t just blazing; it was scorching. If last week’s weather felt like a sauna, then yesterday’s heat was volcanic. I couldn’t breathe, my heartbeat was irregular and at some point in time I thought I was going to collapse. “Listen to your body”, I told myself over and over again. I was glad that I took my FB hydration bottle with me. I stopped, poured water over my head and my body, and when I felt sufficiently recharged, I continued. Then my legs cramped up – both thighs and calves. Both thighs would seize in cramps, I’d stop, and because both were cramped there was no way I could balance on one foot while stretching the other. So I sat myself in a semi-squat position while the muscles stretched, and then continued. Calf cramps were much easier to deal with. The 5km run was a run-walk-stop-stretch routine throughout.
Finally, I turned the bend and found myself on Shenton Way. It was the last 300m, and it was my only chance to beat my mental. It’s now or never. So I sucked it all in, raced myself down the path, turned the last bend, and dashed through the finishing line.
I’d done it. I’d finished. I gave thanks to God for sustaining me. I felt darn proud of myself for finishing it, and after that flitting moment of euphoric triumph, all I could remember was pain, exhaustion and more pain…but that doesn’t matter anymore.
R1: 01:04:17
T1+B1+T2: 01:53:50
R2: 00:40:58
Total: 3:39:04
Position: 39 of 57
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ~ 2 Timothy 4:7
I wish I could say that I’m back with a vengeance but really, I’m back in a pretty sorry state, with a sore throat to boot. In the last month I’ve travelled a-third way “across” the world and back and have landed myself in pretty hot soup by signing up for a race. At the same time, I’ve been trying to keep myself abreast with all that’s been happening in cyberspace, namely people’s lives, and fine, I’ll admit, it’s an intelligent-sounding facade for the term “blog-reading”.
I’ve love reading people’s blogs not for blog-stalking value, but I have a fascination with the way certain people write and express themselves, whether intellectually, politically or simply about life in general. intueri ranks at the top of my list (I always feel like I’m watching ER), karen cheng comes a very close second and the rest are general things about friends’ lives – friends whom I actually know.
I suppose I’ve always had great respect for people who can write and write well. Maybe it’s because I find myself lacking the ability to find the right word at the right time, to lace it with the most beautiful-sounding whatever (see, I can’ think of the word!) and articulate it with writer’s poise. In that sense, silence is golden because nothing pains me more than words strung together haphazardly.
On a tandem note, I know of a few writer friends who are brilliant in their craft and their words are as powerful as a sword in hand. Their sentences may not always be punctuation-perfect (in the name of creative writing, of course) but they never fail to invoke a hearty chuckle with their tongue-in-cheek posts on their blogs.
Needless to say, it is always so damn cool when you flip to the first page of the magazine and under the Contributor’s column, you see 2 familiar names staring right back at you. It is doubly cool when all this is happening while you’re at the salon waiting for your hair to set.
