Remorseless Nuttiness

Just taking note of my marathon training so far for Penang Bridge...

 

well my timing for AHM was crap (2:42) and, once again, the haze gave me tonisilities and has left me with a lingering cough. Also, it's so damn hot I'm breaking out in rashes. Whine, whinge, whimper... excuses excuses :D but I've managed to get in 2 short runs a week (10km and 8km), plus one long run minimum 16km on the weekend. Every 3 weeks or so I'm pushing it a little further, the furthest so far being 25km which took me a good 3hrs and more. I intend to pick it up to a 4hr run keeping to the 2/walk 8/run jiggity jog. My previous target was sub-6hr, and I did 5:45, so this time my target is 5:45 or less.

 

I'm still swimming at least 1.5km per week but my poor bikey's been sitting there leaking the air out of her tires since OSIM. Sigh. I need more hours in the day... or shorter working hours in the week :D But ya, gotta pick it up soon. I still fully intend to do 70.3 Camsur next year in August, tho I will probably skip Singapore 70.3... and Sam has tossed up the tempting idea of actually doing Ironman Western Australia in December 2010. OMG. But it's certainly tempting... for one thing that was my personal goal 'before i hit 40' and I always like being ahead on my goals :D for another thing the timing is perfect and I won't have to do more than continue existing training for another 3 months or so...

 

My feet have begun to groan at the pounding I'm givin em again.. think I'm slightly overtrained so am TRYING to fit in some rest days... will be off to a Bintan holiday next month for a break... I've realised I'm starting to over-stress myself on getting in 'enough training'... all the fun will go out of it if I don't try to settle down eh...

In a word - great!

 

I decided to take OSIM semi-seriously; like the Stanchart Marathon, I have a sentimental attachment to this event cos it's the first triathlon I ever tried. (Actually I think ALL of us probably started with OSIM and Stanchart.. .it's the only money OSIM ever makes from me, and when I had money to invest I went to Stanchart!) Also, this would be my third OD and my second OSIM OD, this time with a new bike and, er, well, swim lessons.

 

I normally work Saturdays but I took the day off and spent it doing ab-so-lute-lee NOTHIN. hanging about, stuffing my face, pretending to carb-load :) Mostly on rice and chicken, which I find actually DOES make good carb-loading food lah. I slept very early, about 9pm. As usual I set up all my gear WAAAY beforehand. I'm quite a kiasu competitor.

 

Next morning at 645am I biked to East Coast at a very leisurely pace - it took an hour to cover a distance less than 20km! - set stuff up, etc. I always like being about 1hr early if I can, cos then there's no queue to the loos, the transition area is nearly empty, I can chew sleepily on my muesli bar... Sam was training for our Penang marathon that day with her pal Judith, so she popped by just in time to ra-ra me at swim start at 9:30am (yes, I was THAT early there!). Strong currents! But the water was not too salty at least, and quite clean. If there were jellyfish, I couldn't see em, heh.

 

I'm a much stronger swimmer now than before, which is to say I no longer straggle in at the very tail end of the pack :) though I'm DEFINITELY still an endpacker for the swim leg! I was in the last three still lah. The currents were against us throughout the longest part of the loop and it was quite a fight; I switched to breaststroke to get around the buoys simply because I couldn't turn properly around them if I couldn't see em! Final swim time was 1:02. Yes, a bit tragic for 1.5km. But my previous time was 1.10, hor.

 

I LOVE MY CONALGO BIKEY I wish to say. So I'm still no speedy gonzales but that bike whizzed me past two people who were well ahead of me out of transition, and I wasn't even pushing very hard. At the third loop (it was 6 loops... I'm glad it was in waves, cos with 6 loops it woulda been a real race rally complete with massive wipeouts at the speed some people were going) I found my celebrity photographer :) hee hee. Steven patiently waited for me at the U-turn, taking photos; taking over from Sam, too, who trotted off to rah-rah other pals. Final bike time, 1:47. Last year it was 1:55, I think. I've become stable enough to drink and suck gels on the bike. This is, well, tremendously helpful, to say the least.

 

My run time was 1:10 for the last 10km. Not hard, though it was hot; for the first time I used shades to run cos it was blazing down. The volunteers were fun and chirpy and there were loads of spectators going Whhooooo Whhhoooo and so on. Nice! Endpackers always get some cheers, hee.

 

Final time 3:57 - not brilliant by any means, but my aim was sub-4, and sub-4 it is. I even made it to mid-pack - placed 12 out of 18, so I'm out of the last 5 at last! Well ok number 18 DQ'd, but I'm still JUST out of it...

 

It was nice having a cheerleader too, heh... Afterwards Steven and I had huge amounts of satay, then went to a mexican restaurant for dinner (Margarita's - I HIGHLY recommend it) where I died and went to deep fried heaven with a chimichanga drenched in guacamole.

 

I'm pleased with this race :) beautiful weather, easy course, and lots of snazzy bikes to watch out for...

 

 

Urgh. this has not been the best month.

 

Sam set me a challenge - complete the Shape 10km run in 1hr. My fastest 10km so far has been 1:01 and that was way back in 2006 when I was training for a full marathon. So I set about increasing my pace, working on my splits, etc. It wasn't going too badly - I managed to get my first 5km in 33min and the second in 30, for a total time of 1:03, just 2 weeks before Shape. Now I don't usually like joining Shape - the organisation is a little bizarre, cos instead of collecting your goodie bag BEFORE the race like every other event, you have to finish your race, then queue for an hour to get your bag, rapidly dehydrating as you go. the run itself often has minimal water points too. But this year Slender Shapes sponsored us all, and I wore our SS shirt to promote the company while running. Well sorta. The only ones doing 10km were me and Sam; there was a much bigger group doing 5.

 

Then the haze started, and with it all the usual problems. I'm not normally VERY affected by haze - a bit of an itch, a bit of a sore throat - but last week I got a freelance project (writing a educational comic for the SCDF) and pulled a few late nights. My immunity must have suffered, for all of a sudden the lymph nodes on the left side of my neck swelled up painfully. I started getting excrutiating migraines due to sinus inflammation. I went on antibiotics for a week and become all wobbly-kneed. And finally, I got a nearly full-body prickly heat rash, 3 days before the run! Fortunately it doesn't itch that much - when my eczema hits its much, much worse - but I feel hot all the time. I look like I've been through a full-body chemical peel.

 

So, sigh. I got as much sleep as I possibly could on Saturday, and stuffed my face a bit. I felt relatively ok at the start line but decided to keep my pace easy - I'm pleased to say my 'easy' pace is now 9kmh, at least, up from 8.5! - and complete it in under 1:10. I did it in 1:07. I probably could have pushed a little harder, cos I was still full of beans at the finish, and was charging about impatiently trying to find a loo, find the baggage counter, find the end of the race kit collection queue (yep... when events are arranged around that maze of a Millenia Walk, it's a lotta hide n seek among crowds of stinky people - thank god it was all women, for men seriously woulda stunk up such a small area). But even so, I was starting a dehydration headache as I made my way out of the event area.

 

I went to Cathay Fitness first to wash up and sort out the massive gift bag - the primary reason most people join Shape is the generous goodie bag, so I suppose that's why they wanna make sure you earn it before they hand it out! - then went to meet my colleagues for lunch. We were ALL starting headaches - Shape REALLY needs to put in more water points! - and I left early cos my face was also hot, hot, hot.

 

Got home, turned on aircon, shut the curtains, and tried to read a book and take a nap. In the end I gave up and took ibuprofen. The joy of ibuprofen... I was then functional enough to get some computer work done, finish my book, find an appetite for dinner (or I would be dead by tomorrow morning), and register for Standard Chartered :).

 

OSIM in two weeks. Let's hope the air will be better then...

The hills! they're alive! ALIVE!!

 

I always wanted to try the Bintan Triathlon, because I'm very fond of Bintan - yes yes so it's a tourist trap specifically designed to trap Singaporeans and Singapore- based expats, but when you want a fuss-free beach break Bintan is only an hour away by ferry, and the fomer Mana-mana was cheap & served a decent breakfast buffet (it's now slightly more expensive as 'Nirwana Beach Club'). There are shuttle buses to cheap massages (cheap for Singaporeans, I mean) and good food; there are friendly, slighty-flirty watersports boys (which is exactly who you want 'em right? :), there are actually quite decent numbers of pretty fish to look for and a calm, beautifully blue sea to paddle about in. Many a time has Bintan saved my sanity. I've been waiting to get fit enough to do an Olympic Distance so I can do the Bintan tri (I think it's a waste of money to travel for a Sprint) and this year I figured, why not?

 

I thought I booked early, but in fact by the time I tried to book accomodations for myself and Sam, both Nirwana Beach Club and Niwana Gardens were fully booked! So I just decided to make it easy and went with the organiser's package deal at Angsana. Angsana is EXORBITANTLY expensive - everything is priced in USD (Nirwana prices in SGD) but our logistics were smoothly taken care of. When you're travelling with a bike that costs two month's salary, you want her safe, believe me, and the Angsana folks were efficient and organised with the bazillion precious babys they were transporting around, covering each bike individually in tarpaulins; the staff even seemed to have been trained (or have simply been doing this awhile) to handle them the 'right' way - i.e carry/wheel them at the right places so they don't smack into one another. And a good thing too because some of those bikes? I swear they cost my entire YEAR'S salary. A good 30-40% of the guys were mounted on those streamlined Cervelos, complete with tri bars and disc wheels and those fancy teardrop shaped Giro helmets and god knows what kinda fancy shoes and pedals. There were CHILDREN with Zipp wheels. There was a wee little boy on a wee little Felt. The people who do Bintan are very, very rich...

 

OD started at 2.10pm and the Angsana shuttle transported both our bikes and ourselves to race site. After a bit of mingling we set up at transition and admired bicycles for a while. I admit a Conalgo is a rather flashy bike already, but she has no real bells and whistles apart from carbon Look pedals. This was the FIRST reason I was glad I brought her.

 

Swim start was seperated into just two waves, male and female/relay. The water was warm, calm and very blue and clear. Definitely easier to swim in than East Coast, but, well, in a word? JELLYFISH. Oh my god the JELLYFISH. Now if you're a fast swimmer, or at least within the pack, you're less likely to be hit by jellyfish - they avoid all the mad thrashing about, because they're delicate little things. Which is why jellyfish tend to sting only the FIRST few swimmers and the LAST few. Now I'm usually quite blithely ignorant in the water, partly cos I can't see so clearly. But I have done lasik and I now have 6/6 eyesight, and Bintan's water is REALLY clear. I saw THREE different species of jellyfish, all drifting gently within arm's length from me. Each time I shrieked and jerked sideways in the water. At one point there was a GIGANTIC pink jellyfish I nearly smacked into with my hand. I screamed, leapt sideways, and yelled at the poor breaststroker in front of me (breaststrokes only see ahead, of course, not side to side) "SWIM! SWIM!! JELLYFISH!!". The poor girl panicked and grabbed the nearest kayak at the buoy, and wouldn't go on. Well I didn't SEE her go on. I really hope she did eventually... :p When I approached that side again on the inside lap (the swim course was set up in a single loop, outside then inside the lane rope) I was extremely wary. By that time that giant pink jellyfish was nearly at the surface - I'd seen quite a number of the horrible things further in or further down, but this one was so close that when I screamed "JELLYFISH" a second time and leapt sideways, the guy in the kayak looked down and said, "Oh, so big, lucky you can see" and beat the water gently with his oar to, er, discourage it. He only had to look down. He didn't stick his head in the water. It was THAT BLOODY BIG.

 

Sam later said that with her fuzzier eyesight she thought the pink jellyfish were anchors meant to hold the lane rope in place. I WISH I'd been that oblivious. I must have wasted a good five minutes screaming and leaping sideways at almost every angle of the lane rope... on the good side, those jellyfish made me swim damn fast. I've hardly ever overtaken anyone on the swim. In this race, at the last few hundred metres, I overtook three people. Get out of the water! get out of the damn water!!

 

The bike leg was, er, amusing for spectators. The race director did say it would be, in the race briefing, because the bike mount line is UPHILL. They didn't mean a slight incline, either. They meant UP a HILL. I set all my gears for a hill - I set them TOO low, so that when I tried to mount, two things happened. First, cos it was a hill, I didn't slide my seat in low enough and it caught in my tri shorts. second, the gears were set too low for me to get enough weight in my pedals to push off (I've never mounted uphill before) and the whole bike (which, you remember, is now some 50% lighter than my old one) tipped me gently sideways. I hopped, I swore, and finally I PUSHED the bike up to the crest of that damn hill (fortunately a small one), mounted on TOP of the hill, then let her scoot downhill a bit before clipping the other foot in.

 

The bike leg, at the briefing, was described as 'undulating'. Now since Port Dickson I've learned that race directors often understate the bike leg. Port Dickson was described as 'mostly flat, some hills' which was a lie, a dirty lie - it was mostly hills and some flat, is what it was. With 'undulating' I was expecting sheer murder, and I was so not wrong. There was hill after hill after hill, rising up before you like the earth god had shook up his sheets and forgot to make the bed. And it was 60, 70% UPHILL. It's hard to have a course which has more uphills than downhills - generally they're evenly matched, ya? but this one managed it. The uphills were INSANE. Everyone was playing with their gearshifts like they were saxophone keys. clik-clik-clik-clik. clak-clak-clak-clak. chink-chink-chunk. clik-clik-clik. Some hills were at an angle so steep there were cars struggling up beside us. The derailleurs were working overtime; I don't think I've ever had to crank my big front wheel gear up and down as many times in less than two hours than I did on Saturday. And the HUMPS. The speed humps are INSANE. They're so high that the few mountain bikes on the course (generally the kid's event had lots of mountain bikes and BMXs) actually FLEW through the air a couple of feet before landing, as if they were doing stunt biking. The road bikes and racers slammed their riders violently in their naughty bits unless we all stood nearly upright on the bikes. Several people lost control and crashed. Being at the tail end of the crowd, as usual, I saw four people wheeling their bikes back at a anxious jog. One had split his cleats; two had their chains off; one had obviously crashed like hell, wheels misaligned and everything. In the kid's race the next day we actually saw a poor little girl crash face first into the ground as her pretty, entirely non-sporty bike failed to clear a hump. The hills, the hills are alive and are in a foul mood...

 

It was on the bike leg that a minor mishap turned into a major hiccup for me. I had two bottles, one filled with dilute Pocari and one with water. I lost the Pocari trying to re-cage it when my bike took a bump I hadn't noticed (I THINK it was a pothole, I'm not sure) - it flew out of my hand and I had to grab the handlebar to steady myself. I actually stopped to pick up the biden, because it was 3plus pm and blazing noon, and I dehydrate like a sponge even in morning races; just as I was unclipping, a bus came along and rolled right over my bottle with a merry KAPOW sound. I groaned. I continued on the rest of the murderous hills on only water. The water wouldn't stay without electrolytes and I evaporated rapidly.

 

By the time I hit the run I was starting a familiar dehydration headache. I sucked down water, I ate a bar, and continued onto the run. Normally I can do a full run for 10km even at an OD, but I settled for an 8run/2walk pace which normally keeps me at a speed slightly higher than 8kmh. Alas, no matter how much pocari I threw into me I could NOT go faster than a shuffle. By the second loop I was giddy and cramping. I sucked down my last Hammer Gel with water, kept up my spirits by waving to all the supporters, race marshals and Doctor Low the jaunty medical director in his golf buggy, and kept going. The spectators at Bintan, I gotta say, are wonderful - the route winds through Mana Mana and Mayang Sari and people out on their balconies applauded everyone going past. The yoga teacher, complete with mat, jogged along with me for 50m. Folks at Nirwana hung out of the swimming pool and made 'whoohoo!!' noises.

 

I made it to the end at, I think, about 3:50 - haven't checked the time yet. It's still a big improvement over my first OD, which was 4:02; my main target was to see a 3, not a 4, in the first number, so I'm still quite pleased. I'm also VERY pleased at how my Babydom performed on those evil hills - she made it easy for me climb, and had enough gears to allow me to push hard even on the downhills (on poor ol Preshus I had to just cruise downhill - she only had 8 gears and she was heavy as lead downhill, pedalling would just be free-spinning) so I was going significantly faster even on a course liable to give me an asthma attack. Alas for the fallen Pocari bottle; my run time was 1:15, nearly 1:20 I think. If I hadn't dehydrated and cramped I probably woulda run better.

 

On a side note, one of the endpackers with me - probably the last finisher - was a plump young lady. I'd noticed her earlier in the swim (she's quite a decent swimmer); I passed her on the bike, and I was completing my second loop of the run while she was on the first, and tried to encourage her as she walked. She DID finish, in around 4:30; I was still there in the transition area, groaning with my feet in the air, when she came through at last. I don't know her name but if anybody knows her, tell her Good Going cos she reminded me so much of myself struggling through my first-ever race! It's tough when you're heavy; she clearly had the stamina, merely lacked the speed, like I did (still do); and hell, she finished didn't she? That's what the sport is really about - not the shiny Cervelos but people like her who make it on sheer willpower. $100,000 worth of gear will do nothing for you if you don't have willpower like hers.

 

Sam was at the finish waiting for me - she did it in 3:30, which is excellent considering she was on her older bike, not her new fancy one. It was a good race experience overall - I coulda done without the jellyfish! but the bike leg was a challenge worth conquering, and the run was fun despite my doing it at near-collapse!

 

We went back to Angsana, ate cup noodles with Feli (Angsana is insanely expensive, did I mention? and we were too lazy to go out), and the next day had a huge, huge breakfast at the buffet. We popped back to Nirwana for a massage, seeing bits of the kid's tri on the way. My, but there are some expensive child athletes. There was a rather obnoxious child with us in the bus, talking about her 15 bikes (FIFTEEN??) and how she hates it when the bike and run course are together cos she hates navigating around runners. I'd hate to know her parents, dear lord. It was swelteringly hot; we went to Pasar Oleh-Oleh for a cheaper lunch and some vague shopping, then melted gently for a while before getting back. The ferry was late by nearly 30min :p so by the time I got home it was past midnight. Sigh. And the holiday's over.

 

Oh, and I'm waiting for my medal impatiently, cos they ran out and have to mail em.

 

Overall I'm quite pleased with the Bintan tri! I could've done better tho. Let's see what happens at OSIM in August.

 

 

Today I spoke at the first ever Inaugural Graphics Novel Initiative launch. So this takes some explanation.. I've been a writer since I was 15, and I've been working as a comics scriptwriter specifically since I was, er, 22 I think. This is how I met and started working with a number of ppl, most notably Jerome Hinds, who started ACAS - the Association of Comic Artistes of Singapore. There are only 2 comic writers and I'm one of them, and the more active one (er, in more ways than one I suppose) cos the other guy has a more high-flying day job.

 

Today was the launch of a contest to submit graphic novel and comic concepts for publication, and I spoke about writing for comics. I gotta say it was pretty interesting! I've always been a bit comicky geeky and my first full time job was establishing the comics section of Kino, but I never imagined I'd one day be on stage, in whatever little bitty capacity, talking ABOUT comics. What was most interesting, I think, was that Johnny Lau (Mr Kiasu) and Sonny Lieu (Malinky Robot, Liquid City) were there to speak as well. As far and away the most successful of local comic artists (and there are, what, 5 relatively famous ones? Morgan Chua, Chew, Edmund Wee Tian Beng... and that's all you'd really come up with, apart from Jerome who hasn't quite turned a profit yet!) they had a lot to say, Sonny in an earnest aw-shucks manner, and Johnny with a certain pai-kia 'listen to big brother' air. They were both excellent and gave excellent advice, but what stayed with me most was how hard they both worked, how thick a skin they were forced to develop, and how persistent they both knew how to be!

 

It's an unforgiving industry... I think one of the reasons I got into the fitness line is because it's literally the only thing in the world that gives back guaranteed rewards for the effort you put in. Eat right, lose weight. Pump heavy, gain muscle. Keep going, cross the finish line. There's nothing else on earth that's guaranteed, except the fact that your body will respond in the ways you want it to, if you only choose to trigger those responses. That's how anorexics come about, after all! It's usually cos of that sense of lack of control - but the one thing you have an 80, 90% chance of controlling effectively is your own body.

 

I hope ACAS gets off the ground and makes Jerome some money soon - the poor bloke's worked like a demon all these years for it, and made his enemies like we all do when we're trying to push hard for something. Plus in many ways it gives kids a hope in hell of making some money out of being able to draw.