Midweek Thoughts and Reflections

WELL! My legs manage to recover in time from the New Balance REAL Run (NBRR) on Sunday for me to join the Triathlonfamily.com people to swim@SMU. Did the following today:-
10x200m
6x50m
Total:2600m
I arrived late, otherwise would have been doing 200m of kicking with the rest of the people. I started strong for the first 3 sets but my shoulders really felt the strain during midsets. The pain only went away during the last 3 sets of the 200m swim. After that I didn't have much juice left for the 50m sprints. Only went all out during the last 100m. All in all was a good workout and hope to make it again for next week. Now that the Mrs has voiced her complaints, looks like I can only go once a week swim rather than twice a week. No worries, will do the rest on weekends I guess.

Looking back at the NBRR, I really wasn't prepared at all. I didn't do any hill training before (and there were some serious slopes!), and didn't try running on sand before the race (that was the killer). Good lesson to be learnt here; really should check out the terrain before plunging in to do something like this. I guess I should be pretty satisfied with my time. I wonder how I will do for the Aquathlon coming up this Sat..... I really hope to improve on my time compared to the Navy Biathlon back in March.

But what I really enjoyed during the NBRR was meeting the people from SGRunners.com. Here are a bunch of running enthusiasts whom I only knew online and now I get to see them face to face!!?? One of them even won a medal! Way-to-go Carine!! :) It really was fun to meet them. Otherwise it would have been just pack up and go after the race. And I got to meet one of my former Lifesaving mates from back in Singapore Poly days! What a coincidence! I remember him being a little bit out of shape then, but now he's really fit! Kudos to you Alvin!

AND GREAT MEETING EVERYBODY FROM SGRUNNERS.COM!!!

Monday Moaning

Arrgghhh!! My thighs are aching like crazy! And my shoulders too. Looks like I am paying the price now for not having done any hill training for the NB REAL Run. The sand portion of the run really took alot out of my thighs. And I had to "encourage" them by keeping my arms pumping up and down. Ended-up my shoulder blade muscles are hurting too. Looks like I will have to rest up for the next 2 days. Hope that I can recover by Wed and go for the swim@SMU with the rest of the SGRunners. Yoko-yoko!! I'm coming....

New Balance REAL Run

Woohoo!! I managed to finished the NB REAL Run! Also managed a Personal Best time of 1:15:40. Last time I did this, it took me about 1 and a half hours. Now go home and "peng san" leow!!

Friday Morning Freakout

The swim this morning was pretty good. Although I was still aching a little from Wednesday night's swimming drill, I was still able to complete the 1.5km swim in 30mins. Since I started late in the morning - about 10:30am, it was only after 11 that I started to run.

Original target was to complete 5km run. But when I hit the 4km point, legs just gave way.... And the pain in my right calf came back to haunt me throughout the run. It wasn't bad enough like Wednesday where I was limping a little, but it was naggin at me the whole time and I had to concentrate to ease up on it whenever I landed on my right leg.

Maybe the heat was getting to me. I think with my cap on, I had the impression that the sun wasn't that bad. It was only after I stopped and took a look around that I realized that the sun was in full strength and doing its best job in a long time. No clouds around to hinder it like yesterday.

In summary, swam 1.5km in 30 min and did about 4km in 22:30min. Fairly decent I guess. Gotta make sure I rest well tonight and hope I can get up in time to do LSD tomorrow morning. Will have to see how it goes - too pain then have to layoff again. :(

Thursday Break

Well, no training for me today. My right-calf muscle strain didn't go away as hoped - even after applying half a bottle of Yoko-yoko since Wednesday night. Good thing it rained the whole day, at least I don't feel so bad about missing a day of training. Really hope it recovers by tomorrow, otherwise I'll have to work out at the gym or the pool instead of running.

Spent a good portion of the afternoon reformatting my PC - dunno what's wrong and lazy to troubleshoot, so just reformat. Anyway, tomorrow should be a good day of training. I will be doing somw distance swimming and then a short run after that. Most probably be at least 1.5km Swim and maybe 5km run. Sprint Biathlon!! Yoohoo!

Weekly Weds Nite Swimming

Feeling a tightness in my right calf since yesterday's MacRitchie run. hope it subsides in a day or two. Anyway, did a pretty tough swimming workout today. Although only covered about 1km, it was combined with land exercises, so it was really tough:-
6x50m Fly pull + 20 pull-ups
6x50m Freestyle pull + 20 crunches
6x50m Freestyle kick + 20 Squats
Some of you fitness-gurus who read this might be laughing your heads off. But try this when you are 10kg overweight??!! Anyway, felt good that I completed it. Hope that my right calf recovers by tomorrow and I can go for my run again.

Good night everybody!!

MacRitchie Reservoir Dash

Just finished a quick 4km dash around MacRitchie with a friend. Running with somebody is really different - I really received a lot of motivation from just trying to keep up with my friend. He used to run alot (in the Commandos) but he's laid off alot the last couple of years. Even so, when I suggested that we make a dash for the last 1.5km, I totally lost him!! Man! There I thought that with my weeks of training, I might at least keep up with him. Maybe even finish faster than him. Alas, it was not to be. What a humbling experience.

Morale of the story : know your limits - and keep training to break them!!

New Brooks Shoes in the Long Run

Have been running up a storm since the beginning of August. So far my longest run was yesterday, which took about 51min. Although I clocked 10min for every 2km the other day, I don't think I manage to cover 10km yesterday. I was totally breathless after doing just 4km when I did the timing run. Think I probably covered about 8-9km instead.

Well, managed to buy a pair of running shoes the other day that I think is value for money. Costs S$59.90 from Sportslink. Original price was S$80 or something like that. Anyway, did the long run in it and it felt all right. Might not be the latest model, but I reckon should carry me through to the marathon.

First Post

Hi all, this is my first post of the blog. Though I have my own website and all, looks like blogging is much more popular these days. Well, more to come in future. Cheers.