wheeeee

wheeee

today was exhausting... because there was no training

woke up at 7am, usually anything later then 8am gives me a mega drain feeling the whole day. went to office with dad, sorted out all the invoices, wrote cheques (: lunch at 3pm lol

well, it's always good to start early. Yesterday just had the urge to pack my stuff and prepare my calender for 2009. Hm.. this spring cleaning's going to be brutal, trying to minimise the stuff i have.

Anw, i am horrified by a report on meat consumption around the world. US people eat a whooping 79.5kg of meat on average/year. and guess where we singaporeans stand? That's right, at 2nd place with 79kg!

Yup, so my plan now is to eat meat more sensibly, the report is right, you don't have to eat meat three times a day (which i don't btw) Still, the idea of going vegetarian doesn't appeal to me although yes, save the earth! Partly because meat tastes good, and i think whey protein has some benefits that soy protein can't offer.

k, on to more serious stuff. The newspaper headlines have been pretty disturbing since, i don't know, the olympics? yea, hope things take a turn for the better

standard chartered this weekend! plan is to run at 8km/h, so that's 5hrs 15min.But i'm going to walk all the downslopes and i'm going to take a break after every 8km. and i will finish the run in 6.5 hours. (previous estimate of 6hours revised)

10.56 today, and i know i can go even faster

What if you believe?

Work hard, play harder (:

"What work i have done i have done because it has been play. If it had been work i shouldn't have done it." Mark Twain

Bring Home Some Gold

seacc time trials yesterday. did k1 500, was a good experience but nonetheless got whacked. Still in a different league, haven't gotten back that sprinting feel. As usual, it was a lone ranger thing, but i'm grateful to my one unexpected supporter that day. I will continue to work hard and get faster.

Losing is not about the race, it's about the drive. So long i know there's still somewhere i can improve, some things i can do better, it's not over.

a video i really enjoy:

faster faster!

Round ubin

round ubin, was thinking of trashing the cert, but since it only says participation i can live with that.

i got owned. didn't complete the race, gave up at the jetty, which according to google earth is the 19th km of the 22k race. For me the race wasn't about the usual canoeing endurance, it was just some hard core balancing. I admit i've underestimated the conditions an open sea is capable of. Equipment wise, kept it simple, apart from the spray cover, it was normal training attire and gear.

Barely 1k into the race during the channel crossing, i capsized, thankfully changzhong and james rescued me, but i continued the next 18k with a swamped boat and w/o spray deck. So there, a T1 weight with a k1 stability. Every stroke was a brace, those kind which you execute to prevent you from dropping into the water, that was how choppy the waters were.

It didn't occur to me how these strokes were affecting me until the jetty. Was trying to catch up as much as i could, did overtake boats despite the really bad strokes, did ketam, the first rounding, the whole fenced-up length, chek jawa, then approaching the jetty, each stroke got damn painful and the range of movement was limited. It's totally different from the normal training pain and lactic, where in a good set you can't move your arms anymore but at least you can feel the pain. This one reached the point of numbness. The marathon runner's equivalent of hitting the wall. In the interest of next week's training, i decided to stop, with just 3km to go.

After everything, went back to macritchie. went to paddle some more. just did random burst intervals for 4k. My regatta (i still need a name for it) never felt so stable though the afternoon wind was strong as usual. Strokes felt powerful, exactly what was lacking earlier in the morning. Some sets i was overcomed by a genuine desire to see how fast and hard i could go, some deep compulsion to prove to things to myself. It felt good, channeling all that power into the water. It doesn't change the fact that i gave up on the race, but at least i had a good row today.

Round ubin has been an extremely challening experience, and i'm grateful to many people, including a stranger whose 'tough love' belied an act of kindness.

on other news, i hit a new 2k PB yesterday. 10.58. That's steamy's PB as of 16 dec 06 and better than the less-than ideal timings up to 14 Feb. Things felt right for that 2k, and the moments after it are something i'll remember.

the best part is i know i can go even faster (:

What if you believe?

wheeee

did short intervals today, real man, during the third set things got really uncomfortable, the part when you can't feel your arms anymore. hm..read up on the concept of active recovery yesterday. sounds convincing but in practise i find it doesn't work that well for me as compared to complete rest (even 5s of not moving seems more effective in recharging ATP-CP).

round ubin on sunday, really don't know what to expect, so my visualisation will involve the most challenging conditions. tested the spray cover yesterday, v unconfortable. It's either that or a wave break which i'll have to make, haven't decided.

filled in the form for time trials, will be a good gauge to see where i stand. 16 weeks into the training plan, things are going on track, and it just means i'll need to train even harder.

red sports survey

hi friends,

if you can spare the time

http://redsports.sg/survey/

from uncle les: I need your help in filling out this survey form to prove to advertisers that real people read this website. Right now, I can’t tell whether you are guys, girls or aliens and how old you are. So the information you provide will be helpful to Red Sports.

thanks (:

OBAMA! (:

For a man who speaks about hope, i think it's quite cool how back in elementary school in Indonesia, when asked by his teacher what his ambition was, obama said "I want to be President".

Watching the tv reports, lots of emotional scenes not just from America, but from all around the world including Kenya and Japan. It's a pity his grandmother did not get a chance to see him elected; just one day short.

Although it's technically the US elections, it feels like the whole world is involved, perhaps all ready to follow in the leadership of this US president.

training

did sprints with the national team people, they are super fast. picked up more pointers from them today. will test tomorrow

this morning i woke up, super exciting, biceps, forearms and wrists felt like lactic acid was perpetually coursing through. Day before was lats and deltoids, so not so bad. today ggxx, think the pullups overkill, but it was good (: never can have too much strength yea

19 (:

wheeeeeee

perhaps i'm getting old, it seemed like just another day, and actually i prefer it that way. reading a geography of time, very interesting book, talk about cultures and people that live on event time versus clock time. the author mentions that the industrial revolution was powered not by the steam engine, but by the modern clock. this guy robert levinge is the one who did the survery on how fast people in orchard rd walk to compare the pace of life across cities. He also points out the idea of clock accuracy, how his lectures are often interrupted by the beeps signalling the end of the hour, usually at their own time own target, but how in a boardroom meeting of an MNC, all the watches were synchronised such that the unison of beeps left an eerie feeling in the room. More ideas from him include observations from prominent people in this field of socio-psychology that while the traditional watch represented the passing of time by the hands moving, the electronic one does nothing then to state a number. The book does get a bit boring towards the end though

Yesterday i felt strong (: it's a nice feeling, did 100 pullups total, benched a nice weight, rowed 21k. The strength is surprising because i haven't actually done much weights training recently.

writing out training goals (:

went for a long run today, very cooling and it's peaceful at night