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Monday, July 12, 2010

Alternative Perspective


Emerald Lodge. The same cafe that I pass every Saturday during my bike training at the top of Mount Faber (or hill). A nice and different perspective for me today? I was sitting INSIDE the cafe having a nice cool smoothie with my wife after lunch, enjoying the gentle breeze as well as the sea view that broke through the short canopy. At least this time, I would be not be huffing and puffing up the crest.

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Spent an hour doing the sets with Monday Swim Group at Clementi. The irritating thing was: I spent the same amount of time getting there from my home! And this usually would have taken no more than 20min! The peak hour plus the numerous traffic lights plus the large volume of cars on the roads were the root of the problem.

Introduced to this Total Immersion (TI) technique - side stroke but using freestyle kick. All it took was 50m and my legs were all lactated up! 3x100m of paddles and I was left with no bubbles to draft. 8x100m with flippers was the main course for the night. Tiring but not too bad. Its with the aid of flippers after all!

This morning, I measured my resting heart rate to be 41 beats per minute (bpm). For the good part of the year, it had been hovering at 43. In fact, it had been 43 since last year when I started IM training. Good sign I suppose, now that my heart if more efficient in pumping the blood all over my body? Mohd Ali, the reknown boxer, and Sean Kelly, Lance Armstrong, the pro cyclists, both in their hay days had a resting heart rate of 30-32 bpm. At the age of 19 when I was in the army, my resting HR was 42. I may be almost twice over that age, but the heart is beating as young as it was then.

As many would say in denial of their actual age, literally "young at heart".


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