Tri 4 Life

I watched this video TriSwimCoach blog and I practiced the similar thing last week, though not exactly emulating how Grant Hackett was powering through the water but more of his technique. On Thursday I did 5 sets of 400m. Again I was clocking the range of 1:36 - 1:49, mostly probably averaged about 1:47 per 100m. This is a vast improvement over my 1:51 per 100m before I went for my ironman. The simple correction of keeping elbows more bent shaved off about 3seconds off my swim time per 100m. It was quite an amazing feat. Perhaps it is also because I felt more fresh from not swimming 3 times a week. Yesterday was the 1st swim for the week because I had to miss the Monday squad swimming session.


This morning I did a 65km ride with Andrew at Coastal. Planned to do a 100km, but decided to call it a day after an unpleasant incident with a military van. The irony of it all was that the van was a "safety vehicle". The van had stopped by the road and inching out of the side road. It got out so much that it was in the path of our lane. We had to veer off and risk being hit by cars on the right lane. It was not so much of the driver but the unacceptably poor attitude of the vehicle commander that I was really peeved with. The VC insisted that he "had done no wrong, why should I apologise?" and his first words to me was this and I quote "There is a Park Connector, you should be riding on it." and to top it all off, "Are there any injuries? If there are no injuries, there is no case."


What will it take for the residents here to treat cyclists with respect? Will bicycle lanes really work, when the basic lack of courtesy, consideration for the safety of road users and the absolute scant respect of lives  in general is possibly the root of the problem?


As cyclists, its a pity that we have to put up with such errant attitude from other road users. This is a common problem I believe and not unique to Singapore alone.