1) The Haitian earthquake that shook the world.
2) Oil spill in the Gulf that created a furore by the environmentalists and residents in the nearby region alike. BP's attempt at plugging the leak that finally was successful after a few months.
3) The rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners. These miners were indeed fortunate to have been alive. Compared to the New Zealand miners.
4) World Cup 2010 and the birth of vuvuzelas.
5) iPhone 4 revelations - is this really newsworthy? I think it was because it created a new generation of mobile phone capabilities. Just look at the number of applications, also commonly known as APPS, created just for the phone.
Perhaps something closer to home:
1) The inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG)
2) The passing on of Mrs Lee Kuan Yew
3) Opening of the 2 casinos, Resort World and Marina Bay Sands.
4) Flash floods that plagued the island, something unheard of for a very long time.
I listed the above with much difficulties. The year past so fast that I could hardly remember what happened in the world and Singapore. I am sure there were many other headlines, financial, economical, political, technological and the like.
Perhaps for 2011, I will want to track more closely of the headlines and events that impact the world in the blog. And at the end of 2011, perhaps I will be able to tag what had happened for the year easier than what I had done above.
***
Yesterday marked the official start to the whole training season. I have only 2 races for the 1st half of the year - Aviva 70.3 and Challenge Cairns. Deliberately putting in fewer races so that I can focus on training rather than to race this time. Last year, I made the mistake of taking part in couple of more races than I should and that took away time from focusing on certain aspects of the multisport.
Taking 1 week break after December's ironman, and doing only basic sessions throughout the remaining part of 2010 had done me good. I was in no hurry to push up my heart rate and was just ensuring that I am burning bits of whatever I had gained slowly. I suppose this is one way of active recovery that many athletes and coaches talked about. And also, I will be able to keep myself motivated when I make come back. My longest swim was 2km worth, ride was about 100km and run was 20km. Come to think of it, this is like a 70.3 but of course all done on separate days. Heart rates were free to go in any way they liked, sometimes high, sometimes low. In fact, the only time I wore the HRM was during the long run on Sundays. Not even during the bike sessions nor the track work.
With the change I have implemented to the run routine, I hope I will still be able to improve over last year's PBs. Already the swim has improved by a couple of seconds. It remains to be seen whether the bike and run can get any stronger. Coach had already given me the programme for Week 1 of 2011, slowly nudging me towards the real stuff in the next few months.
Andrew did not turn up for the swim session last night because of work. But Enrico did and that was great! I did my part and brought more people to swim with the gang. And hopefully they will benefit as much or even more than what I have experienced for myself. Being fresh from not training long hours over the past few weeks, I did not feel tired from the hour of swim. Unlike in 2009 when I returned to swimming after the ironman race, I remember telling Matthew that I lost my endurance swim strokes. Not forgetting I put on something like 4kg over 1 month, from the over eating fueled by hunger spikes and lack of exercises. This time I put on probably about 1-2kg max. More to be trimmed definitely to get down to 75kg by June. Will try to do more 2 hour runs with less carb and more water as Joe Friel's blog mentioned about training the body to burn fats for fuel by not consuming carbs when training shorter sessions. His definition of shorter sessions were less than 1.5hr swim, 3 hours bike and 2 hours run. Although he mentioned no carbs, I will still include some to ensure that I do not run on an empty tank. Otherwise I will get a chiding from Coach.
Overall, a great start to 2011. Hopefully work schedule will not be too hectic and I will be able to do more quality sessions.
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