Challenge Cairns 2011

I will have to make up my mind really soon. Cairns or Busselton... Cairns or Busselton... If Cairns, no Sundown Marathon but will be Standard Chartered in Dec. If Busselton, I will have to register for the Sundown Marathon really soon. Slots run out very fast. Running a marathon in Singapore has become a daily affair for many. It has gained popularity in recent years.


Doing Cairns will be refreshing. New destination, new place to holiday, new route. BUT same distance. Good time to visit the Great Barrier Reef as well. Only snorkeling though coz nobody in the family dives. My heart is with Cairns. But the flight time is really long. Driving from Brisbane will be quite insane, whole 1700km straight!


Will have to make up my mind or I risk losing the Busselton slot as well coz it opens on 6 December, the day after the race...

***

Did a 130km bike today. Was suppose to be 140km but I shortened the warm down as I took a lift from my family who was in the east. Slacker... Heart rate was again very high. I think the illness had left some memories behind. Hope tomorrow's run will get better.


During the ride, riders were passing me. Got me mad that I could not go any faster. The HRM was beeping away. Speed was no more than 30-32kph consistently. Oh well, better sick now then later. I still have 1 week to do some short but intense stuff. Hopefully the body will feel better then.

Yoga!

I finally signed up for 10 sessions of yoga starting from next Friday. I signed up early so that when I get back from WA, there would be continuation. These are really cheap classes with the community centre in my area. My wife said not to have too high expectations and I really am not expecting much. I just need some time to have some stretching exercises to compliment the so called off season sessions. Will be missing 2 sessions while I am down south, but its fine coz the cost is really no big deal. I hope to continue for as long as I have the time. My discipline with stretching after my training sessions are really poor. Usually no more than 5-10min stretching, sometimes nothing even. It is just by sheer luck that I am not getting that seriously injured just yet. Explains the yoga sign up before I get any bad injuries in future.


I think I fell slightly ill on Monday evening, unknowingly, but still went for a 12km run on Tuesday while feeling giddy. Wednesday suppose to swim but did not go proceed and swam on Thursday instead. Clocked 1:12:55 for 3.8km swim after a 200m warm up. Strokes did not feel right after 4 days absence from the pool and was touching the wall at 1:55 average per 100m. Not that ideal and explained the deviation from my personal best of 1:10 for 3.8km swim. But I suppose I cant be expecting myself to swim 1:10 all the time, so 1:13 would have to do.


Did an easy 10km run at East Coast this morning after sending my wife to work. Heart rate was surprisingly high even at slow pace. Possible reasons were the fact that I am recovering from the illness and the unusual high caffeine from coffee that I do not usually drink. Whatever it was, 1st 5km with 5:45/min pace and over all of 5:44/km for 10km. Far cry from the run I had with Enrico but the HR just would not allow me to run any faster. Plus body might be recovering still, so no point in pushing it at all?


Sickness did not hit me too hard, fortunately. Just some nausea and fatigue. Body seemed to fight it off pretty well. I tried to sleep as much as possible as well, so that could have helped. Today the running legs felt good, just unfortunate that HR was unusually high. Hope that by Saturday I will recover fully and be able to do the last semi long ride and semi long run on Sunday. Taper is still about a week away. Will see if I can still fit in another 3.8km swim in the evening. Rest now and hope to get better from the bout of whatever-it-was-illness.

Power & Peace

I caught Megamind with my family and our family friends. Hilarious cartoon, highly entertaining, witty at times. And with the events that happened around me, the stories I have heard, I was reminded of the power Man has and how much it can affect those around us.

Remember the Spiderman series from the movies? Peter Parker's uncle Ben with his last breath told Peter, "With great powers, come great responsibilities..." How apt and how true...

- Hitler was highly influential, he brought up the nationalistic nature of the Germans and look at how he was able to garner support from the nation and soldiers to create so much suffering and chaos in the world

- Parental power, how much we have been given to be able to influence the minds of our young ones. Sometimes, even the mistrust of the loved ones can turn to abuse, physical or mental. Just look at the number of sexual abuses and even deaths caused by their own family members. BBC had reported about Haitian child slavery even in present times.

- Bosses have the power to make or break an employee's working life and career prospects. My friend shared an article in Business Times, that employees leave not because of the company but because of the bosses. Some truth, though not completely right. My wife had her fair share of nonsensical bosses. And I have my own as well. But the power is very obvious.

- Cheating and abusive spouses. I have heard enough stories to write a book on it.

And I can go on. Power does not lie in the hands of leaders as we often think. It lies in everybody's hands. How we use it, will have an impact on the lives of those around.

My nightly routine with my kids was to lie on the bed and talk for a while. My kids had always wanted to go home on their own - an attempt to gain independence - but ever since we shared about the child molester in the estate, still uncaught, they had been quite weary. My older girl commented just tonight: why must there be bad people; why cant we be nice to one another?

One for the adults to think of. If only Man were so easily understood and had more common sense, perhaps there can be - as many of the Miss Universe wanabes would say - "world peace".