300m Track Work

Tonight's track work was 10x300m with 100m recovery. 61s, 63s, 64s, 66s, 66s, 65s, 68s, 63s, 64s, 58s. Recovery time was 1:20 on the average. Since it was the 1st time I was doing 300m, I wanted to keep it conservative. The key to doing such speed work is to latch on to somebody in front so that there is more motivation to keep pace. I found that the moment I lose the front man by just mere 5m, my mind got a bit lax and simply cruised through. And that was exactly what happened with the 68s lap.


The 60 year old Uncle Lim helped me on the last lap. He paced me and I was forced to hasten the legs cadence. Although I beat him by 1s, seriously, I should be ashamed. I needed a 60 year old man to push me to that pace! There is more to be done definitely and I will try to amp it up next week during the similar work out. Perhaps 64s for all 9 sets and an all out in the last. And this time, there will be no chili sloshing in the stomach - did not learn my lesson and ate Hokkien Mee with chili at 1600 when the run was at 1830. Started with a 3km warm up, followed by a 2km warm down after the sets.


Andrew was really a monster. He clocked 51-53s on average with the last one in 48s I believe. Thereafter he ran another 2x600m with 90s pace with a female sprinter from the institution. But he has been running for more than 10 years - so I console myself...

***

Last night I met up with my Volvo friends for a meal/supper. Been a while since we met up and it was great fun talking about everything under the sun. And it was then I heard about a story that just made me look at the drivers in Singapore with disgust. Not only are they unsafe and callous, the egos are simply too big for their shoes - or in this instance, for their cars.


Lady friend of mine was driving along and the Clown tried to overtake her but without signalling. And since she was not in the mood to be bullied, refused to let Clown in. And Clown got so close and his front bumper hit friend's rear bumper. Clown's Audi was a total wrecked and my friend's SAAB was perfectly fine - I suppose it was because of the characteristic of the front crumple zone of all cars.


The first statement from the Clown was," You are a lady driver. Why do you drive like that? You should have given way..." Since when did we ever breed such an animal in Singapore? Where has all the education gone to? It is with disdain that I look at such a breed of animals behind the wheels.


Speaking of Audi, I caught National Geographic on Mega Factories that built Audi cars. It was a specific part of the manufacturing of the supercar R8. I could now appreciate why the car cost so much. The car was fully customised by the owner. It takes 4 days to paint the car. For the body works to be immaculate, the worker had to be lint free. Best of all, it was fully assembled by hands. Only the paint job was done by robots and this segment takes up 70% of the power consumption of the whole factory. Incredible!

Looking Back at 2010

How much of 2010 can we remember? Let's have a recall:


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.

New Year!

Been quite an eventful new year. To start off 2011, an inconsiderate driver parked the whole car on the pavement, in front of the staircase that led to the lift of my block. Spent 2 minutes to knock sense into the common sense lacking woman and to a point of threatening to call the police before she found her wits to drive the car off.

Thereafter, the police rang my door bell at 12am (2nd Jan). My neighbour saw a stranger who tried to open my door and at the same time appeared to have stolen some shoes - belonging to other neighbours. The case is still pending investigation. But yes, it sure was an exciting start.


Lastly, my younger girl contracted chicken pox. No greater timing than this,when term is just about to start.

So what resolutions am I making for this year? 2 simple ones. First to spend more time with my parents and second, spend more time going through my children's work at night. It is so easy to forget these simple things after a hard day's work and even more overwhelming with the day's training sessions. Hopefully with the 1.5 years of base training I have had, I will not feel so tired after the sessions.

My running friend is training for his first 70.3 race. His weakness is his swim while the other 2 disciplines he will excel in them. Swam with him twice and with my little knowledge, tried to give him some pointers. He will also be joining in the Monday swim to get better, after hearing how much I have improved.

Last Friday, new year's eve, we did a 400m warm up, 500m, 400m, 300m, 200m, 100m and 2 x 50m swim sets.And it is probably confirmed that I have improved after swimming consistently the same timings with 3 sessions. So that is good news definitely!

Was suppose to do a 140km ride on New Years' day but decided to sleep in and spend more time with my family. After all, it will be 2 more days before the official start to a new season for Challenge Cairns. Not much time for that A race. 19 weeks in all only, excluding the 2 weeks of reservist in April that will be a disruption to the training routine.

Today did another 20km jog with just water for hydration. Met my former student on the way back of 1.5km. Chatted along the way as he accompanied me back. Young man did a 3:24 SCSM in 2010! It is great being young is it not? Anyhow, covered the 20km at easy pace again in 2hrs.