Cycling with Anaesthetists

28th December was a special treat. I was cajoled into cycling with my anaesthetic colleagues jt and okc Anaethetists are our colleagues on the other side of the screen so to speak. They keep patients sedated and quiet while we work on them. Working well with them is a pre-requisite towards the best desired outcome. We started on my usual route. The mandai route was obviously an old haunt for them too. OKC was able to give me a number of fine pointers on cycling on undulating terrain. I had to work hard to keep from being dropped although I was thankful they actually did wait for me. I did 45 km in 1:45, a little bit more by climbing the overhead bridge at ADam-Bukit timah and Whitley-Steven junctions before heading back round the Newton route. There after I was car-less for the day; had to send my vehicle in for servicing and end up being stranded and instead of going swimming( I dragged my workout bag to 2 different hospitals ), i ended up taking the MRTfrom SGH to NNI. It was quite nice to take the train during the off peak hours. I did not realise that there are a lot of routes now including the North east and east and a whole lot of routes. The trains looked as well kept as ever and in fact looked positively comfortable and decent!

On 29th December, I went down to the Buona Vista pool in the late afternoon and went for my long swim. I resolved to do 48 laps( or 2.4 km) non-stop. I focused on body rotation and slow controlled breathing with an aim to increase my aerobic base. As usual, I was lapped like a gazillion times by many swimmers including a guy swimming breast stroke! Talk about slow, I was reminded of a line I liked to use on my registrars:" Dr xxx, if you close this wound any slower, time would be moving backwards!" I would think in this case, that line would be appropriate on me.I completed it in 1:19 and then headed straight home for a 30 minute spinning session before I called it quits for the day.

I have also started on Accelerade after each work out to reduce my weight loss as I have a tendency to lose too much weight when I am training relatively hard and I hope I will be enough muscle mass for swimming and cycling for the next few weeks. I do not quite like the taste as even the flavored beverages taste a little metallic and I actually feel a bit nauseous after I am done but at least I have upped my weight from 64 to 66 kg so its working.