Has been a while...

Well its been awhile since my last entry. Major things to report? have managed to encourage 3 of my frens to do a mini-sprint. hooray! even did a mini- training session at sentosa to help out. The fledging triathletes look great.

Then after much procrastination i i signed up with yellowfish for formal swim lessons. He video taped my swim and the description wasn't pretty! i was described as a Longkang swimmer much like how a dog might swim! I watched the video and winced; well at least it can only get better from there! my head was bobing up and down, i did not pull fully, my kicking would not have dislodged my grandmother from her sofa. to add salt to wound, i developed cramps in the latter part of the session, an ignominuos first for me.

somebody asked me again why i choose to escalate the level of distance( i.e sprint to od to 70.3 to ironman) and not focus on one distance and excel in it? well i suppose i could but hey, isn"t life's challenges about facing your fears and doing what can't be done( at least to you?0 . if i can do a sprint, then my personal progressed must be measured according to what distances i can now complete that i could not previously do right? what is the point of finishing a previously distance i had previously finished except to do it faster? okay okay it shows you have improved but personally what cuts for me is facing my fears. why did i sign up for the phuket 70.3? i would think it would be the hills. my personal resolution would be to train and ensure i will not push my bike up those steep hills but to grind my way to the top. its not about a personal pb, its about facing your fears( in this case of hills) and conquering them. to do what i i thought i could not previously do; that is what its all about isn't it?

I really must be getting old...

after the last post, expounding bravado and testosterone,  i literally in the last 2 days. It was hectic. by late wednesday, I was feeling the effect of having workouts for 7 days straight. As luck would have it, my patient deteriorated in the early hours of thursday morning and i had to scrap myself out of bed to operate at 4am in the morning instead of cycling. Took me 3 hours and a lifetime to stop bleeding. I left the operating theatre drained and hunted down a coffee dispensing machine to give me a much needed caffeine boost before dashing to do a round at ttsh and then saw 2 patients in the clinic before dashing back to sgh to start my elective operating. Hey if i thought the ironman was insurmountable maybe today would test my inner resolve again. I went straight into action and resected a brain tumour in double quick time in a lady with a solitary metastasis from breast cancer, then rushed to the Novalis suite to plan treatment for a guy with recurrent brain mets from a lung cancer. Then its back to the operating theatre for the mother of all skull base tumours  which took all my energy. the tumour was so darned difficult I did not have lunch or did i stop for a toilet break. Twas 10 pm when i finished. So today was a bit of a wash out and after another brain tumour to remove, i didn't feel much like going to the pool for a swim. most likely it will be a early night where i will sleep well and hopefully dream of a good weekend to get in some quality workouts.

Back to the Usual Routine

Post Aviva 70.3, there has been a bit of distraction that has taken me away from the usual physical workouts. I have been pre-occupied with operating and work; i bought a new bike adn spend hours tinkering with it and countless more hours dreaming about it. I was mulling over what races i should be doing. Last week though, i got some training albiet low volume.

Did 2 short tempo runs( 2.5 km and 5 km) keeping my pace about 5:30/km and lower adn both of which came out of bike workouts. I went to the RTC 's 25 m pool to practice bilateral breathing and kicking. Will need many more hours to streamline my swim and make it look like i am drowning. Did an OWS at Siloso and swam about 1.5 km and got stung by jellyfish twice which prematurely ended the endeavour.

All in all, an easy pace 8 hours 15 min last week.

I plan to crank it up a gear and for start my preparations for the Tribob's sprint and OD events in May. A bit more tempo runs and speed training would be in order; i have negelcted running of late because i am obsessed about right swim strokes and cycling speed and spend the lions share of my workouts on these but in rality, I make most progress in any race in my runs so it would make sense to keep my running fitness and catch and move up the ladder on the runs

So i have planned 4 runs this week. I have done one 4 km tempo run at 5:10 on monday after the swim. I plan to do a 10 km race pace run today; a 20 km long run on saturday( since FOTR is not riding) and a speed session on sunday.

In the meantime, I shall continue to mull about the Phuket 70.3!