Formula One Weekend

or a weekend of overdoing the booze. Well technically I only overdid the booze on Friday and suffered for it the whole (I'm not exaggerating here) Saturday. This coupled with all the aches and pains from personal training on Friday was not one teeny tiny bit fun. I swore off alcohol on Saturday. I may have a problem, because right on Sunday I had 2 more bourbon cokes. My excuse is it was the first Formula One night race and I was watching it live!...Okay, I confess, I didn't drink any of those bourbon cokes whilst watching the grand prix, they came after. And yes, they were very tasty.

What I did since the last time I made an entry -
Friday: Had a 1 hour session with my trainer doing squats, chin-ups, crunches
Saturday: Died the entire day
Sunday: A lovely hour and a half of windsurfing

Splish Splash

After my failed run on Tuesday and the achy legs the whole of yesterday, I decided to go for a swim instead. Just to prove that to myself (also because the whole world was out running last night to taunt me, I'm sure) I pulled my runners out of my bag and tried a wee 5 minute jog on the street home. I was still wearing my dress, I was carrying a bag slung over my shoulders and I probably looked like a complete idiot...but it was dark and I convinced myself that no one saw me. The 5 minute jog reaffirmed that my knee still hurt, so it was off for a swim after instead. It was a nice change, although I forgot how tiring swimming was. I always seem to live with the mistaken impression that swimming is a relaxing non-exhausting sport. I'm always proven wrong. So anyhow, I did 4 laps of a mix doing the crawl and breast stroke. 5 more laps doing just the crawl, 5 laps doing just breast stroke and the last 4 laps a mix of the two again. It sounds like nothing, but I can assure one and all that I was very, very tired after all of that. And my neck hurts. I must be swimming wrong.

What I did yesterday:
Swam 18 laps

What I plan to do today:
Rest...my legs are still rather sore for some reason

Failed 10k

There's nothing much to say really. I wanted to run 10k last night, I didn't.

Well, the longer part of the story is that my legs gave up on me quite early on in the run and I was thirsty and miserable. I made it to 7.6k and I just couldn't go any further. I can only think of a couple of reasons why this happened

1) I didn't sleep properly the night before - I've been waking up in the middle of the night lately thirsty and cold
2) I didn't drink enough water the whole day
3) I've been happily slacking off the last two weeks, boozing too much and exercising too little, and my body has gotten too used to slacking off
4) All the late nights and drinks has finally hit me and I need to start being a good girl again
5)I had a large box of fries from Macs about an hour and a half before the run

Whichever the reason, I'm disappointed and upset. But tomorrow'll be another day and another run.

What I did last night:
Ran 7.6k in 54:20 mins

Sheer Laziness

I have no idea why I can't seem to do any proper exercise over the weekend. It's almost as if my body instantly goes into shut down mode and to even consider moving is too much of an effort.

After drinks on Thursday (as well as Wednesday)* last week I finally decided to get my ass down running on Friday. And run I did, but it was not fun. Because I was completely dehydrated, I developed a stitch in about 20 seconds which needless to say, lasted me all the way home. (I've actually managed to find a site that answered my side stitch questions, and I think the reason I used to get them all the time was because I ran without having drunk enough water!) Nonetheless, a bad 4.5k run, is still a 4.5k run, so to me, it beat sitting around at home staring at the tv.

The weekend, as mentioned before, was one whole lazy string of days. I thought about doing a run on Saturday, but that was all that materialised. A mere thought. In the end I sat by the pool and read a book, then deciding that I was being too darn lazy, I headed off to the driving range in the evening and hit about 135 balls. I need to start taking proper lessons really soon. In my head I used to rock at golf...now I don't even rock in my own head!

Sunday was actually quite a happy day for me. I went windsurfing again and I think (hope I don't jinx this but saying it out loud) I've rediscovered my mojo. Well, that or the wind was just the right number of knots, the water wasn't too choppy, the current wasn't too strong...etc etc. Whatever the reason behind yesterday's session, I had a lot of fun and I think I might start going back a bit more consistantly to the club after taking a rather long hiatus from it. I'm slowly realising how to bear into the wind after a tack, building the hope that one fine day I will finally be able to complete a whole tack without 1) falling into the water, 2) being hit by my sail, 3) dancing around the board trying to regain my balance or 4) all of the above.

What I did on Friday:
Ran with my constant companion, the side stitch, for 4.5k in 32:35 mins

What I did over the weekend:
Hit 135 balls at the range on Saturday
Windsurfed for an hour and a half on Sunday

*Just a side point, I've come to realise how evil drinking is:
1) I'm completely dehydrated from all the alcohol;
2) I'm also hungover, which means I don't do any exercise whatsoever; and
3) I have my greasy food cravings, which means I'll end up eating unhealthy oily rubbish

Not as Far and Not as Fast

I did my long run home from work yesterday. I had plans to run all the way home or die trying, whichever came first. Well, needless to say, 'die trying' occurred about a good 3k before I reached home, so I grabbed a taxi for to go the rest of the way.

The entire run was pretty uneventful on the whole. I stopped a gazillion times because I just happened to hit the lights wrongly each time I got to a traffic junction. I could jog on the spot, but I always feel a bit ridiculous doing that. And don't ask me why, I haven't a clue why I feel so darn self-conscious about jogging on the spot. Anyway, the run was going along quite fine until I got 7k or so. After that everything was uncharted territory and sulk all the rest of the next 2.6k my legs did.

All in all, yesterday I made it almost to 10k but not quite and I missed the 1hr goal completely. But, I did run further than I ever have in my life. It's hard to imagine that it was only a year ago that I dug around my room, found a pair of cross-trainers and thought 'hmm, let's try running, it can't be too hard', ran 1k on the side road from my house, died on reaching the main road, had my shoes fall apart from lack of use on my crawl home; and decide in the end to still give this dang thing a valid shot (well, after buying new shoes of course - it always is about the gear!)

What I did yesterday:
Ran 9.63k in 1hr 10 mins

So Tired

It's been a rough weekend full of alcohol and way too much drama. I'm suffering for all of it now. I'm completely ragged and run down and I just need nice, long, peaceful sleep. I did manage to fit in a run yesterday afternoon after I went to the driving range though. In all, I'm glad the weird weekend's over now and I can go back to swearing off the bourbon and cokes.

What I did over the weekend:
Ran 3.2k in 19:23mins
Hit 100 balls badly at the driving range
Deprived myself of sleep

A Not-so-easy Easy Run

As I mentioned yesterday, I was irritable over nothing, so I decided to get a run in. I begged my colleague to drop me off at the track near my place (on his way home) and I ran home from there. I made it all the way home without any music and realised that I had run longer than I planned to. I was going to do an easy 3k so I could fit in a short run today before my monthly alumni drinks, but it ended up being closer to a 5k run instead. I couldn't get much sleep last night on account of my knee hurting throughout the night. I couldn't extend my leg, nor could I bend it - all in all it was a jolly miserable night's sleep. So well, it's leg-resting today. I might walk to the bar instead of grabbing the bus though, that should count as some form of exercise!

What I did last night:
Ran 4.72k in 34:29 mins

Dive Class

I went for dive class last night and I have since learned that there numerous ways I can be severely injured or die from diving. Way to sell the sport! I'm not sure I'm going to be a huge fan of the sport (somehow it doesn't seem like a sport to me, more like a hobby...I'm sure diving enthusiasts would be up in arms now), but I said the same thing when I first took windsurfing and here I am a year later with my own personal (albeit secondhand) board and sail.

I'm going for a short run tonight. I'd go for pilates but I'm really in an angsty mood and need to get some meaningless pounding done. I have these moments full of random pent-up frustration over nothing (which in turn makes me more frustrated) and the only thing that would ease it is mindless repetition. It'd be better if I brought music out with me, but being the scatterbrain, I happily (sorry, angrily...because I'm in THAT mood) left it at home. So I shall be out running tonight, angry and music-less.

My Longer Run

After close to 2 weeks of 3k (or thereabouts) runs, I finally decided to try the crazy route that I suffered through the last time. At 6.30pm, I headed out the office armed with my backpack, my bottle of water, and my annoying (but now deemed slightly more trusty) old ipod.

I wouldn't say the 7k I ran yesterday was a complete breeze, but I didn't get any stitches till about 4k and even then they kind of disappeared for the most part*, I didn't stop to walk once and not once did my legs bail on me! Everything just fell very nicely and neatly in place and much as I hate to admit it, I think the music played a big part - 80s cheese is the way to go!!! And I probably wouldn't admit that out loud ever again.

Of course a 1/2 hour after I got home and plopped myself on the couch, my legs got all creaky and achy on me. The legs are actually feeling pretty alright today so maybe they're actually getting used to running outdoors!

What I did last night:
Ran 7.02k in 52:27 mins

*The lack of a stitch could be due to a number of reasons: 1) I ate a half pack of Craisins before the run instead of a huge meal; 2) I actually drank enough water before going for the run; 3) I went for pilates last Wednesday (the magic solution?...I really doubt this); or 4) God looked down and took pity on me finally!

Post-Rant

I realise I was ranting so much about my ipod Nano that I forgot to go on about my weekend training, or lack thereof. Saturday was spent in a state of hangover. Had my usual wine headache that lasted the whole day. I did try to squeeze in a run in the morning, but after barely running 1k, I really really felt like throwing up. So I had to walk all the way back home.

I went windsurfing Sunday and this time for real. After sitting around on my lazy ass the past few weekends, I decided to get serious about windsurfing and not head down to the club to muck around. This Sunday was pretty good side shore wind, so I had quite a bit of fun out. Of course having been lazy the past 3 weekends, in about 10 minutes, my arms were ready to fall off. But after short rests here and there, I managed to probably surf for about a bit more than an hour overall. And I know that I exercised for real this time because today my arms ache so much I can barely extend them and there is that familiar pain in my lower back.

I have a neck ache as well for a completely unrelated and very dumb reason involving trying to jump on someone, missing and getting whiplash from landing on the floor...No one should be surprised. It's me, I do stupid things and I suffer for the consequences ALL THE TIME!

What I did this weekend:
Ran and nearly puked for 1.4k in 9:59 minutes
Windsurfed after way too long for about 1hr over

Junk

I hate my ipod. Early this year I thought I'd really want a cool arm strap to wear whilst running, and because of that I needed an MP3 player so I'd have a reason to wear the strap. This probably sounds bizarre to everyone, but my brain works strangely, I genuinely did think the arm band was cooler than the MP3 player.

So I got the ipod Nano and got itunes installed on my computer. It was so much of a hassle that I uploaded 2 CDs and gave up. This essentially meant that I was running to the same songs all the time. I finally got really sick of those songs last month and had to beg my sister to help me put more songs on my Nano, which she very generously did. Now because the Nano is such a stupid device, it essentially erased everything I put in and replaced it with her songs. Which didn't affect me too much, until last night. I figured I wanted to run to some jazzy tunes for the long runs, because dance tracks just annoyed the hell out of me when I was dying of exhaustion.

Of course being the piece of junk it is, everything my sis had put in for me got erased and replaced by one sad Jazz CD's worth of songs. Which meant I spent the rest of the night having to convert CD after CD just so I'd have enough songs to run to tonight. Aaaaaargggghhh! For all the marketing and hype about the Nano, it has to be the biggest piece of crap ever invented. It complicates everything, restricts everything and is the world's least user-friendly MP3 player. I'm now thinking of getting either a Sony or a Creative to replace this after I throw it against the wall repeatedly in frustration.

Interval Training

I've mentioned before that I'm following this running schedule that I took off the Polar website. Yesterday 'Interval' was slotted in, which meant I had to go on a hunt online as to what 'interval training' actually was.

From Wikipedia, 'Interval training is broadly defined as repetitions of high-speed/intensity work followed by periods of rest or low activity.' So that's more or less what I did. Because I had to meet my childhood friend for dinner, I had a small window of time to do a very short run. But then they always say quality is better than quantity right?

I headed to the gym and got on the treadmill and did spurts of 400m dashes followed by slow runs for 200m. I'm not actually sure if I did it properly but here's the thing, this need to run fast and then slow and then fast again actually made this treadmill session go by rather quickly and, dare I say it, enjoyably. Then again, I didn't do this for very long because I was running late, so it could just be that I hadn't gotten to the point where I'd be bored.

What I did yesterday (vague recollection):
Intervals (5 x 400m) - overall finished 3.61k in 25 minutes

Pilates Finally!

Yesterday night I went to a pilates class at a studio near my house. I'm more used to machine-based classes, so last night's mat pilates class took me a while to get used to. Ever since my realisation that yoga wasn't really quite my cup of tea, I've been trying to get back into pilates and I was looking especially for machine-based classes. Unfortunately, most of the machine-based pilates schools in Singapore seem to cater to expat wives and tai-tais (ladies of leisure) who have the afternoons free, which means I don't have many options available. Nonetheless, I've set my sights on a couple of places and hopefully in no time I can go back to having pilates as a consistent fixture in my timetable!

What I did last night:
Pilates for 45 minutes

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I've just finished Harumi Marakumi's book 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' and I rather enjoyed the book. I've always wanted to get down to reading one of Marakumi's books but there's a whole pile-up of books at my bedside table that I have yet to read. The reason I have so many books left to read is because of the simple fact that I cannot go to a bookstore and buy just one book. I have to get at least a half dozen each time I'm there. I completely over-estimate how much I can read at each given moment and well, long story short, I wind up with a book pile-up.

Lately, I've also started trying to read as many books as I can. I was a total nerd when I was a kid. I think I was the only kid in the world whose parents worried that I read too much. And I'm not exaggerating, I swear I used to get punished all the time because I wouldn't do my homework or go to bed at night because my nose was in a book. Even now if a book is particularly gripping, it would take sheer and complete exhaustion for me to even consider leaving a story on hold for a couple of hours. I have been guilty of going to work groggy because I absolutely HAD to finish a book at 5am in the morning.

Over the past couple of years though, my reading has slowed down a lot and I've taken to reading trashy magazines, running magazines and basically anything shorter in length. This I found a bit tragic, because my imagination was disappearing and replaced purely with the latest Hollywood gossip. So middle of the year I decided I needed a plan to get myself back on track with the reading. I found a list of books online ('101 books to read before you die'...I decided that '1001 books to read before you die' was being overly ambitious) and decided to try to read most, if not all, of it by the end of the year. As of last week, I don't think I was even halfway through, although I have read 8 books since I started.

So, with my book pile-up coupled with my self-imposed need to finish reading the books on my reading list, I had no time to actually get down to reading one of Marakumi's books. I happened to read a review about 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' in a magazine and it seemed interesting enough, but I forgot about it after a while. But I saw the book again when I was wandering around the Bangkok airport and it caught my eye. I figured since I finished one of the books on my list on the way there, I had nothing left to read on the plane ride back and I could do with a break from being a slave to my list.

Personally I rather enjoyed the book. I found it funny, entertaining and at moments motivating. I loved how I could almost hear Marakumi speaking through the words and how it was such an easy read. It probably won't win a Booker prize, nor will people sit around discussing the complex literary themes in the book, but to begin with, it should be read as a sort of a biography and also sometimes I just think it's great to read a book not because it's some critically acclaimed masterpiece but just because one simply enjoys reading it or because the book speaks to one in a way no other deep, intellectual book has (well, probably because I think I'm really not all that deep and intellectual to begin with).

I ramble though...this entry was just meant to say that 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' by Harumi Marakumi is a book I particularly enjoy and would recommend to non pseudo-intellects. Somehow I managed to make it into an essay!

Belated Weekend Recap

Over the weekend I took this lovely Irish gal to the little island of Ubin a 10 minute boat ride away from sunny Singapore (well, not so sunny the past week). Ubin has to be one of my favourite islands and not because it's even anything as close to pretty as any of the Thai islands, but simply because it's so close to Singapore yet so very different. It's basically Singapore as it was before all the clearing of kampongs (that's Malay for 'village') to make way for fancy new buildings.

Aoife and I happily cycled halfway across the island to check out the wetland reserve and climbed up a watch tower for Aoife to take photos of the lush green-ess that surrounded us with the sea in the distance before her camera gave up on her. We cycled uphill and downhill...and for the most part we pushed the bike uphill and cycled downhill, but I know for a fact I definitely did more up-slope (it feels ridiculous using 'hill' in any Singapore context) cycling than the previous few times I've been to Ubin. Soooo, my conclusion is, spin classes do help!

Being with she of the Irish heritage, we put all our exercise to waste by indulging in 2 bottles of sparkling red wine (it is as strange a drink as it sounds) which we generously shared with another Irish lass. Stupid idea though, being completely dehydrated as it was from all the cycling and sweating, the sparkling red wine just got to our heads and we ended up even more dehydrated and way too happy.

On Sunday I woke up early and did an hour of stretching. Headed to church and then ended up at the windsurfing club waiting for wind. I managed to take the board out for a too-short spin, but most of the time was spend finishing up the bottle of JD I brought down out of the goodness of my heart. And no I did not finish it all on my own.

All in all, my weekend was spent in an alcoholic blur and I'm kind of glad that it's all over and I'm going to be good again...

So last night I went off to the specialist running store (a shout out to Feder Sports at Pennisula Plaza...these guys rock!) and finally got down to getting a pair of running shoes that suit my feet. **By now people should realise that my missions to do something big begin with the purchase of new gear** I did a short run after work, and this morning I did another short run with my new babies and I love them! Like deep, true love. My last shoes were always a little on the loose side and they slipped around a lot when I ran, now my Asics Landreth 4 (woo hoo!) are so light, so cushiony and fit so well! Of course by running twice in less than 12 hours (I know it isn't that big a deal to loads of runners out there), my feet are now a bit sore, but nothing that my magical new shoes won't heal. But I'll be a bit more sensible and take tomorrow off to go for a swim instead.

What I did over the weekend:
Cycled (and bike pushed) for 2 hours
Streeettttcccchhhhed for 1 hour
Windsurfed for all of 10 whole minutes

What I did yesterday and today:
Last night: Ran 3.5k in 24 minutes
This morning: Ran 3.7k in 27 minutes