Sick

Bah, I'm on the brink of a flu and I've been fighting it for almost a week now. What with multi-vitamins, lots of water, tons of rest...in fact I haven't run since last week...although that probably is more due to laziness than illness. Despite my efforts I'm having a persistent cough that wouldn't go away. Hopefully if I keep up the rest, water and vitamin intake, I'll be feeling 100% by next week and I'll have no excuse to not run!

I miss waking up bright eyed and bushy tailed!

Back to Being Lazy

Wow....I haven't run since last week's pathetic 4k run. So that's like 5 days (except for the 1.5 hours of windsurfing on Saturday...which to me is more fun than exercise) of laziness. Don't I feel guilty now...

Cuts, Scrapes, Bruises and One Wrecked Sail

My poor sail is with the Windsurfing Doctor this week because I managed to make two huge holes in two separate panels. So RM is going to get it all fixed up for me and hopefully I'm good to go next weekend.

I tried using the harness on Saturday and it was well, weird. I get the whole, 'your arms will be less tired, you're using your body weight' argument, but firstly, I kind of like my arms being tired and secondly, being hooked onto the sail just means if I let go of my sail because of whatever reason, the darn thing pulls me along with it and I wind up landing on my sail, looking completely stupid and putting rips and tears into it.

But being me, I don't like knowing that I suck at anything (which is probably why at some point of time, I'll probably be heading back to complete my dive course). So I'm sure I'll be back next Saturday, harness and all, putting new holes in my sail and more. L's going to look at my rig next week and I might be on my way to buying a new sail! I hope to God it's a lot lighter than my current sail!

What I did over the weekend:
Saturday: Windsurfed for 1.5 hours

All About Fish

Long time ago, I mentioned that I had too much body fat and was trying to eat a bit more healthily. I can't remember if that's actually what I wrote, but in my head I knew I had to start eating more healthy.

Since that entry, I've made only a half-hearted effort at eating healthy. The moment I started running 7k and upwards, I convinced myself I could eat anything. So I've been eating all kinds of junk - McDonalds for breakfast, curry for lunch, fries in the afternoon and the list goes on...

This week, I decided to make some effort to eat a bit healthier and have more fish. Fish to me is the miracle food group. Every other runner goes on about having more carbs, but I'm more about the fish. There are so many health benefits in fish and it tastes oh so yummy when it's cooked just right.

So, my fish intake this week has been as follows:

Monday: Asian Grilled Salmon with buttered bismati rice and stir fry vegetables
The recipe for the salmon is here and this time around I went easy on the sugar, so the fish turned out just nice. Tasty and healthy.

Tuesday: Grilled Sanma with Curry Udon
Sanma is one of my favourite fishes. I know it's strange, but it tastes soooo Japanese. And it's so easy to make, just season with salt and pepper and chuck it on the grill. The curry udon was a bit on the dodgy side though. Coupled with the fact that my sister completely overcooked the udon and added too much water to the curry, the whole thing just tasted like it was choke full of MSG.

Didn't do fish on Wednesday

Thursday: Grilled Italian Sea Bass fillet with Herb Butter
I didn't cook this. One of my close guy friends and I went on one of our dinner dates at this lovely Italian restaurant on Bukit Timah called Casa Roma and they served a really mean fish dish. My dinner date had a lovely squid ink pasta with prawns in white wine sauce. It was a kick ass dinner!

SO that's my fish roundup for the week!

I Suck at Running

I do. 10 seconds into the run, I was exhausted. Yes, TEN.WHOLE.SECONDS. It was pathetic. I bumped into a friend midway through the run, so I had to look lively for a good 5 minutes after (you know, one always has to give the impression that one's at the peak of their fitness....it's an ego thing and I'll be the first to admit to that).

I think because I haven't been running enough lately, my legs have forgotten how to run. And I'm back to starting off too fast. And not drinking enough water through the course of the day.

So today my legs don't feel good. After spin class on Wednesday and last night's run, I think I should just give my tired feet a wee break. And I know I didn't run all that far yesterday, but well....WHATEVER....I think I've been pretty darn good this week with the swimming, cycling and running...ooh, I can probably take part in a triathlon after this...but like a really really short one

What I did last night:
Ran: 4k in 29:10

Back Spinning

Whoa, crotch burn!!!!

I went back to spin classes last night and I have to say I enjoyed this class a bit more than the Monday classes. The lady was more attentive and didn't let anyone slack off. On top of that when she was leading the class on her bike and somehow no matter how much I felt like dying it was nice knowing that she was as drenched in sweat as I was. The guy on the Monday class just seems to shout a lot and the only reason he was sweaty was probably only because he was so into his shouting.

I think I might start going for these Wednesday classes from now on, which means I've got to play around with my schedule.

What I did last night:
Spin classes for 1 hour

The Non-Run

I did swim though!

By the time I got home yesterday, I was just too lazy and hot to do any running. I think this is why I prefer incorporating my run into my journey home. I don't feel I'm wasting more time running after I've taken an hour to get home. Did I say 'wasting time'? Sacrilege! But yes, when it's half seven and I haven't had dinner, the thought of a one hour run isn't all that welcome.

All the same, I did swim 15 laps in the pool and didn't pick up a neck ache for a change, so I did do some sort of exercise!

What I did last evening:
Swam 15 laps in 1/2 hour (I think, I kind of only half checked the time)

I Must Run Today

I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today I must run today

My chant for the moment because I'm getting really sleepy.

A Weekend of Wind...NOT

This weekend I decided to get back windsurfing. I've actually managed to morph into the kind of windsurfer (if I can even qualify for such a term) I used to hate. I go all the way to the club nowadays to sit around drinking and barely touching my precious board and sail.

I made a change this weekend. I went down to the club on Saturday and went out for about a half hour or so...and realised because I have been so out of touch with windsurfing, I couldn't remember half of what used to come somewhat naturally to me. The sail felt heavy, my toes hurt from gripping the board and when I woke up on Sunday, everything thing waist up that could ache, ached.

But being super motivated meant I dragged my ass down to the club on Sunday and went out and died. I spent five minutes shooting out and the rest of the time struggling to get back to the bay I set off from. The current was too strong, the wind too light and wee old me was not a happy bunny.

Needless to say, the aches from the weekend are more painful today. Yet in a sick way, I rather like having them. Makes me feel like I'm doing something at least.

What I did this weekend:
Saturday: 1/2 hour of windsurfing
Sunday: 1/2 hour of windsurfing

And yes, I do recognise how pathetic it is that I'm sore all over from a mere 1 hour of windsurfing this entire weekend.

Last note:
I watched Tropic Thunder on Sunday night and it kicks ass! One of the funniest films this year!

Trippin' on Guilt

I'm supposed to run tonight. I probably won't be going to do that because I went out last night for my monthly alumni drinks and as usual I ended up staying till the bar shut and they kicked us out. I'm tired, I probably still have a blood alchohol level that's waaaaay too high and mainly I'm just too darn lazy.

I'm going to go home tonight and try and get some much needed sleep as well as catch up on the latest episode of Heroes. I actually know what's going to happen in that episode because I had no self control and went to read up on it on heroeswiki. I'm a nerd like that.

What I did yesterday:
Drink....aaargh, I feel sooooo guilty!

Bad Run

Yesterday's run was really crap. I've no idea why my legs were aching, but they've been aching since my trip to Dayang. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the squatting toilets, but I digress.

The moment I started on the run I knew it was going to be a lousy one. Everything hurt, I was hot, I felt tired and I just wasn't in a mood to run. But because I was all changed in my running clothes, it seemed a bit lame to hop into a cab and ride home. I had to at least make some effort to sweat a little.

I sweated buckets and I managed to pick up my least favourite side-stitch, the one that aches around the ribcage area. My run ended then, and I grabbed a cab home. All in, it was a disappointing and crummy run. But this isn't my first lousy run, and I'm sure I'll have many more like these to come. So I'll just write it off as a bad day.

Meanwhile, I really really need to fit some sleep in my schedule. I haven't had enough sleep since last Wednesday and I'm building up a giant sleep debt.

What I did yesterday:
Ran 4k in 28 minutes

Open Waters - Pulau Dayang

(warning, this is a real long one)


What a complete failure! I am officially a dive drop-out. I went for the first shallow dive and decided to give up altogether, so the dive trip became a beach holiday for me. Let's start from the beginning:

After travelling for 4 hours on a bus and another 3.5 hours on a boat, our whole dive group got to Dayang at 4am in the morning. Barely 4 hours of sleep later, we were woken up and the bunch of us drowsily trooped off to wash up and have our breakfast.

In the first dive we were supposed to run through the drills
1. ditch and don the mask,
2. ditch and don the BC,
3. ditch and don the weight belt
4. ditch and don the regulator

The first dive was the most shallow dive (well, from what I heard, since I only went for just the one) and round about when I reached the bottom, I had a massive headache and my breakfast was more or less ready to come flying out of my stomach. In my defence, I managed to tolerate this general queasiness for quite a while, but when I was going through the 'BC ditch and don' drill, I stuck my hand through the wrong hole and then things started getting bad. Subconsciously I kept finning, which meant I was slowly shooting upwards. Just before I hit the surface I realised I was too high, so I stopped finning and sunk down. When I tried yanking my hand out of the wrong hole again, I subconsciously started finning again...essentially I was shooting up and down for all of 6m. Needless to say, if I was feeling sick before, after that bouncing up and down in the water, my breakfast was ready to be unleashed. I signalled to the instructor that I had to go up and up I went.

I know everyone's going to go on about how it's so beautiful under water and that there are so many different kinds of fish, but frankly the sea is just a big seafood menu to me, when I see any sea creature, I think of how best to cook them, and I end up getting mighty hungry at the end of any trip to the aquarium. Fish just don't interest me all that much.

So I spent a lot of the time this weekend alone chilling by the beach. Thank goodness the beach was lovely. Powdery sand, clear blue waters...Saturday was a beautiful day, so I spent it swimming, sitting in the sun and just being lazy. At night, I watched more football than I ever watched because there really isn't much else to do. Not that I'm complaining. I'm all caught up on football now so I can go back to neglecting it for another month.

In all, despite not diving (which was why I went to this wee little island in the first place) I rather enjoyed this weekend. I made wonderful new friends and I had a lovely time sitting around really, really relaxing and not having a care in my mind. I wish the living conditions had been a bit more 'tourist friendly' though. I didn't feel clean my entire time in Dayang, and sleeping with a sleeping bag on the bed, is not my perfect way to be resting. All that aside though, I'd give this holiday a 7 out of 10, simply because I haven't had a beach holiday in such a long time.

Just a Little Bit Further (My Longest Run So Far)

Yesterday I did my longest run and about 20 times along the way, it almost turned into a short run. But by some strange rare determination that descended on me, I made it all the way to 1k from my place and walked the 1k in.

I was an idiot really. At half 4 in the afternoon I got hungry and went down and bought me a bowl of noodles. Real bright of me. Because I was just burping noodles the entire way home (I know this is in the 'too much information' territory) and it was not fun.

It's been really humid lately as well. With the monsoon season coming upon us, it's been raining on and off...which is fine, however, in between the rainy parts of the day, the air is still and muggy, which makes running just that bit more uncomfortable.

After all the running, I went out to meet K for drinks. One always has to gain back the calories they lose running, so I did my share of 'gaining'.

What I did last night:
Ran 10.48k in 1hr 19 minutes

A Slow and Steady Run

After a whole week of booze, rich food and utter sloth, the guilt finally hit me last night. I brought my backpack and running gear into work yesterday morning, but it was mostly just a meaningless gesture to make me feel like I was making an effort when I expected to be out boozing after work. However when work drinks got cancelled last night, I ran out of excuses to slack off further so finally(!) after one whole week of laziness the roads of Singapore found me once more.

Despite having had curry for lunch again (like I said, I didn't actually think I'd be doing any running), the run was actually alright. It was insanely humid last evening, so that was a bit uncomfortable but otherwise, yesterday's sloooow run was just another one of those uneventful runs. I had a side stitch midway through but that disappeared on its own after a couple of minutes. All in all, I have nothing really much of value to report on the run.

Next up, I'm planning to do a long (by my standards) one on Wednesday since I'll be off on my open waters dive this weekend with the lovely Ms T.

What I did last night:
Ran 4.5k in 32:26 mins

One Giant Wasted Weekend

I achieved absolutely nothing this weekend at all. For that matter, I don't believe I achieved anything the whole week that went by. In fact it's not a matter of believing or not, I officially declare that my entire last week was spent eating a whole lot of junk, drinking a whole bunch of alcohol and doing not a whole deal. Nonetheless, I've had my week of rest and relaxation and now it's time to get my lazy ass off the couch and back on the streets again. G is trying to convince me to do a Biathlon in February and I probably need to get what little training I can get in before that.

What I did the entire weekend:

Sat around at the windsurfing club drinking a lot of JD Cokes and doing absolutely no windsurfing

Ouch!

I went for my last session with my personal trainer yesterday and in a nutshell, OUCH! I wasn't actually in that much pain the whole of yesterday but this morning I woke up and realised my triceps were in soooo much pain! My obliques also have a small appearance in this symphony of pain I'm experiencing. I guess I won't be doing any pull-ups today.

On a totally separate note though, remember the period in life where I was all moody and cranky? Well, all's been sorted-ish now and I have been getting a full 7 sweet hours of sleep every night since Sunday. People eat when they're stressed up, I just wake up at 3am every night.

What I did yesterday:
1 hour of personal training

Post Race

I have done nothing. And would you believe I feel so guilty for that. I should be enjoying my week of absolute nothing, but all I'm feeling is strange and uncomfortable, as if I should be doing something, but I'm not.

Since Sunday I've been feeling a certain sense of loss. Which is odd, because before the race I couldn't wait for it to be over and now that it's over, I actually miss having something to look toward or just having a reason to run. I know there are people out there who love to run just because, I'm not one of those people. I need to have a reason to run otherwise it's just waaaaay too much pain, misery and effort. Of course I could stop running altogether, but I guess there's a sick side of me that kind of enjoys the suffering I feel I'm putting myself through.

G and I have decided to take part in a bunch of runs next year. I want to be able to do a 10k run comfortably (maybe even get to the stage where I don't have to stop for water!) and do a few 5k runs and work on my speed there. She also wants to do a mini Aquathlon in February next year. Well, we'll see how all that goes...

In the meantime, I've got my last session with my trainer this afternoon, I'm planning an nice short run on Friday morning and I've got big plans to get back to spin classes and pilates.

Great Eastern Women 10k 2008 Race Report

Good news first. I made it through all 10k without walking! Woo hoo! Bad news, I didn't do the run under an hour.

I woke up bright and early yesterday morning and had a banana and some dried cranberries. I made sure I drank a whole bunch of water the whole Saturday and I drank a whole lot more after I woke up. Yes, I realise I do have an unhealthy obsession with being constantly hydrated.

My running mate who I'd never actually run with before, G, picked me up in a cab and we headed on our merry way. I have never seen so many women in one place. Nor have I seen so many people wake up at some godforsaken hour in the morning just to run.

After dropping our knickknacks at the baggage counter, we went off trying to figure out how to get the running chip on our shoe. Needless to say we probably tied it completely wrongly, but what's most important was that it stayed on the whole run, and that it did.

Because G and I hadn't run together before and G hadn't run 10k before this, we compared our individual pace when warming up and agreed that I'd tuck myself behind her for the first 5k and then we'd switch for the next 5k. Brilliant idea since I always tend to start off stupidly fast and end up getting tired and miserable about 4k through.

Apart from there being tons and tons of people (we chose to start somewhere in the middle), I thought we did pretty good for the first half of the run. G was keeping at a good comfortable steady pace and that worked out really well. I grabbed a powerade at the 5k drinks station (after fighting off a few women who were shoving others to get their drinks) and decided to pick up the pace a little.

By now I had more or less lost G amongst the masses of women, because unlike me, she isn't crazily paranoid about being dehydrated and she didn't actually stop once throughout the run to get any drinks. So I was flying solo. I tried to pick up the pace a bit now and wasn't completely winded, so kept at that for a while. At about 7.5k, I grabbed some water and decided to push the pace a little bit more because I figured I could. Not good, I started getting a little floored at this stage, so held back again.

I hardly remember the last 1k. My shoulders were aching, I had a stitch, I was thirsty, I was tired...all I wanted was for everything to end. I vaguely recall making a mad dash for the finish in the last 500m, more because I wanted everything to be over than actually thinking I'd make better time. G came in about 4 minutes after me, despite having walked from the 8k mark to the 9k mark. Just goes to show how slowly I was running then.

So there, my first 10k race, which I didn't complete under an hour, but yet strangely there's a sense of accomplishment that I haven't felt in a while. I conquered the 10k without dying, and that left a sweet sweet taste in my mouth.

Race Time: 1:09:47
(956th out of 3900 people...which is within the top 25 percentile...anything to make myself feel better!)

2 More Days

and I'm freaking out...well sort of. Somehow a part of me has acknowledged I'm probably not going to make the run in less than an hour. I've been drinking too much and just lazing around waaaay to much to be able to feel like I'm at a 100 per cent fitness level....more like 50 per cent if I'm truly honest with myself.

I'm off to do my last run this evening. Going to go just the 2km today because despite lazing (although I prefer to refer to these past few weeks as 'tapering') all this while, I don't think I should kill myself today and try a run on Sunday with achy leggies! Soooooo, 2k today, a swim tomorrow, maybe the driving range tomorrow evening, and conquer the world on Sunday!

Foray into the World of Morning Runners

I woke up at 5am today. I planned to wake up at 6am, but I spent the whole night tossing and turning, fretting about getting enough water into my system that I managed to wake up a whole hour earlier than planned. So I spent an hour lying in bed over-analysing life. Essentially, after the hour of over-analysis, I managed to get very angry. The story of my life, I make up dumb scenarios in my head that gets me all riled up...over nothing, really.

Anyway, at about half 6, I got out my shoes and headed out for what was supposed to be a 5k run. Because I started too quickly or was just dehydrated (this was my fear all night!), I ended up getting my good ole side-stitch and dragging myself back home after just 4k. Now my legs are aching for some reason and I'm not sure why...actually, I lie, I know why they're aching, I've been lazy for too long and my legs have gotten used to the good life.

Nonetheless, it was interesting to run that early in the morning. For one, morning runners are a lot friendlier than night runners. Maybe because it's dark and no one really thinks the other person can see them, but I've been past runners at night and given them a grin or a wave only to have them run by me oblivious. There's something about the fresh dew and morning sunlight that must make people look happier, even if they're dripping in sweat.

Would I go running again in the morning? Maybe, even though I still feel like throwing up and dying when my body is shocked awake with the early morning exercise. Meanwhile, I've got a feeling I'm going to be really sleepy for the rest of the day.

What I did this morning:
Ran 4k in 26:55 mins

Incidentally I didn't swim yesterday. I got home and proceeded to get very lazy.