.... the jackal rides and run....

Did my last ride of the year this morning with KL and Ben. Just a friendly 65km of Eastern Loop followed by a sell deserved milo-ping at Siglap kopitiam. It was good also to see Mark and Stefan there (with the PC group). 2011 career-wise was an up and down for me. Very numbing experience from the start till end and it continues! Well, I have plans for 2012, just you wait and see. Let's get on with the interesting stuff : Cycling AND Running. This of course is the year where I completed quite a lot of cycling events....starting off with the NTU Bike Rally, JMFR2011, Cameron's + Ipoh Century and finally TdB2011. I did a lot of solo rides kicking off at 5am and doing many of these in excess of 110km per ride. Its also the year where I managed to keep an average speed of 30km/h+ for distances above 100km....solo! It was tough but it was all worth it, just for the experience and the torture :) Completing the century ride under 5hrs was also quite a feat for me. TdB 2011 was pure

Glad this is over. No one ever wants to cycle on Christmas weekend. They are either too sick or too drunk :) I did a normal paced 11km on Christmas morning and pretty much ate the rest of the day and had some wine too at night. I was looking to cycle on Monday morning but just couldn't wake up....end up waking up at 7am. Seeing how nice the weather was (cloudy & windy) and terrible I felt from oversleeping, I went for a 10km run. I was surprised that my legs actually felt good and did my fastest 10km! Made it in 55m 38s, a 15s improvement over last Tuesday's best time run. Although right now, my knees are feeling a bit iffy....evident from this morning's 30km cycling especially my left knee. A sure sign that I need to take it easy for a while. Maybe do a couple more rides instead of run in the coming days. A sub 55m run is looking more and more possible with each passing run! Did a so-called 'recovery' ride this morning at 5.30am....usual 30km loop. S

This month has been dismal in cycling. I only covered a mere 250km up this this point of the month. Normally I would have racked up about 500km by now. No, I've not been lazy......I've been running. 110km covered on my minimalist shoes this month....about 35km of trail too. I guess after months of cycling quite intensively (by my standards even!) preparing for various events, I need some refreshing so that I may return to cycling more charged up than ever. I needed a diversion. Running has been more than just a diversion. Its not a real competitor to cycling for sure. Why? because time for physical activities are scarce these days, for a married man with many kids. :) That and the fact that running is just about the most convenient, economical and effective physical activity one can do. Just about anyone can get good at it, given the proper dedication. For me, its been quite an adventure, especially working on the trail paths and then finally getting on the road to run them.

Presenting....the duotone legs! I've been living with this tone since cycling again in 2008. Gotten worse this year thanks to some day events which I attended. Anyway, the point of this nice little leg pic is to show 'Le Sock' which I used for this first ever, epic, sub 56min 10km run! To be honest, I'm really please with this achievement and to get to this point only after achieving under an hour about 3 weeks ago, is to me, quite a feat. The sock does work (I think!) and as the morning was quite cold, I wore the compression top that my wife bought for me as well, with a singlet over it (to conceal my 'beautiful' contours). The impression I have from the compression sock is that the calves are kept 'quiet'....meaning they are not jiggling around and put in place when the feet lands on the ground. This, somewhat aid in lessening the shock on the calves, I feel, contributing to overall improved performance. Also its been 2 days since the brutal Trail

My legs were sore...not for the run but from the fall! My left knee is pretty bruised up and although the wound has well dried up and hardened, therein lies the problem....every time the knee is over flexed, the sensation of hard skin over the wound is not nice.  Other than that no noticeable further damage from the fall and best of all very minimal muscle soreness. So I highly suspect now that compression works (read my last post on the make-shift sock!). I wore it during the run and a good part of the day after the run plus to sleep as well. That kind of battering on Saturday would have taken its toll on my calves but hey, feels good so far. Still I think its too early to conclude. It could be that I just got stronger anyway! I'll keep using the same sock (or other old socks) a couple more times before I conclude. No need to buy! Just do a Macgyver on this one. Its amazing how companies can squeeze out SGD40-80 from a consumer for something like this. That's easily couple

I was pretty much psyched up for this run for the past couple of days. Kinda worried cause I was fighting a slight flu, cough and fever as well. Fortunately, today I felt much better, not 100% for sure but good enough to go. The target was to complete 20km (16km+ pure trail); I made up the route but using partial of what we did last week and adding Woodcutter's Trail, a much lesser known trail. This time, I wanted to make a route which allows us to do a true loop, meaning starting and ending at the same point without going through the same route again. The usual suspects included JvM, JM and me.....we set to meet at 6am, Venus Drive. At 5am, I received a message from JM that he is still not well and hence not able to join this epic run. Met JvM at Venus drive and we set off with our lights. As before, the night run was exhilarating. Good thing he still remembered the route as I was a bit blur at the time. Funny thing was here we were running with our lights in pitch darkness an

Saturday : did 80km with Ryo, KL and Sam (whom we met at Mandai). This is the same route as I did solo last week, a 81km route. Got a puncture on my rear wheel at Bukit Timah Road on our way back...did a quick repair and off we went. Nice friendly ride with some sprints in between but nothing too taxing! Sunday : TRAIL RUN! My first ever. Over the week I was discussing this with JM and we decided to do a 'short' one. The cool thing about this was that we want to start early, in the dark! JVM came along as well. I drove down to Mandai Zoo, our meeting point, and we started off there at 6am. Ran into Trail 15. The starting pace into the rail was quite challenging for me as JVM led the pack. I'm weakest runner in the pack of 3 and was struggling for the first 2-3km into the trail. It was complete darkness, if not for our Lezyne Super Drives. Very cool and exciting! As expected, we got lost a bit especially when the trail forked and made a couple of u-turns. But rest assu

I got these upon insistence from my wife after coming back with blisters every time I went barefoot. It was the best decision ever for running. So far I've had this for a little over 3 months and covered about 240km. Its not the best wearing shoe for sure but what can I expect? its so light and thin (I could literally squeeze the water out of the shoe like a towel!) plus almost no padding. It has to be the next best thing compared to barefoot as far as shoes are concerned. Below is a shot of the sole indicating the wear. When running in these shoes, I'm definitely not heel striking anymore BUT I do still land on the heel AFTER striking with the fore/mid foot. I've not done much detailed study into all the various ways of running barefoot but what I firmly believe is that once the shoes are off (or with a minimal shoe like the H-Streets), and you've persevered through the weirdness, aches and pains of doing so.....your body WILL ADAPT. It will adapt a method that will

It has happened the past 2 weeks. I went into TdB weighing 86kg+, fully carbo-loaded can reached Singapore with 84kg left....admittedly a lot of water loss from the event itself. After the weekend, I was back to 86kg again the usual bummer weight. I cycled much less from then on and started to run more frequently with increasing intensity and goals. That first goal was to do consistently, 10km in under an hour. So far I already managed to do this 3 times over the past 2 weeks so running 10km under an hour should be a given thing now, not a fluke! The last run yesterday, I did the usual ECP route but ran into the construction area near Marina Barrage (a failed attempt to get to the bridge, I'll try again tomorrow). I ran a total of 11+km yesterday giving me the best 10km time of 56mins 45s with a pace of 5.40min/km. That's quite an achievement for me! The good thing was legs were STILL THERE and felt as if I could go on at that pace for another 3-4km or so. However, this readi

SONY NEX-5N I bought this to replace my aging and bulky D70 last week. It was a major tussle between the Nikon V1 and this. Being a Nikon user for may years now, I really like what they offer but problem is they ARE a camera company and still somewhat traditional (like Canon!) so the feature-sets and size could be a bit too much for my liking. Not to mention the price as well! I tested the V1 briefly at a shop last week and like the size (though i think its still a bit heavy) and build quality but I still can't get over that teeny sensor they put in that thing. Autofocus is very very fast and accurate plus its comes built in with an EVF BUT there is no flash. After much thought, I kept going back to the Sony NEX-5N and it reminded me a lot on how I liked the old DSC-F717 so much. Though retired, I daresay the 717 is STILL my favourite digital camera to-date. It has a very unconventional design (swivel lens), a usable EVF, pop-up flash, video and 5 megapixels...way back in

Had a short 40km ride with KL and Ben which started at 7am. It has been quite a while since we rode that route together. Pretty much a tame ride except for a quick 40km/h dash across the Coastal Straight. KL started with 40km/h lead, I took over and then Ben....soon after a group 2 guys stormed pass us and we followed. Those guys pulled at 40+km/h. Ben dropped off and later on KL and as I was behind him I tried to him up front to the 2 guys but he dropped off as well. I went in close and managed to stay with them. Towards the last bit, I pulled up front to lead but that was shortlived as they probably did not approve of it and overtook me, so I followed. That was the fun part of the entire ride actually! On Sunday, I rode alone and in my bid to avoid the traffic blockages, decided to do a new route, 50% of which is the 80km west loop and the rest is coming back via Old Chua Chu Kang road towards Bukit Batok and then upper bukit timah road and into the city. It was a tame solo ride fo

3 Runs this weekend.......no weekday morning bike rides for a long long time. Managed to run 2 x 10kms under an hour. Best time was achieved on Wednesday, covering 10km in 58min 11s. This is a slightly new route; basically, there is an extension of ECP AFTER Fort Road turn-off which is I suppose, not officially opened yet. It runs for about 800-900m and is blocked again. I think its before long that this will open up and give direct access to the new park opposite the wheel. On Friday, I tried again, wanted to go below 28mins....started off pretty decent pace despite the rain and wet paths but nature came calling suddenly at the 3km mark. From them on it was a decision on whether I could continue ignoring the call....but it was apparent the big one was coming so had to double-back to the toilet I just passed. Did my deed and had a horrible time picking back the pace again. Still decent running time about 29mins 30s or so.....just made it under the hour. I will continue doing 2 x 10km