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

Finally, managed to complete a 10km run one weekday morning under an hour (58min 52s) at ECP! Forgot to take my HR strap along so I'm not sure how intensive it was but I'm guessing average about 160bpm or slightly under. Felt ok and best of all, legs were ok...no pains thank god. I think this barefoot running thing is great! For the weekend I resumed cycling and went for a lone 80km West Loop early Saturday morning. The alloys feels good and seemingly more comfortable as well bu no less stiff. Hit 30.5km/h right after Manday and thereafter managed to pull it up to 31.0 km/h after LCK road. There was quite a fair bit of traffic so it was a tad slow at Jalan Bahar/Boon Lay where I lost speed. Did well at Jalan Buroh and led a fast group to 38+km/h after the 2nd flyover.....I was spent after the 3rd and 2 guys sprinted off at the final slope. I decided to let them go at the lights as I did not want to draft anyone for this ride. From thereafter headwinds started and only managed...

ah yet again, thanks to my discussion with Ryo, I saved myself some money by not buying an espresso machine or the nespresso capsule thingie. Back to basics....that's his motto these days (barefoot ideas!). So on Friday, popped by ISETAN and got my self the entire kit! - Rulio - French Press - Haro - Ceramic Bean Grinder - Starbucks Caffe Verona Beans Its a slight hassle (not as much as one would imagine!) and the coffee tastes stupendous...the aroma is great too. I think it will be a great help to help start the day. The kids are my official coffee been grinders. The wife likes the aroma too.

I thought I had enough of riding and wanted to retire for a while after the tough TdB weekend. Well, guess what, I was out on my saddle again on Wednesday morning. Did the usual 30km on the Z3 on Wednesday, with my DA handbuilts....decent ave of 32+km/h achieved and wasn't pushing much too. A strange phenomenon these past 2-3 weeks was that my HR seems to have gone down. Its getting tougher to hit the 180's these days. I did 2 short 5km runs as well on Tuesday and Friday morning. As agreed with JM, we went out for a 100km ride on Saturday morning, sporting our new Lezyne Super Drive light. The buggers are bright and cost about half of what CRC is offering online at Gee Hin Chan. The guys there were kind enough to inform me that the stocks have arrived.....apparently this is a new line of products from Lezyne. Impressive lights, and equally impressive build quality as well....I just hope they last! They are rechargeable via USB. 450 lumens of brightness! JM, as usual, was...

Finally, this is OVER. Anticipation of this event was quite bothersome (well, most events to me are anyway!) and I am so glad that I managed to complete this. Quite frankly, prior to the race, I was pretty confident on qualifying for Cat 3's 'Premier Top 80' since by last year's data, even a 6hr completion of Day 1 could have qualified. Oh, I WAS SO WRONG! What I did not anticipate though, was that this year, the participants ballooned more than two-fold. Veterans were also back for blood (training at site!) plus due to Cat 1 and 2 being filled up quite early, some super riders had to settle for Cat 3. So we really had a mixed group in Cat 3. Needless to say, I was happy to complete all 3 stages safely, still in one piece. The rolling hills at Bintan are B.R.U.T.A.L.....1411m ascent over 154km is no joke. To complete the route leisurely is already quite a mammoth task. To complete it in a race situation, it takes a lot of guts. So real kudos to RYO and BEN (aka STEFAN  ...

I did basically some sort of exercise everyday. On weekdays alternated between 5km runs and 30+ km east coast rides. Did quite ok for the 5km runs....28mins for 5km and getting better; with the exception of an afternoon run (about 2pm) on Sunday where I was totally OFF. The body wasn't quite in exercising mode. On Friday, intended to do a 100+km ride with Ryo. Started off rather well albeit a bit slowly as we were chatting and got caught at LCK in the rain. Stopped for a while at a bust stop as the rain got heavier and heavier....I think we must have waited about 30mins. Seeing the rain did not let up, we continued but at a cautious pace. At some point, we decided to cut the ride short and opted to return via Jalan Kayu. It was a working day so traffic was murder. Cars and buses were out to kill anything not on fours. Stick to Coastal rides for weekdays! On Saturday, managed to get JM out for an introductory ride around West Hills. He cycled all of 15km from his place to mine...