ironman on bintan?

just got a mail that said there will be an ironman event on bintan next september!

my immediate reaction was "wow!  i really have to do this now.  my last remaining major excuse has just been blown out of the water".

what do i mean?

well, i have always been a little put off at the thought of having to travel too far with the bike to do an event, or with having to wear a wetsuit... and now, these concerns are rendered moot.  ironman in busselton was a little far, a little cold.  plus it was in december, which is mainly time for a family vacation.  the most likely was ironman langkawi, until they pulled the plug on the event last year.  i thought my dream would never be fulfilled.

looks like my original dream of doing the race before i turn 50 might come true after all...  the missus said today that if there are events i would like to do overseas, we could plan a holiday around it.   cool!  that was possible of course but it wouldn't be much of a holiday watching me limp around or just be horizontal for a few days after the race... unless it was hawaii!

there was info on the event when i clicked on a link in the mail, but now when i google "ironman bintan", i can't seem to find the page.   need to check my mail again.

right now, i'm excited and i know i will be thinking about doing the event, and it will consume a great deal of my consciousness, especially once i sign up.  can't say that i definitely will but...

ironman wales

recently caught a telecast of ironman wales and i was blown away by the waves in the swim.  some of the triathletes seemed to have a hard time just getting out to sea!  and by the time they were done, they had a half mile run to T1 which looked like it was in the middle of town!  and the first part of it was uphill from the beach.

and because of the lengthy transition run, most of the athletes chose to leave their shoes at the beach...some chose to strip off their wetsuit to run, some chose to remove the suit while on the run and some others ran in their wetsuit.

certainly a most interesting variation of the race...

i am now back to training and worked my way up to 13K runs so far.  a month to go and possibly behind schedule but i am monitoring progress carefully and taking care of my aching knees.  i think the experience and base i have built up this year will probably get me close to the right level of conditioning by the time the race rolls around but it would still be quite some way from being ideal preparation.

i have bought some new equipment to help me out and there will be a review soon.

the garmin forerunner 610 and the compex muscle stimulator.  stay tuned.

downtime

it seems like an eternity since the san francisco marathon.  two months have gone by but it seems like much longer because so much has happened in that time.  and predictably, my body has succumbed to the stress and i have had a succession of minor ailments beginning with what felt like congestion in the head , then flu-like symptoms and finally a sore throat.  none of which was major enough to make me take medical leave.

which is worse?  just having a really bad bout of flu but having it last for just a day or two?  or like what i am going through?  not quite feeling sick enough to lie in bed the whole day, but just not feeling 100% and having to labour through work for about 2 weeks now.  even went to the doc and said just give me the antibiotics so that i would not get hit by an infection even if it is useless against the flu.

the other bad thing about these symptoms is that i don't feel sick enough to lay off training completely.  so there has been a series of really slow jogs, mostly on the treadmill in the gym and two very light spins on the bike trainer.  played a terrible soccer match and sat out another which was depressing.  and with arsenal in full meltdown mode in the league, i am not a happy camper.

so what has happened after san francisco?

i was feeling really good after that.  spent a couple of days with my brother-in-law before packing up and going home after almost two months.  i think the packing may have been tougher than the marathon!

there was no way i could bring everything back with me, especially the books from the program (as well as those i bought for myself).  books are heavy...unless of course i was flying first class...in the end, because singapore airlines allows for extra baggage at US$109 per piece, i decided to bring my brompton bike back with me.  the books would have to wait.  no hurry anyway.

anyways, on coming home my mum fell ill and spent 2 weeks in the hospital before passing away on 18th August 2011.  she had been suffering from parkinson's for a couple of years now and the deterioration has been fairly rapid in the last couple of months.  in the end, it was an infection that she could not quite get over.  the shuttling to and from the hospital, and then the funeral arrangements and all exhausted me.  i do believe however that my fitness level at the time (after the marathon) might have helped tide me over this tough period.  otherwise i might have fallen ill earlier.

i need to get my act together soon seeing as i have signed up for the stanchart marathon in december.  just met up with neil for the first time after coming back.  he's doing the half.  cornel, who i met in stanford, asked me about the event but i haven't heard from him since.  hope nothing's happened to him.

took the kids to the park one saturday to let them see the brompton and ride it as well.  matt enjoyed it obviously.  he likes gadgets, especially expensive ones!  and ethan got to ride his new trek bike!  he had outgrown his old giant bike (that sounds weird - if you did not know that giant is a brand of bike:))

and just when i was feeling something like close to normal after the funeral was over, i had to travel to washington for work and maybe that was when the wheels started falling off.  never felt quite right after that.

but being in washington during this time was significant as it was the 10th anniversary of the sep11 attacks.  i visited the special exhibition at the museum of american history and though it was somewhat of a letdown in terms of scale, the exhibits did bring a sense of connection to the people who died as well as those fortunate enough to have survived it.  michael collarone (mikey flowers), whose badge is one of the exhibits, was a volunteer emergency medical technician who rushed to the site and helped evacuate and tend to the injured.   

this doll, dressed in a firefighter's uniform... who did it belong to?

and coming as it did soon after my mum's passing, it was a time for reflection on my own life - thinking about my family (my parents both of whom are gone now) and my responsibilities to my younger brothers (it was always there but i guess as long as my mum was around, even if she was incapable of even communicating in the last year or so, i somehow felt less so) as well as my own family.

as i started to come to terms with all that was happening, and resumed writing my blog, i happened to go the blog of enrico varella (leadership lessons from triathlons) which i hadn't read in a while now, and saw a blog entry about older triathletes and what motivates them and how they felt about triathlons.  and i thought about what makes me keep at it.

i don't take any of this for granted.  i see so many of my friends get sidelined by injuries, ill-health, work pressure, family commitments etc. that i am truly grateful for the next workout, even if it is one done when i am not feeling that great, not at my best.  enjoy the moment.  there may not be another chance.

i don't think i need to race to enjoy such a lifestyle.  i don't race anyway.  i just complete the event respectably and just hope not to embarrass myself.  incidentally i just read something in 3Go, one of the latest triathlon magazines about a dj who does not race but does more than the equivalent of a olympic distance event every morning in training. hats off to him!  and there were comments from other readers who say that even though they don't take part in any races, they consider themselves triathletes.  i am cool with that, just that i think they should do one race, even if it is just a sprint.  otherwise they have not really experienced it fully.

or perhaps the more accurate term is multi-sport athlete? i play soccer too.  names don't matter.  just go for it and enjoy doing whatever you enjoy most.

the race, the bridge, the san francisco marathon

race morning.  neil and i got up ahead of the alarms we set.  i didn't sleep too well which isn't unusual the day before a race.  a quick energy bar (clif) breakfast, rub-down with some deep heat and we were off.   it was a few blocks away so we walked (see map below where (A) is the hotel and the green bubble is the start point).  i did not drink coffee as it would mean quite a few toilet breaks - and there would be quite a few but more on that later.

i think this picture was taken before the start but the photo info says 8.25 am which can't be right (this is one of those from marathon photos which i bought and downloaded).  it would have been brighter by then.  in fact, it was already brighter at the start as can be seen below.  as you can see, i was well protected against the elements (in fact, it wasn't that cold at the start) with gloves, cap, sunglasses and my pearl izumi rain jacket which is super light and obviously catches the photographer's attention:)  there were disposable coats sold at the race expo - you looked like a butcher or lab technician.  6 bucks each and people just threw them on the ground along the way.  a bit wasteful but i guess it's that or you freeze if you didn't have a jacket like i did.

my handy garmin forerunner worked beautifully and this is the view of the route from google earth.  i had a rather largish fanny pack from asics which i bought at the race expo, which i would later stuff the jacket into.  also had one of those handy waist belts (the one i bought was called a spibelt - picture below) which double as race tag holder, gel holder and comes with a waterproof stretchable case where i put my iphone - pretty handy for photos and videos here. 

race gear:  on the left is a wrist tag that comes in different targeted finishing times.  i picked a few and in the end decided to go with this one.  i had to make it by 5 hours if i was to make it back to the hotel in time to check out!  if i was ahead of schedule that would be great but i did not want to put too much pressure on myself if i picked say, 4.5 hours and then run out of gas and had to quit.  this is something new to me and a very useful and thoughtful piece of equipment (if you could call it that - or maybe race aid might be a better description).  you just keep checking elapsed time against the mile markers on the left to see if you were on track.  in the middle here is my number tag.  there is a tab for beer (but i never got to use it) and on the right is the timing chip which is looped around the shoelaces.

green for go!

and we're off!  lost neil when we both went to the portaloos.  waited for a while in case he had taken some time but after a while i figured he must have gone off to the start line.  quite a long walk to the holding area, and from there, another longish walk before you actually cross the start line which is why the runners at the back of the wave (mostly latecomers like me) have already thinned out here in the pictures you see - at least among those of us who took the time to soak in the atmosphere before actually making our way to the start line.  we were one of the last waves and below, you can see what i saw as i crossed the start line.

took a while before we caught sight of the bridge for the first time.  by this time i had taken off the jacket - it was getting warm.  but the gloves stayed on for a bit.  below, one of the first views of the bridge!  it was exciting knowing that we would be running across it soon.

this is an image from google earth of the area approximately where i took the photo above.  can't recall why i took that little detour at jauss street - must be a toilet stop:)

closer now...

this picture was taken using my iphone by the bald guy in the video above.  as you can tell, i was not aiming for a personal best by any stretch of the imagination with the numerous photo stops that i made. as well as quite a few toilet stops - what can i say?  it was cold.  and many of the queues were long.  the longest wait was about 5 minutes near the bridge turnaround.

and i'm off again after one of my last photo stops.  this was the start of a rolling section that led eventually to the bridge.  the hills were tough but because of my runs to the dish, i was actually in quite good shape for them...  the bridge at last!!!  it was quite congested even at this point.

one of my all-time favourite moments during a race was coming up behind this guy and seeing the t shirt.  he put a smile on the face of everyone who saw this.  this ranks number 2 in my collection of memorable and funny moments in a race (not that many given the suffering we tend to experience) - my favourite remains "this seemed like a good idea 3 months ago" which i saw at the stanchart marathon in singapore a couple of years ago.  and i didn't realise it at the time but there are actually different interpretations you can make for this chap's t shirt.  

"the older i get, the faster i was" can be read literally.  as i get older, i slow down.  and so relatively speaking, i was faster when i was younger (as the gap grows).  strangely enough, i interpreted it more philosophically by thinking that what the chap meant was that his recollection of how fast he actually was when younger, changes over time.   every parent and child who has had this conversation (life was tougher when i was a kid, we had to yada yada yada...) would understand this.

 

it was overcast and the wind was blowing strongly while we were on the bridge.  that made it cold.  and soon i would put on my gloves again.  as you can see from the picture above, there were stretches on the bridge where we would be quite close to other runners and in fact i saw two people trip and fall. one was a female runner just behind me (no it wasn't me who tripped her) and i looked around and she was being helped to her feet by someone, probably a friend running with her and looked alright.  another was a guy on crutches believe it or not (and of course with a cast on one foot) and he was going pretty good too until someone ran past and took one of his crutches out and he went down.  it was an accident waiting to happen.  he didn't look too badly hurt but it could have been worse, and it could have been someone else who got hurt.  i admire his guts in doing it on crutches but all in all, perhaps not the smartest thing to do and maybe the organizers should have pulled him off the course before he did any serious damage to himself or someone else.

no more pictures taken with the iphone after coming off the bridge.  i decided it was time to get serious or else i wouldn't make 5 hours.  i had been going pretty good the first half even with all the stops but i knew that the second half would be tough.  still there were a couple of interesting bits where i stopped to take a couple of shots but for some reason they did not appear in my phone.  maybe my fingers were too frozen:)  i actually shot a video (or thought i did) of a band playing along the route.  there was actually more than one band, as well as some other acts (two drummers, a dj just playing stuff on his console, some college kids just going nuts cheering for everyone).  and somewhere in the park area (i think it was the martin luther king park), i suddenly saw a sign in chalk on the road that said "beer ahead". i thought it was someone's idea of a joke until i rounded a corner and saw that yes, there were actually a couple of guys who had a keg of beer and were handing out plastic cups of beer to runners!!

from the expression on my face, i guess i am suffering at this point in the race...and the gloves are on again!   and i started listening to music on the phone.  had not created a playlist since this was a new phone (the old one fell into the truckee river) so it was a bit of a hit and miss when it came to stuff that would help with the running.  but i do remember that elton john's "i'm still standing" had a really great tempo (if a tad fast for my weary legs by then) that pumped me up and gave me a lift.  much of the last third of the race (or less?) was run through neighbourhoods (tough to run over rolling hills but then again, this is san francisco) and i found it baffling at one stage when i saw a group of runners in front of me being directed to turn left at a junction, and they then closed the junction and we were told to keep going straight!  i was like,"is this a short cut?  or did they get a short cut?"  and then it dawned on me as i kept going and suddenly could see other runners a block away running parallel to me (i think i was on 15th and they were on 14th).  i guess what the cops did was to alternate opening up junctions so as not to make traffic disruption too bad and because it's all a grid anyway so there is no real distance gained or lost when diverting runners in this way.

think this is near the ATT stadium, home of the world champions of baseball, the san francisco giants.  it was good to see the stadium because it meant we were close.  by now i had stopped taking pictures myself but did use the phone to reply to messages from neil who had finished his half marathon in 1.52 which he was very pleased with given his achilles problems and the effect it had on his training.   he was on his way to the airport and it was great to receive the messages of encouragement.

near the end now, still pumping those arms and puffing those cheeks... i had a hotel to get back to and check out of!  that was great motivation.  didn't need anything else.

don't think i have looked anywhere near this comfortable at the end of a race.   all in all, an excellent day and a great experience running in temperatures way cooler than back home.  the difference was tremendous.  i did not feel that beat up.

this is the thermal wrap we get at the finish.  very welcome after a couple of minutes when the cold hits you.  i hugged it tightly as i walked briskly (well as best as i could) back to the hotel.  reached it with an hour to spare.  had a nice shower (it was heavenly) and then headed to the train station.  had not checked the train schedule yet and walked to the nearest starbucks to get a free wifi connection.  turns out i had about 20 minutes or so to get to the station from the starbucks.  so i quickly chomped down the muffin and took my chai tea latte with me and this time, i was really walking briskly, striding purposefully towards the train station.  but in reality it was a stiff-legged amble with my quads screaming in agony in parts.  but it would be all good as previous experience in singapore had revealed.  keep moving and get the blood flowing.  reached the station with 5 minutes to spare but i was sweating profusely.  but i made it.  did the run, made it back to the hotel, made it to the station...

all in all, a very satisfying race for a variety of reasons but mainly because it was really good fun.  highly recommended.

post-script:  i was in washington two months later, and was out in georgetown doing some shopping when i saw this display at the north face store along m street!  what a coincidence!  quite cool that they sponsored the winner and then could actually feature what he wore in this manner...

the san francisco marathon - getting there and pre-race diversions

this was my ride to san francisco.  i was in zone 4 in lawrence, and headed for the last stop on the route in downtown san francisco on 4th street.  4 zones 1 way for US$8.75.  not bad at all.

as you can see, the train is very comfortable, double decker, and later when i was watching the movie source code on the flight home,  i was reminded of this because the movie is set almost entirely on a train that looks very similar.

arrival in san francisco.  it took about 1 hr 30 minutes or so.  i was to meet neil at the race expo on 7th street so it was a pretty short walk.  met neil at the program a couple of weeks ago - we were in the same discussion group and he was also from singapore.  and when he mentioned that he was running the san francisco marathon, i thought that it was an incredible coincidence!  

don't you just love the tag line "worth the hurt"?  well, we will see whether it was worth it.  the other thing that struck me was that the race expo was held so close to the race.  typically it is done at least a couple of days before but maybe it attracts quite a diverse group of participants, who would not travel to the city too early.  as it was, we met quite a lot of participants staying in the same hotel.  

neil had booked the room for a night only as he had to catch a flight on the day of the race at 2 pm.  as it turned out, that meant that if he had chosen to run the full race, he would be cutting it pretty close and might miss the flight home.  but he was going to run at least half, as that meant running on the golden gate bridge, which seemed pretty cool to both of us.  it was also one of the main reasons i decided to go for it.

rest of the day was spent walking around town, taking in the sights and some shopping.  dinner was noodles in chinatown - a bit late for carbo loading:)   not ideal marathon preparation but neither of us had done any proper training leading up to this anyway so...

one last visit to a streetbike named desire

i decided to make one more trip back to the store just to browse and also to get the box to ship the bike back home.  as luck would have it, i met the man behind the concept, joe.  here he is, the proud owner of a brand new business that had bikes flying off the shelves from day one.  well-deserved i say, for a concept well thought through and executed.

an electric bike.  i forget the name now but the battery can be seen just below the seat, cleverly integrated into the design of the bike.  think joe said they were from spain?

one of my favourite bikes in the shop.  and the briefcase is designed specifically for the bike too!  isn't that awesome?

one last shot of my brompton before packing it up and bringing it home.  that's palo alto high in the background - some kids were playing lacrosse.  i carried the flattened box and rode back to campus holding it in one hand:)  guess i should have figured out how before deciding to ride my bike there and having to wing it.