Catching Up

Another big catchup blog. Life is a bit busy at the moment and the blog has suffered.

Genting Sempah - Saturday

Saturday morning I headed out to Genting for my first bike ride in a year. I drove up and up and up towards the Orang Asli hospital but couldn't find it. Thinking that I might have driven past it and not wanting to miss out on the climbing I stopped and got everything together. 200m after starting to cycle I came round the corner and there was the hospital. :)

I was aiming to go up in as big a gear as possible and for most of the time I was on the 3 hardest gear of my 52-42. It was only after the bridge on one of the last tough corners that I shifted down. I spent most of the climb with a chap called Nizam from Taman Melawati  chatting away which was nice and I think kept both of us going faster than otherwise.

It was a good ride and I reached the road junction after 51 minutes  which was pleasing. Slow on the way down though as I wasn't comfortable with cornering and a bit shaky with my controls. I got used to it after a while.

Fallout 3 - Sunday

Well I'd intended to go running on Sunday morning but I'd started playing fallout 3 on Saturday afternoon. Senay and Maya were away and I had no other plans. as midnight on Sunday approached I realised that the run probably wasn't going to happen. I'd reached level 14 though :)

Work - Monday

Monday was a shit day at work. Lots of things went wrong; I was desperate for my swim by the time I headed off at 1500 for it. So my card didn't work in the car park and the attendant wasn't around. Trapped I went back upstairs to sort it out and got caught with more fire fighting. Leaving work just before 7 I was in 2 minds as to whether to go or not. Feeling guilty; not wanting to do it; needing to do it. So it started raining heavily. I went home.

TTDI Trail Running - Tuesday

I got up and couldn't face doing one of my usual routes. Boring - I'd done them all too many times  before. So I headed down to TTDI to do circuits there. The first one of the little park took 7 minutes. Running round another 8 times seemed miserable so I took a detour and headed up onto the mountain bike trails used for the Saloman Xtrail run.  Mondays are moderate uphill efforts and fast downhills. I followed the same route of the Salomon Xtrail run along the side of the jungle so I didn't get lost. I'd forgottent how long that initial climb was. Hard work - It must have certainly seperated out the racers during the run. I remember lungs burning by the time I reached the half way point.

Today it was easier. Lots of fallen trees and I wasn't  going at race pace. I was wearing my VFF's and was having to pay a lot of care and attention to where I was placing my feet. I got to where the first drinks stand had been and stopped for 30s before heading back downhill.

My coach has been telling me to run fast with a very high cadence downhill. On this trail and with my VFFs it really worked. It gave me lots of flexibility and control and I flew down. Landed on my ass and scraped my legs and arms. Whoops. Really good fun running - but actually hard to push myself to run at a hard pace over rough ground like that. I need to do lots more trail running.

Balcony Bike - Wednesday

Onto the 55-42 on the turbo. First thought was this was heavy. After a while though it wasn't so bad. A bit like swimming with paddles. Did my 50 minutes and really worked my legs and also my lungs every 3 rep. Pleased. Started dreaming of a power meter.