I picked up Senay and Maya at KLIA last night and was kicked out of bed at 0630 as the rest of the family had jetlag. No matter that it was muy alarm clock that had disturbed them from restful slumber.

Shortly after 7 I was on the road off to Gombak with the new 55 tooth chain ring ready for its first road test. The first 5 minutes were like - Oh Shit. This is hard work - but I think the majority of that was due to cold muscles, starting on a hill and of course the big gear.

I stayed on the big chain ring all the way - shifting down only when I bumped into Terry Tan - Terry whipped my ass a couple of years ago going up to the top of Genting - and almost killed me as I tried to chase him back down on my tri bike with no gloves. My hands kept on sliding off the handlebars leading to braking difficulties on corners! Terry was with a friend who was putting on a good show and so I shifted back up and shot off again.

I discovered that I could play my iPhone on loud speaker which was really cool - but not loud enough. I probably deserve some grief for this - but my answer is wear ear plugs!

I felt the ride up was a lot faster than last week - but my calculations made it either 53 or 63 minutes which was really disappointing. I over took 3 people and was caught by none and I rocketed past all 3. 43 minutes would be too fast.

The ride down - captured here by some dudes I don't know was a lot faster and more confident than last week.

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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.

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