Public apology to Stupe

I feel like kicking on my own backside 1000 time, in fact I shd ask Stupe to kick my behind. I have disappointed my self and more importantly Stupe by waking up late on Sunday morning. So late that if I go to the RV point Stupe would have already completed his run.

These things do happen to me from time to time. Luckily one time Bandit called me and I manage to do a 'change parade', a little bit late, but not too late.

It really hurt me bcos I have set a very high standard in terms of punctuality and getting on time. Most mornings, I would only rely on my handphone alarm clock to be woken up. But I shd know better that weekends are different. I need to wake up much earlier to be able to do the SwimBikeRun activity, so much so, that it wont disrupt my family time and maximise the benefits of having to do it on empty road, and of course, in a much cooler temp. On weekdays, I can automatically wake up even without the alarm. Note: Buy a proper alarm clock with the loudest volume.

I guess I dont need to explain much further, I did not do the 20 K. Stupe, thousands of apologies. I really hope that you wont be discouraged to ask me to join u again.

How much difference a week can make

Just a quick one. I want to congratulate my colleague Azmil for completing 10.4 K in 1 hr 05 mins. Just last week he was doing 1'28" for the same distance.

Tak tau la apa yg dia makan mlm semalam, or maybe he got something else. Ye la, mlm Jumaat...

Anyway, I strongly believe it was bcos of pure will power and determination. Next week the target would be sub 1 hr. I have full confidence that he can and he will achieve it.

Today's morning run was also part of my preparation to do 20K with Stupe this Sunday. Wish me luck guys, hopefully Stupe wouldnt have to 'seret' me back,....

Almost like the good old days

Had dinner last night at HRC. Definitely feels like going back down the memory lane when myself and the gang frequented it. Somethings do change, it has new decor and new ambiance now, but the food quality and the ppl are as great as before.

Most of us were there, the hardcore gang like Ikang, Izat, Piche, Zalee, Tesa, D, and the not so hardcore like myself, Jimi, Sahura, Ubai, Nurin and Zawiyah. Mantat..well Mantat is unique, he was always somewhere in between. Plus, the new up and coming gang led by Amir the Champion of the World, Aidan, Uqail, Malik and Adam( oldest being 4 and youngest 2 yrs old). Noah tak boleh join, kalau dia melalak takut tak dgr pasal Mommy n Daddy dia sibuk berborak. However Bagak n Ezan couldn't make it, work commitment...or golf commitment. Farouk and Af were understandably excused, new job...

Somehow or rather, or it is just me, I feel like we are getting closer again, after like.. maybe 5 yrs break. I think, along the line, they were so many stuffs going around. Nak kawin lah, tukar kerja baru lah, nak naik pangkat lah, nak buat anak lah, nak pindah rumah lah and many other stuffs. I guess now, the storm has gone and we are more stable. All of us just want to enjoy the precious time given to us by the almighty and share it with good friends.

Though its sounds like a cliche, I do feel true friendship is valued more than the $ sign.

Credits to the organisers, I'm particularly impressed with the punctuality. Keep it up guys.

And special thanks, again to Izat, semoga Allah murahkan lagi rezeki kau.

Bogged down

Little late for weekend update huh? But, who cares, a story is always in the past anyway. That is why it is called history, his-story, male chauvinist tu... Apa yg aku merepek ni.

Let's start on Friday, had a running date with Azmil, my colleague. Started running at 6.15am, KLCC park. Plan was to do 8 rounds = 10.4 K. Wanted to do round 1 warm up, round 2-5 50%-70% heart rate (hr). And the lst 3 rounds 70%-80% hr. Started off with a good pace. Increased the pace on the 2nd round. The 3rd round, Azmil had some difficulties, he was suffering from athma and forgot to bring his inhaler. So we slowed down the pace. But I told him, no matter what happen, we will not stop running and we will complete the 8 rounds as planned. And true enough, full credit to this guy, despite having problem with athma, we succesfully completed 8 rounds. This guy is one tough customer, strong will power, strong determination, kudos Mil.

After breakfast, my nose started giving problems. Asyik nak bersin je, air hingus dok meleleh-leleh. Badan pun dah start rasa tak sedap. When I reached home after work, straight away took few panadols and went to sleep. Woke up around 7 pm, but no improvement to the body.

Bandit came to the house arnd 8pm to install the cleat pedals. Yep, will be going cycling on Saturday. After installing it and lenghty explanation by Bandit, went down to try it. A little bit difficult, but thanks to Bandit's explanations, I got used to it after 7-8 attempts.

Woke up at 5 on Saturday, shoot, badan tak sedap lagi. Went out to meet Bandit at Akademi TV3 junction for the Putrajaya ride. It was starting to rain. As I reached there, Bandit called to inform that the ride was cancelled. Ok jugak, pasal badan still tak sedap lagi. But alang-alang dah keluar, decided to just carry on riding. Went down to Jelatek, masuk Jln Ampang and turn left to masuk MRR2 at Suzi's Corner. Total 15K.

Had dinner-get-together at Nong n Jimmy's with Bagak, Jimi, Sahura, Ikang, D and surprise package Mantat n Ezan. Menu - Nasi Goreng ganja, curry crab, black pepper crab, kerang and sotong bakar, tom yam syahdu, siakap steam, siput lalalala kerja, lalalala kerja, kailan ikan masin n few other stuffs.Tension gile, pasal everything was tasteless, only for me, demam punya pasal. Went to watched J Bond at pavillion after that. First time tgk wayang after Noah, very fortunate to have in-laws that are always more than happy to babysit Noah.

Same story on Sunday, badan tak sedap lagi. In fact, woke up at 10.30, very rare for me nowadays. Went for lunch at Azry's house and free viewing of 'Awang Spanar'. Went to Curve and Ikea after that. Kesian Tesa, she wanted to buy this dress kat flea market, but cash tak cukup. So we went to look for Maybank ATM (my stupid ATM cant be used in other tellers) to take out some cash. It was quite far from the shop. And we also had to change Noah's diaper. When she went back to the shop, the dress was sold off already. She was very sad....Had dinner at Ikea. Haram line nak beli makanan panjang gile, waited abt 20 mins. The worst part is, I couldnt even finish my dinner, demam punya pasal.

Starting to pay off

Yes, my gym works are starting to pay me off. All those squats and lunges exercises, really paid dividends. I was very happy with my performance last Saturday when I did the Putrajaya route. And talking about it, I want to stand my self corrected on the actual distance I did 2 weeks ago. It was not 80K, the actual distance from my house to Putrajaya and back was only 75K, did a mistake when I set up my odometer previously.

Back to last Saturday, I was particularly happy bcos I pedalled flat out the whole stretch of the hiway, from Pandan to Putrajaya, abt 23-25K. However, I did briefly stopped pedalling when I went down few hills, but really for brief moments. And I believe it was the result of my leg muscle strengthening exercise I did on mid-week. I dont find climbing hills as difficult as before, it is still hard nevertheless, but my tolerance level in enduring the pain in my quads is much better now.

Last Saturday started off quite badly for me. After doing good preparation the night before, ate a lot of pasta and went to sleep early. I found myself to be awaken by the phone, not the alarm clock, Bandit was calling me. Shit, I overslept, did not hear the alarm. Apalagi, kelam kabut la siap. So instead of RVing at the traffic light, Bandit came over to my condo. It was raining that morning and I did not do enough stretching. By the time I'm ready, Bandit, told me Shazly and Rashid had left. Good for them, dont want them to keep waiting for us.

We used Jln Jelatek-Tun Razak to reach Pandan Toll instead of MRR2, Ampang Hilir. Bandit ckp area tu byk anjing, so kalau 2 org je a bit dangerous. It was drizzling, in fact it drizzled the whole time. Bandit asked me to just 'kayuh' and meet again at Putrajaya. He wanted to do some bike fitting. So as I said earlier, almost 25K of pure pedalling. I think I did avg 30-35K for that distance, couldnt really tell the correct speed as I didnt have a watch to clock it down.

Shazly and Chipang were waiting for us at Putrajaya toll. Waited for Bandit and started cycling back, kind of leisurely, at least for Shazly. OP Boot greeted me while overtaking me, and couldnt be seen after that. That guy is fast. Reached back home arnd 9.15. Started at 6.45. 3-3.5 hrs for 75K. Ok la....

What-a-Getaway

Last weekend was so fulfilling. We had a mini get together at my parents' place in Cherating , and it was a satisfying sand(bunkers I mean) n sun weekend indeed. Eventhough I do feel a little bit disappointed for not having able to participate in Powerman, but the fun n joy we had the whole weekend was..in Mastercard's word, priceless... Anyway, I had planned for this weekend way before I even started doing the BikeSwimRun activities, which was only a little more than a month ago.

I guess I just have to tell it starting from Friday. I took the whole day off on Friday. Plan was to do 11K run in the morning, as I wont be doing any serious training for the weekend. Started after subuh. After running for abt 1K, felt something funny with my stomach. Crap, I know that sign. So I stopped running and walked slowly back, becos I think I wd exaggerate the (u know what) if I run. Managed to reach home and blasted the crap out of me. Fuuhhh..lega. Was in the toilet for a good 20 mins. So since it was like 7 plus, scrapped the idea of running (safety reason, kereta dah byk on the road). Instead went to the pool and did 50 laps. That shd be enough to cover for the weekend.

Initial plan was to push off for Cherating at 10. If I were to do that, I need to wake Tesa and Noah up at 8. But the night before Noah only slept at 3, so I think it wd better to let them sleep a little bit more. Dont want him to be crancky in the car. Anyway, I didnt commit to anybody on my travels, so decided to take my own sweet time. After waking them up arnd 10, went to fix my running shoes and picked up Noah's IC. Yes, kids now do have IC. It is called MyKid. But obviously gambar takde la. Muka budak2 kan berubah2, masak la 2-3 bulan sekali nak tukar IC.

After packing everything up, we pushed off at 12.45. Was flabbergasted to see the number of bags we brought along, evrything doubled up now. And we need to run thru everything twice just to make sure we dont miss anything. Tu pun ada yg tertinggal jugak. Maklumlah, the first long trip with baby. We seriuosly need to improve on this. Next time need to employ a better system to make it more efficient.

The whole journey was fine. Noah was being a very good boy. We only stopped once, for a toilet break. Reached Cherating arnd 4.30. The whole journey was actually 3.5 hrs, but we wasted almost 3o mins at Taman Melati McD's drive thru. Punyala byk kereta.

My father and the rain greeted us as we reached the place. He was so excited to see Noah. Ikang n Dee were already there, they arrived 15 mins earlier. At that point, I just hope that the rain would not be the order of the day and the next 2 days. But alhamdullilah, the weather was fine after abt 30 mins untill the day we left.

After checking in, we wasted no time to jump straight into the see. Amir n Aidan were so excited, si Amir ni, kelakar gile, when we were playing in the sea, there was this group of young man pulling up a big fishing net nearby. Kitorg pun busy body la nak tengok. Nampak je ikan2, ketam, siput etc, si Amir lari lintang pukang takut.

That was also the first time Noah stepped on land and in fact touched the sea. Just dipped his feet few times. Letak je kaki, dia angkat, letak, angkat. Maybe the saltwater was giving a new sensation kot, but he was also definitely having a blast. Relax je tak pakai baju kat tepi laut atas tikar, mcm Mat Saleh tgh sun bathing je.

Bagak n Jimi arrived arnd 7. Had dinner arnd 8 and straight away went to Karaoke after that. Before the trip, there were so much hype about this Karaoke session, especially from Jimi. She thought it wd be a 'gimme' for her n Bagak to be named the best duo. Well, well, well, we were just so dumbfounded to witness the awesomeness of Dee singing Ramlah Ram's Kau Kunci Hatiku. Habis dia pukul semua org. Lepas dia nyanyi takde sapa berani pegang mic lagi. Sahura n Ezan arrived just in time to witness this.

End of Day 1.

Day 2.

Went out at 7.30 to Kijal with Bagak for golf. It has been a while that I havent played with Bagak, one of the persons that I enjoyed playing golf with. Arrived there arnd 8.15 after stoping at petrol station, to do...what else, crapping la. Bagak started off strongly with a bogey whereas I had a double par. But as we played on my scores keeps getting better and better. Managed to get a couple of pars and few bogeys on front nine.

Back nine was a whole different story. Started off ok with few bogeys. But it all started downward when I put my approach into the pond on th 12th. It became worse when we played the 2 jungle holes. I lost 6 balls in that 2 holes. After getting his second of his 2 pars on the 1st jungle hole, Bagak and I just simply agreed on not keeping the score anymore. Teruk sangat.

Reached back at Cherating arnd 1 plus. Had lunch and went to rest. Meanwhile the other guys were playing kites as the winds was quite strong.

Ohh, almost forgot, while myself and Bagak were playing golf, the others had a blast as well. They started off with pool and sea sessions in the morning. In fact Ikang had few fantastic shoots of the rising sun from horizon. Then they went for brunch in Hai Peng kopitiam and went berserk. They almost had a free meal if it was not for Ikang. Ye la, semua pakai cun2, seksi2 n glamer2, terbeliak mata org Kemamang tgk, kalau mintak makan free mesti dapat punya, Ikang kacau la.

Lepas Hai Peng they all came back. Some went to sleep, waiting for the next melantak session, which will be at gerai Satar. So at 4, we all went to this famous shop kat Kuala Kemaman. Agak risau jugakla, pasal tempat tu byk org alim2, budak2 ni belasah pakai seksi2. But, peduli apa, janji dapt soru. We ordered Satar, otak2, kepok leko, mee calung and ICT. Huh? ICT? What the hell is that? Well, its a local short form of Ikan Celup tepung. Power la org Ganu ni.

Amir mcm biasa sudah buat bisnes kat kedai tu, same as what he did kat Hai Peng. Budak ni memang kuat 'kubab' la. So lepas makan balik Cherating, and jumped straight into the sea again.

Mlm, we had a BBQ dinner. All the sea food were so fresh that some of them were only marinated with salt, u can taste the sweetness of the fish's flesh. Lepas makan, layan MU vs Arsenal while the girls played cards and gossiping. Masa tgh tengok bola, Amir was pestering me to go for karoke. Budak ni dah gian becos the night before dia dgn Harazz dok melalak-lalak. So I told him 'kalau nak karoke kena ada at least 5 org', saje je nak bagi excuse. Si Amir ni punyala determined, dia sudah pergi balik bilik and panggil the girls to go to the hall to fulfill the minimum 5 ppl. And they just couldnt refuse Amir's request. So layanla karaoke lagi. But this time, it was all his show. He asked me to sing with him lagu tentera (Si Baju Hijau - Carefree ) dekat 5-6 kali. Sampai naik biul org lain dgr lagu tu. Ezan siap melekat dlm kepala lagu tu sampai balik KL.

End of Day 2.

Day 3.

Had breakfast and main dgn budak2 kecik atas sampan. Bagus jugak, kira I did some sweating dgn budak2 ni kira mcm training jugak la. All of them checked-out early so that they can layan Hai Peng seround lagi, so Hai Peng it was. Semua org balun cukup2, ye la, lepas ni tak tau bila lagi nak datang. After meal, wished e'body farewell and went back to Cherating while the others went straight to Lanchang to Elephant's Sanctuary. After lunch, pushed back to KL arnd 3.

All in all, it was a very satisfying weekend. Good fun, good company, good food, what else could u asked for. Need to do this kind of activity every quarter....

I broke the chain

Folks, last weekend was another milestone clocked by me, I did 80K (patting my back). But of course, there must be some drama behind it.

Started of the ride at 5:05 Sat morning. As most ppl were still snuggling up in their blankets, I forced myself to wake up at 4:45. Was actually worried that I couldnt get up as I only went to sleep at abt 1 am. But man... I couldnt miss the opportunity to ride to Putrajaya with those crazy Ironmen (Stupe, Shazly n others).

Met up with Bandit at his house abt 5:15, Then we rode down to simpang Kg Pasir to join the others. The plan was to go to Putrajaya n back using the new Putrajaya highway (Kg Pandan). Total distance abt 100K. I was innitially sceptical, mostly bcos of safety reasons. First, we'll be doing it in the dark, and secondly we'll be riding on hiway most of the time. And not to mention doing it with freaking Ironmen.

But Bandit assured me of my worries one by one. He'll provide me with safety lights, the highway's emergency lane is very wide n not to many cars use it and lastly, he said they(ironmen) wd only be doing avg 25K/H.

How wrong was Bandit. They were doing 30-35 from the start. I only managed to keep up with them for abt 15K. Then, I can only see the tail end of the safety light from the last person like a small red dot at the corner of my eyes. Damn, those guys were really fast.

As I was left alone in the middle, (5-6 guys in the front group, 2-3 at the back) I could feel something wrong when I was shifting the cranks. It produced some weird noises and I could just feel that the chains are not sticking. Eventually, my worst nightmare did materialised. The chains just snapped.

Crap, I was in the middle of the hiway, and to make matters worse, I was on the elevated part of it. Need to at least walk back abt 5-8 KM to normal road. But I didnt panicked cos I know Bandit brought along his toolkit and he was behind me.

Stupe and Kam stopped by and offered help, but I asked them to carry on as I know Bandit will help me fix this problem. After few more minutes, the sight of a hulking man in a gayish red jersy was definitely a sight of relief, here comes SuperBandit....

Bandit straight away assessed the problem and told me that everything will be allright. He wd just cut out 2 chains(the broken ones) and re-clamped it back. But there's one problem, we couldnt get the particluar tool out of its barcket. It was too tight. We tried to get it out in so many ways, even using our teeth, but to no avail. But Lady Luck must really be in our side, while we were struggling to get it out, a CRV pulled over and the driver came down. That guy(Mat Salleh) was a cyclist too, we could see his Cervelo lying at the back seat. This poor guy was actuallly lost, he was trying to find his cycling grp. Their RV was at Midvalley, so this guy was heading totally to the wrong direction.

Anyway, we borrowed his tool to unlock our tool and gave him the direction to go back to Midvalley. Thanks and gd luck to u man.

From that point on, myself and Bandit was just pedalling at our own pace. We re-set the target -> we will stop at the next R&R and wait for the main grp to turn back so we could join them again. We use these moments together (sounds gayish) to do some bike fitting on me. So Bandit did assessed the way I cycled, my body position, the way I shift the gears so that I can enjoy the ride better.

During our stop at R&R, bandit shifted my saddle to the front, with this new setup, the pain on my shoulder and neck were not as bad as last week.

As we were waiting for the grp, OP AJ came zooming past by us. This guy is 55 yrs old but looks fit as a fiddle. Salute to u sir.

Then we decided not to wait for them but ride slowly as we were very sure they could catch up with us. And so they did, we joined back the big group back home. This time they were really doing avg 20-25K/H. Thank god. Myself and Bandit couldnt wait to do this route again in a fortnight.