racking up the mileage

total for the week:
swim: 2800m
bike: 80km
run: 40km

of that, 30km of the run was done over the weekend. the other 10 on thursday. so that's 40 in 4 days. now to put all 40 of them in under 6 hours.

saturday ran from bukit aman to petronas hartamas. started at 6:20 am since i didn't want to be out running when the sun came out. reached pteronas at 7.21am, 1h01m after starting. stopped there for a while, had a bottle of gatorade and the rest of my powerbar before heading back to bukit aman. reached bukit aman in 2h01m which leads me to suspect that the run was probably a little less than 20k.

on sunday, did the tri clinic in PD. the swim course has changed from last year in that we now start at the beach and swim into the marina. the start of the swim was alright and it got better as we got into the marina. got into this habit of counting each time my right hand plunged into the water so i could sight every fifth count. helped to pass the time on a very long swim. the return trip was a bit hazardous though, with the currents getting stronger. as i left the marina i felt myself being pushed into the rocks on the shore. at one point i was about 10feet away from the rocks. made it back to shore in 42m49s.

i'm not so sure about this new swim course. PD was supposed to be the tri that beginners would want to try because the swim was sheltered. with this new course, i'm not so sure beginners will be able to handle it. I'm now thinking twice about my cousin doing it. I'm actually thinking twice about it myself. those rocks looked quite menacing.

anyway, after a loooong transition, mainly to get everyone to start the bike together for safety reasons, it was on to the bike. the bike started off with an easy pace, everyone keeping in a pack until we got onto the kampung roads. then it was every man for himself. i started near the back of the pack and gradually worked my way to the middle, chatting with zubir along the way. when we turned into the kampung roads, i put my head down, got aero and picked up the pace a bit (on an aside, i just tweaked my aero position, dropping the bars another cm. felt good). pretty soon i caught up to adrian and said "hi." he replied with a "hel... shit! arif!" and immediately picked up the pace! so from there, we went on, working together, sometimes up to 40km/h, till the u-turn. after the u-turn (which was a bit messy) we continued working together till the wind picked up. having aerobars was definitley an advantage because i looked back to see adrian dropping back.

this was when things got hairy. the rain started to fall and the winds picked up. coming across the open fields, there were very strong crosswinds that threatened to push me off the road a couple of times. scary stuff. had to really slow down to avoid crashing or ending up in a longkang somewhere. once we were back on the main road, adrian passed me and i followed (from a distance) him back to transition. bike finish in about 1h23m.

after a short rest, it was off for the run. right from the start, i knew i was in trouble. my shins have never been a problem before but after a few metres they were hurting like hell. i soldiered on, trying to run through the pain. but at point it got quite unbearable and i had to walk. the 30km i did in the last 3 days were starting to take its toll on my legs. at one point i was limping because every time i put my right foot down, it felt like my shins were going to shatter!

after the u-turn, i got some ice from the water station and iced down my shins, it felt beter after that, but a kilometre later it was back. so i started walking again. soon though, i got tired of walking and just wanted to get back to transition as quickly as i can. so i started running. and i kept running and the pain wasn't there! it just disappeared!

after the lsat water station, i saw senn in her car. adrian and bernard must have seen me limping and reported it to her. she came out to rescue me! how sweet! thanks babe. but by then, my legs were feeling better, and having learned a very expensive lesson in giving up at langkawi, i decided to carry on. call this mental strength training!

anyway finally got back to the finish at 1h09m. not to bad despite all my troubles.
overall time (minus the long transitions): 3h11m. which is about 15 minutes faster than last year.

so now, with the big marahon coming up this weekend. it's time to rest. tuesday will do an easy bike, wednesday and easy swim and maybe a short jog oon thursday. friday, i'm off to penang. wish me luck. hope the shin problems don't come back.