Hill is "Hell" Mis-spelt

The title of this post just about sums up the Newton 25k Challenge. It was all about hills and the hills, yes, they were hellish. Combine it with the heat, then you have one of the toughest events in Malaysia. Frank of Runnerz Circle had already warned us that the usual Bukit Aman - Hartamas loop was just an appetizer compared to the Newton route. Guess I was hoping he was exaggerating a bit. He wasn't!

The run started well enough but within 4k, we hit the first hill. Legs still fresh, the first series of hills were not too bad. And the sun hadn't come up yet.

When the hills were not a problem... yet.

It was after the 12k mark that hell came. By then the sun was out in full force. It wasn't that the hills were particularly steep (ok, some of them were) but they were just long and relentless. I was beginning to think the 140k ride the day before maybe wasn't such a good idea.

Before hell came!

By 18k, I was reduced to walking. Walk up the hills, and try to run down them. At this point I was wishing I had just done the 12k!

With about 3k to go, Emma caught up with me (feels funny saying that since Emma is normally miles ahead, but today she was just having some fun and taking it reeeaaaallly easy) and saw me walking. She kept urging me on, telling me it's all in the head. When she found out it wasn't my injured knee that's making me walk, she said, "C'mon Arif, baby steps." So from there on I mustered up whatever I had left and just followed Emma and Lydia home. Thanks for the encouragement, Emma.

Almost there!

And so I crossed the finish line in 2h47m. One of the toughest races I've ever done. And I was lucky enough to get a medal for my troubles. And a pretty medal it was. Hard-earned too!

Just glad it's all over!

Senn did quite well. She did the 12k and finished in about 1h45m. Not too bad for someone who hasn't been running at all!

I must say Uncle Chan loves to inflict pain on athletes. Who else would organise a run in such hilly terrain? It's kind of reminiscent of his Lake Kenyir triathlon. Anyway, it was quite well organised with some lovely freebies.Traffic management could have been better though and the water stations could have been closer together, especially with the heat. But other than that, everything went well. Once again, another good job from Uncle Chan.

From this run, I can see that I still have a long way to go to hit my target in Ironman Western Australia. Bring it on...

Pictures courtesy of Emma, Tey and Julie.

Ironman Western Australia Target

I normally don't set specific time goals for any of the races I do. My target has always been to PB or do better than last year. But since this will be the first time in Busselton, there is no benchmark to measure against.

So now I'm going to put it out there, I'm going to set a time goal for IMWA: to finish the race before nightfall. Sunset at Busselton on 5 December is 7:17pm, last light at 7:46pm. The race starts at 5:45am. That gives me 13h32m to finish the race, almost two hours under my best IM race.

Which means I'll need to shave about 10-15 minutes off my best IM swim, an hour off my best IM bike time and an hour off my best run time.

So that's it, it's out there: 13h32m. 13h32m. 13h32m.

Maybe I'll get it. Maybe I won't. But now that it's out there, I have no choice but to work my ass off towards it. Full time Ironman training begins after Raya.

Shit... What did I just get myself into?

Pedal Away Polio

Ride for a good cause, guys...

I got my mojo back!

I lost my mojo in PD.

During the 2008 PD International Triathlon, on my way to a personal best, I hit a pothole and crashed hard onto the tarmac 1.5km from transition 2. Among the things scattered on the road was my mojo. As i got going again, pushing the bike to transition, I must have left my mojo there.

In 2009, I returned to PD to look for my mojo after a season of dismal results. It wasn't to be. Thanks to a knee injury and some drama that had me driving all the way back to KL and back to PD again in the middle of the night, my mojo was nowhere to be found.

Fast forward to the PD International Triathlon 2010. The search for my mojo continues. A friend said, after screwing up in PD two years in a row, you better do well this year. Talk about added pressure! I was more determined than ever to find that elusive mojo.

But already the dramas had begun. On the way to PD, the airconditioning in the car broke down. Not a big deal really, except that since the aircon runs on the same belt as the water pump, and other vital systems, it made the problem terminal.

As I sat there waiting for the car to be fixed (courtesy of a bunch of mechanics who roam the highway looking for car trouble), I started to wonder whether it was a good idea to race the next day. Could today's incident be a sign of things to come? Will I never find my mojo?

Or is this simply a case of getting all the bad luck out of the way today, so I can have good luck tomorrow?

Four hours and RM800 later, we rolled into PD. At this point, I have to say I was really glad I had Senn with me. She kept calm the whole time and helped keep me from pulling my hair out. She said that whatever I wanted to do the next day, she will support. Thanks, babe, I needed that.

We skipped the carbo load dinner. As much as we wanted to catch up with old friends, the thought of fighting for food with 1200 other triathletes turned us off. So we had a quiet dinner near the apartment and then went to go buy water and breakfast for the next day. On the way, we found a mamak shop that was showing the Tour de France final time trial on TV (earlier I had been fretting about how I was going to catch this). What luck! And while walking back to the car, Senn found a RM10 just lying there on the road. Even more good luck! Maybe I had gotten rid of all bad luck. Maybe my mojo was coming back to me. Maybe I should race tomorrow. Funnily enough, these two good luck incidents happened a few metres for where I crashed two years ago!

So race I did. And I have to say, it was the best race I've ever had.

We got there late so didn't really have time to mingle. Set up transition and headed straight to the start. Managed to take this picture though.



The swim was decent. I was in the battles all the way. Which meant that I was keeping pace with the others. When I had calm water, I thought I had strayed off course. As it turned out, I had dropped the group of swimmers I was battling with and was moving towards the next group for more battles.

Out back onto the beach and only 33 minutes had elapsed. 35 by the time I crossed the timing mat (running on the beach is not easy).

On the bike, I started looking for a train to latch on. For about five or six kilometres I kept looking, then I realised there was a short train behind me! OK, game on. As soon as a faster rider overtook me, I latched on and so did my little train. We went forward, tagging on to the next train in front of us, then the next and the next. Pretty soon, we had a decent sized pack. From then on, It was an easy ride back to transition.



Off the bike in 1:09.

A quick transition and it was off on the run.

My legs felt a little jelly like and I had trouble finding a rhythm. The athletes in the train I was with were starting to drop me one by one. And the side stitches came. I thought this was going to be a tough run. Fortunately, the weather was overcast, so that helped things quite a lot.

3km in, I started to find my rhythm. Stomach cramps were still there but not to severe. I started passing people again. Coming back I saw people who would normally be ahead of me on their way out. That gave me the motivation to push that little bit more.





Crossed the line and my watch said 2 hours and 40 minutes. The run had been done in 52 minutes. A personal best! I was shocked! Elated! Happy!

I had found my mojo.



Photos courtesy of Aileen/Stupe, Yit Thing/Zabrina and Keni K.

What a week!

Monday: run 6.4k
Tuesday: swim 1500m, bike 27k
Wednesday: run 12k
Thursday: swim 1200m, bike 36k
Friday: swim 1200m
Saturday: bike 115k

Wow! I haven't had a week like this since the buildup to IMMY08. All in all, 4000m swimming, 178k biking, and 18.4k running. I was so beat up after saturday's ride, I decided to skip Sunday's run.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning. If I can keep this up and slowly add more quality mileage as the weeks go by, I'll be in good shape for IMWA.

Ironman training has begun!

Not the Best of Marathons...

Thankfully not the worst either.

If anything, the 2010 Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon taught me the importance of training. Without which, be prepared to suffer.

And suffer I did, from about 25k all the way to the end.

But before I get into my race, let me just say that this year's edition was a marked improvement over last year's. There was plenty of fluids at the water stations, the route was great and the medal collection was excellent. It's good to know that the organisers learnt their lessons from last year and made efforts to improve.

There were still a few issues though: traffic management was ok throughout but there were a few intersections where it could have been handled better. Particularly at the Jalan P. Ramlee/Jalan Ampang intersection but you can't really blame the cops when the motorists decide to ignore them and almost run down a few runners. Another issue was that there was no water given out at the finish line. If there was, it must have been hidden somewhere because I didn't see any. They should have given us water together with the medal/finisher t-shirt. Would have been a lot better that way for runners.

Anyway on to the race: it started wet. Really, really wet. But after a few km the rain stopped. I was doing a pretty decent pace, a pace I thought I'd be able to sustain for 42km. Hit the first 10k and I was going slightly quicker than I thought. My first 10k was 1h03m.

Continued on. By now the thighs were starting to feel the burn. Thought I'd slow the pace a little. But apparently, I didn't. Second 10k was 1h04m!

Now was when it started to unravel for me. At 25k, I lost it. Just couldn't run anymore. So I walked/ran. It was painful. Runners were passing me left, right and centre. It was quite demoralizing. At this point, I was wondering if I called it quits, how would I get back to the start line. Then Sofian runs by. He must have sensed my agony because he yelled out, "C'mon Arif, don't give up!"

That really helped. I went on till the 28km water station. I had some of my EFS gel, rubbed some ointment on my legs and took some ice from the nice medic there. This gave me a bit of a second wind. I managed to run till the 31km marker. Saw Jason going around on his bike, he asked if I needed anything. A taxi back to the start line perhaps, I wanted to say. But I kept on going.

Finally hit Jalan Kuching. Sun was up and blazing by now. This is one mentally challenging stretch. It goes on for only about 2km but it feels damn long. Meng, the 5-hour pacer, caught up with me now, and urged me to run with him. Made it as far as the 34km water station before I had to walk again.

At 35km, Adeline passed me. She looked damn strong. Guess all that distance/endurance training has paid off for her (she achieved her first sub-5 marathon!). She motioned me to tag on but at the pace she was going, there was no way I could. At this point, I couldn't tag on to anyone, no matter what the pace!

Shortly after the 36km water station, there was some welcomed relief. Kash, Rais and Uncle Allen were there with a mobile kedai runcit. Rais gave me some Counterpain, Kash offered me a Gatorade and Uncle Allen offered me encouragement. Thanks guys, you really helped! Thanks to them, I managed to run all the way to the bottom of that steep hill near the little roundabout.



After that steep hill, I knew we'd have a nice downhill stretch. I love going downhill, you can pick up speed with hardly any effort at all. But it was not to be this time. There was just so much lactic acid in my legs that each step was agony! And to make things worse, at the bottom of the hill, they made us go up another hill just to u-turn midway up. Cruel.

From there it was a slow run/walk all the way to the last turn at Pertama Complex. By then we had maybe about 800m to go so I threw all caution to the wind and ran all the way to the finish. It was painful, but it had to be done.

About 100m from the line, I saw Senn cheering me on and I knew I couldn't stop now. Passed a few other runners along the way too and finally crossed the line. Felt like collapsing right there and then.



The race clock showed me finishing at 5h10m. For a while I thought I'd come in closer to six hours, maybe even after six hours. I guess when I hit that wall at 25k, I knew sub-5 was out of the question so then it became a matter of limiting the damage. I hadn't set a target for this race as I knew I was unprepared for it. Still I wanted to do the best I could. And If I could go under 5, all the better. So doing a 5h10m was ok. Painful, but ok.

Lesson learnt. To run a marathon, you must get the miles in. Last year I was running 40-50k, sometimes even 60k, a week in the build-up to the marathon. This year, I was lucky to get in 20k a week. So for me, to finish itself is a result.

But I couldn't have finished it without the help of friends. Special thanks to Sofian, Eugene Teoh, Jason Hue, Dr.Sya, Kash, Rais, Uncle Allen, Bro Md Nor and a whole bunch of others for pushing me on in one way or another. That percussion group in front of Pavillion, all the medics and volunteers, you all were a great help.

And finally, a big special thank you to Senn, who was there for me after the run and took care of me when I could barely walk. Love ya, babe!

NB15k

The NB15k run this past Sunday was probably my best race so far this year. There were minimal dramas and no injury issues. The only drawback was that I hadn't done a long run since the Energiser race back in March.

There was a bit of drama the night before when we heard of Ngae's passing. Ngae was a legendary character in the runners/triathlete's circle. He always ran barefoot in a sarong, was always humble and always had a smile on his face. He's never one to forget his roots, always telling stories of his days as a young boy in the kampung. He was loud and witty, and always a joy to hang out with, ready to dispense some friendly advice if it were needed. We were amazed at how quickly he got back into action after having gone through brain surgery to remove a tumour last year. Within a few months, he was running again. His passing was a big shock. Ngae, you will be missed.

The morning started with a one minute silence to remember this great man. A few were running in sarongs.

My personal best at this race was a 1h30m. Thought I might be able to improve on that but the question was by how much. The dinner at Laif's house the night before certainly wasn't going to contribute to any improvement. But really, on a day like today, it wasn't about the time. It was about honouring a friend.

In the end, I managed to better my PB by almost 5 minutes. It was as if Ngae's spirit had come to join the run and was pushing me on. My finish time was a 1h25m58s. As I crossed the line, I pointed up to the heavens, at Ngae. This PB I dedicate to him.