my first ultramarathon

Look what i did. I signed up for my first international run. and it will also be my first ultra-marathon. and to bring it to another level, it is a trail run. 

translantau 50km - lantau island, hongkong. 

Thank you for your order with IRONMAN Asia-Pacific. Now Train for it.

Completely slipped my mind that today was the final day for the early bird registration for ironman 70.3. luckily i am registered now. yeah even early bird is so expensive. triathlons is an expensive sport. 

Shit just got real. its slowly sinking in now. 

short workout better than no workout - tabata workout

i am so glad that there was a midweek holiday break. i've been so exhausted lately so today was really about recuperating and doing the things that i liked to do-sleep, eat, workout. 

on a side note, happy deepavali everybody. i too celebrate it every year, by eating lots of muruku, lots might even be an understatement. im a huge fan of muruku. i had so much muruku today. and pasta. and cake. and chocolate. 

after indulging, i came home and thought i should do something, some sort of workout or something. but i was feeling super lazy at the same time. at times like these, i always go for a short workout. i mean short workout better than no workout at all, no? so, i opted for a short tabata workout-it is my 'turn to workout' whenever im feeling lazy. 

what's a tabata workout you ask? tabata is a form of high intensity interval workout. it is 20 seconds of an intense workout followed by a 10 second rest, repeated continuously for 4 minutes, making 8 rounds.i did a round of boxjumps and a round of leg raises. then i practised some pullups.

then, it started to rain. le sigh. but i'm glad i got to sweat a little. although it definitely did not justify my food intake today haha but it was still something.

 so if you only have a short limited time to workout, you can always go tabata. it works with squats, pushups, pullups, you name it. just go as many reps as possible in 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds. repeat this for 8 cycles. and watch yourself sweat bucketloads. 

saturdays with my xfit familia

my saturdays are always without fail, spent with these awesome-s peoples. i literally spend almost the entire day with them. i try to go as much as possible, provided im outstation with work-ish stuffs. but if not, saturdays are dedicated to functional-ish crossfit-ish training with these peeps. oh and did i mention eating as well. 

there are 2 sessions, 10am and 3pm. this week i had something on in the morning, so i went for the 3pm session. if i join the 3pm sesh, the day with these people starts with lunch. our favourite usual is the legendary chillipanmee. so it was fill tummies first, workout later. 

we have birthday wods, named in honour of bdays of the honeybadgers (yes that's wad we are called). in honour of beast vinesh and sexysexymatt's birthday, felix concocted the matt/vivi's bday wod-which was quite the killer i have to say. the aftermath of this wod-my traps are aching, i can feel my sore butt, and my quads are pretty much gone now. so *drumrolls*

that's the wod. there is a time cap of 30 minutes on the wod. well, i did the scaled down version of course, because i'm not beast-ess enough. 

we always start of with some stretches. and my flexibility is absolute crap! that is me laughing at how absurd the pain was. so unglam. 

then the wod begins. starting off with the pistol squats, 16 on each side. 

then we hit the front squats. 

the pullups i scaled down to rows. there is no way i can do 19 pullups-twice. 

then the 88 calorie row. which was painful. 

and then we do it one more time. i tell u, the second time round, the front squats were painful to do. 

and finish it with 91 kb swings. 

i clocked in a time of 27 minutes and 43 seconds. yeps they call me meldiva. that's my name. 

now, meet the familia. 

cfal tristate registered

after much hesitation and persuasion (me persuading myself), finally,i signed up for the campaign for a lane (cfal) tristate 1st edition. this is a 120km ride, starting from penang, down to kedah and perak then back up to penang. this is happening in january next year. coincidentally, i will have to go up to penang for a wedding with my bestie stephy and this race so happens to fall on the very same weekend. it was a sign! i thought since i was going to be up anyways, i should just go for it. so despite being utterly completely unprepared, i signed up. 

initially, what kept me from signing up was because i had zero confidence that i would be able to complete this race. i don't even have a bike yet, let alone have that cycling capability. yes, despite the fact that this race is not a century ride since its 40km short of being officially called one, to me, this is still one heck of a difficult task. my current cycling level is- i'm not sure i can even ride more than 10km. so apart from my heart of steel, i have nothing. 

have to thank kenkent for constantly persuading me and encouraging me to sign up for this. he has been very encouraging and supportive of my ironman dream. it is true that this would be a part of my training for ironman. and if i don't sign up, i would never know. maybe, just maybe i could make it. 

freaked out slightly yesterday and wanted to do a little running yesterday evening, but it started raining, so i could not run outdoors. have to thank miss moy for inviting me to jatomi to workout with her. i decided to do a quick brick workout (which turned out to be not so quick afterall). 5km run followed by 30 minutes biking and wrapped it up with a 3km run. the biking part was the more difficult part for me. i have approximately 3 months to polish up my biking skills. hopefully i will improve exponentially. 

so yes thanks miss moy. 

have got to get back to the groove. have got dreams to chase. 

klscm 2014

the goal this year was to complete klscm in 4 hours 30 minutes. i had no strategy. i had minimal training. basically i only upped my training 2 weeks before the run itself. but i was really hopeful that i could have a new personal best. a girl can dream, no? 

so, the night before, i had dinner, downloaded songs, pinned my bib onto my shirt, and went to bed, nervous yet excited. i went to bed roughly around 10pm. before i knew it, my alarm rang, and i jumped out of bed, super egg-cited about the big day. some people are excited about their birthdays, some their wedding, some their graduation, me, i get excited about a big marathon day. 

i had some biscuits for breakfast. i wanted to have cereal but i was afraid i would get my slight-lactose-intolerant side effect. got there, checked in my bag, and stretched a little before my run. so it was karen's first marathon and cheryl's second. i had high hopes for karen. i was estimating a 5h15minutes arrival for her. 

we could not get in front to where the pacers were. so upon flagoff, it was a pretty long chase for me. we ran along jalan raja/jalan raja laut, then turned on to jalan sultan ismail where sheraton imperial was. i skipped the 1st and 2nd water station. i only managed to catch up with the first 4 hour pacer somewhere along jalan perak and the 2nd 4 hour pacer somewhere right before jalan tun razak. it was a real long chase, probably only caught up with him 6-7km into the run. 

so that was what i did. i followed this pacer at a very steady pace. i decided to follow the first pacer as i thought his pace suited me better. we ran through the roads of kl, on to jalan tun razak, and then on to akla highway. i quite enjoyed the akla portion of the run because my pace was pretty good. when we reached the water stations, i would up my speed, afraid of losing him in the midst of my water breaks. 

it was only till i got onto the duke highway that i could not keep up with said my pacer. 

i felt the urge to use the toilet, so i did, and when i came out, it would have been difficult to catch up with him. yeah, running whilst needing to use the toilet is not pleasant, at all. this happened around the 23-24km ish point. so i started to pace myself. when i was really tired, i allowed myself 30 seconds of walk time then i continued to run. 

running duke was pretty difficult for me. the road was not completely flat but slanted, to the left. thus, it put alot of pressure on my left foot to adjust itself, hence i could feel my ankle starting to hurt. thankfully i pulled through. the other difficult point for me was somewhere near the 38km mark. this was where it said there was 200m more to a rest stop. so i continued, anticipating water/100plus and a short rest. some 500m later, i saw a hill, and no rest stop. it was only after you overcame the hill that you would see a rest stop.

and i crossed the finish line at my new personal best, 4 hour 14 minutes and 13 seconds. i had tears of joy. it might mean little to alot of people, but to me it was such a significant moment. i was super overjoyed. i could not stop smiling to myself. dreams do come true. even now, 2 days after the event i'm still in this 'over the moon' mood. 

i have to say klscm is an amazing marathon. if anyone would want to try running a marathon, klscm would definitely be my recommendation. it was so greatly organized, with sufficient water stations, a great route, or maybe i'm just biased because i pb-ed here haha. results just released. 

2 of my friends made their first marathon. tianyi made a 5h 15 min time and fong made a 5h 22 mins time. unfortunately, karen, hanyang and cheryl didn't make it. it's okay, i'm trying to convince them to come back next year to try again. we didn't manage to have a pic during the event, because we were too exhausted but we took one when we were having lunch, replenishing. 

so what's next? i have a new dream, maybe i have too many dreams. i want to do ironman. i want to qualify for boston. people tell me i have too many dreams. 

the first step

2 weeks ago, i was up in langkawi for the ironman event, as a mere spectator/supporter/cheerleader. 

i was inspired. it was a congregation of people of all ages, sizes and nationalities. the oldest participant being 77 years old, and the youngest being 19, it made my biggest accomplishment so far seem so little. suddenly my 42.195km run meant close to nothing, compared to what these guys are doing. these guys were inspiring. and somehow they managed to ignite a spark in me, to dare to dream that i could be one day be one of them. and so, here i am. 

for those who are clueless as to what ironman is, let me enlighten you. you start with braving through a 3.8km swim in the sea, then you hop on a bike and challenge yourself with a 180km bike course, and as if that was not enough, the sweet finale is a 42.195km run. you have 17 hours to complete this, arguably the most famous endurance race in the world, to qualify and earn the title 'ironman'. if you run down that red carpet before the race clock strikes 17, you are an ironman! 

i was one of the supporters this year. i stood by the sidelines, cheering, shouting encouraging every participant that crusaded pass me. they were strangers. i was a stranger. but i'd like to believe that my support for them meant something to them. as it would have meant the world to me in any race. the local langkawi people were supportive as well. having required to race under the blistering sun, one lady even took out her water hose and sprinkled the oncoming athletes with cooling water. it is this support that i admired. you got support from family, friends, competitors, racers, and even strangers. i even went so far as to dream that my family would come down, come 2015, to support me and cheer for me. 

unfortunately, my hype  for this ironman dream has not been well received. i've gotten plentiful of doubts and discouragement, but in this pool of negativity selected few have encouraged me. by selected few, i really mean 3 people. but i won't let myself be discouraged. 

so here i am, i will begin to document my journey to ironman 2015.