First thing tomorrow morning, I'm going on an overnight deep sea fishing trip with my brothers, Dennis and Harry. We will only be back on Sunday evening. So I had no choice but to squeeze in my 16km run this morning instead of Sunday. However, I will have to give cycling and swimming a miss for this week.
According to Teo, they're going for a 40km time trial cycling tomorrow morning between the Sabah Trade Centre and Sepangar Navy Base and back; they're trying to achieve an average speed of 35km per hour. I think even if I could join them, I doubt that I can achieve a 35km per hour average. I'm just not up to that level yet. Maybe if I trained hard enough for a couple of months, I may have a shot at it.
A couple of weeks ago, Teo had planned to try his luck at the Kokol hills in Menggatal. It's been some years since the last time I went to Kokol. In fact, I didn't even know that the road is sealed now. According to Teo, he had been planning to do Kokol since January as a preparation for the PD Triathlon, but he said he had no balls to actually carry out his plan. But now that the PD Triathlon is near, he wanted to just go ahead with his plan.
It happened that Amelia and her husband were also keen to try out Kokol. I did not know what to expect, but decided that the worst that could happen was to surrender and turn back halfway up the hills.
Through a series of SMS exchanges with Dr Peter, I told him what Teo told me. I said I did not know much about Kokol, but I could only guess that Amelia's gonna suffer up there, since she for certain did not have balls? Dr Peter replied thoughtfully, asking me how could I be so sure that Amelia hadn't any balls and Teo had?
I guess he had a point there. I had to reluctantly admit that I could only deduce that Teo had grown a set of balls between January and now, but there was no way to be sure. It's unclear where's the connection between balls and bicycles, but I did say to Peter that ball bearings can reduce frictions?
Anyway, it just so happened that on the day we were supposed to go to Kokol, most of Teo's friends did not turn up at Sabah Trade Centre. So Teo decided at the last minute to ride all the way to Salut, passing the huge bridge and Rasa Ria Resort to that small roundabout near Tuaran; and then all the way back to Likas. That was a total of over 70km, so it was quite a good workout on a harvest festival holiday.
I found out recently that Kokol is a 16km uphill climb. I think Kokol can be a very challenging workout. I'd imagine even a 1km uphill ride would be very punishing for the thighs, so 16km uphill would be something to think twice about. No wonder Teo was talking about balls—although I still can't see the connection.
I think I will ride Sepangar at least a few more weeks before attempting Kokol. I have the feeling that Teo won't be able to make Kokol before PD Triathlon anyway. So that gives some of us new cyclists a bit of breathing space to train first.
But for now, let's see if I could come home with lots of fish on Sunday!
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Just in case you're wondering, the fishing trip was quite a disaster. It was a cloudy morning, but we decided to go anyway. About an hour into the journey, the sea became quite rough. Waves swelled up to 2-3 metres, and then it became 3-4 metres later on.
By the time the boat anchored a few km from Mengalun Island, Harry was already suffering. All of us started fishing, but he was negotiating his seasickness. Shortly later, he started throwing up into the sea. First, it was just something whitish... then I saw all the konlau mien we ate for breakfast that morning.
As you can probably imagine, we did not get a good catch... maybe about 10kg worth of fish each. But Harry had the beginner's charm; he caught the most among us brothers!
In the end, we had to come home about half a day earlier than planned because it was just impossible to fish in that condition.
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