Signature For A Cause

I was enjoying my dinner while engrossed in Level 350 of Candy Crush Saga this evening, when a woman walked up to me, seeking my signature for a petition document. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying, but I saw the word LYNAS on the piece of paper she was holding. I have of course heard of that word LYNAS many times before, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't have a sound knowledge of what it's really about. I just know that it's something that many people are convinced may be harmful in the long run, but I don't know the scientific explanation of it. I suspect that the majority of those who're against it don't really know why they're against it anyway. Someone said it's bad; and so it must be bad, the truth of it regardless!

Incidentally, just a week or two ago, I received a text message from a close friend, asking me to vote for a beauty pageant contestant from Sabah in the hope that she could win the contest eventually and then represent Malaysia. But, you see, as a matter of principle, a beauty pageant is about who is the most beautiful of 'em all. Well, OK, I suppose there's some credit for brains too. To vote for this Sabahan lass just because she's a Sabahan, or because she's a friend of a friend, isn't really about being beautiful or intelligent. What's more, I didn't even know who were the other contestants—apparently from west Malaysia—I would be voting against. If the other contestants were indeed more beautiful and intelligent than our Sabahan representative, is it fair that they lose because they failed to accumulate the highest number of votes?

I have in fact posted an article a few years ago when our Sipadan Island was nominated for "7 Wonders of Nature", as can be found here. Now this may be surprising to some of you, but I haven't been to Sipadan myself! I'm sure it's a beautiful island based on what I've heard from many people, but I did not see it with my own eyes. Moreover, I couldn't bring myself to vote for Sipadan against the other nominated places because what if those other places were more deserving of the title?

This reminds me of a time some years ago when I was walking the Gaya Street Fair one fine Sunday morning. There was a group of people conducting a signature drive to petition a court verdict that found someone guilty of the crime he was accused of. I saw many people signed the petition document because "a signature doesn't really cost anything anyway". But I did not sign. I'm thinking; I did not even know anything about that accused person; absolutely zero knowledge of the case, and for all I know he might have been guilty as charged! I couldn't bear the thought of freeing the accused, however remote that possibility was, on account of my signature which was foolishly given without knowing anything about the case.

Many people would readily sign petition documents or vote for a cause for the sake of making the numbers, but don't really know what they're signing or voting for. As you have probably guessed by now, I did not sign that petition document this evening. Not that I think my signature has a profound effect on the total number of signatures they're gonna get anyway. 

But the good news is that, after at least 50 tries, I finally conquered Level 350 of Candy Crush Saga! So those of you who've received a Candy Crush request from me, send me a ticket please!

Activity Report

Yesterday morning, Mia went to Tun Fuad Park at about 6am for her final long run prior to the Borneo International Marathon (BIM), but she gave up after wasting a long time trying to get a parking space. The  BIM is of course on next Sunday, having been postponed from the first weekend of May. It's a strange reality, but many people had just realised that the race is next week, and then suddenly were inspired to run this week in the hope of achieving a major breakthrough during the race.

Yesterday evening, Judy texted me to post a run for this morning on KKRC facebook page. But I told her there's no need, as I was sure that many people will run anyway. As I had expected, there was a big crowd of runners this morning for the so-called final long run prior to the race. I ran with Lim starting at about 5am since we're running 21km. Most of the rest ran short distances. My legs were still very tired from yesterday's cycling, but after a while, it felt not too bad. We decided not to do the UMS loop today, opting to turn at Orange at Sulaman instead.

On our return leg, just as we were approaching 1Borneo, we saw Sarah on the other side of the road. We overtook a few other runners within the last few kilometres of the run. It was a surprisingly hot morning. When we finally finished the run, there were many familiar faces at the car park.

Of course everyone was all out to outdo each other with their bombastic stretching routines. John was there again with his favourite stretch.

But let me say to my readers that this stunt is not for the faint-hearted; please don't to try this at home.

Then, Jiki, not to be outdone by John, did her favourite "lipat kaki" stretching thing, assisted by her sister, Marilyn, as usual.

But that's not the only routine; she did other styles too!

Marilyn would normally stretch after her runs too, but I don't like her routines very much. I mean, they're all very common stuff, you see. Besides, there's no clear shots of her. It doesn't really matter, of course, as their parents were really good at what they did, so these sisters obviously look like they came from the same oven. But I searched the net anyway in my hope to let my readers have a better idea what Marilyn looks like in person, and the best that I've found is this one, which I reckon what she'd look like while taking a bath.

I was just chit-chatting with the other runners, when I suddenly realised that Jiki was walking around with an intimidating plastic knife. I thought she wanted to expand on her idea of that murderous stretching routine of hers by stabbing somebody with that knife. It was quite a frightful experience seeing her like that. Little did I know, actually they had a surprise birthday party for Alice. Just as Alice arrived, everyone started singing Happy Birthday, and John was the most enthusiastic singer of 'em all. They had a cake ready too! And then they continued a second time with the Happy Birthday song for Peter whose birthday also falls on the same day.

These are the happy faces who're now 18 years plus, obviously still very young. Just don't ask about that plus. For a moment, everyone seemed to forget about the morning run and BIM. The birthday party was the main focus. 

I don't know if they will expand the idea for future birthdays to include life band or some sort of fancy stretching demonstrations by our very own special guest stars John and Jiki. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it!

Well, folks, the countdown has begun; one week to the Borneo International Marathon. Here's to breaking new records and new frontiers!

Customer Loyalty & Its Big Reward

There are so many people out there who're active in the food supplements "direct-selling" business. If one were to consider the supposedly good points in each product, he is apt to end up buying all those products—there is in fact no need to have a regular meal—might as well consume the food supplements as the regular meals, and treat the regular meals as the supplements! Therefore, I don't normally buy "food supplements". 

However, because of my active lifestyle, I do consume some vitamins which I'm convinced may be beneficial for my body. For example, I take glucosamine and B-complex. I'm not sure if they're really of much use to my body, but I don't mind to consume them on a daily basis.

Anyway, this post is not really about food supplements; certainly, I have no intention to promote anything here in this post. I just want to share a little bit about customer loyalty and its big reward. 

You see, I've been a loyal customer of Abbott for some years now. Never mind which product and why I've been consuming it. I usually buy the product from a pharmacy near my office. And each time I buy the product, I'd fill up a form with my name, address etc. Apparently, I get to earn some sort of points from each purchase, and that can accumulate over time. When I've accumulated enough points, then I'm entitled to get a "free" product from the company.

Well, I've never really hoped for any reward for being a loyal customer, but then again if I can get something out of those so-called accumulated points, why not?

Today a big parcel arrived through a courier service at my office. Gave me quite a surprise it did. It was from Abbott. Some of the office folks were fairly excited just looking at the size of the box. 

Curiosity mounted, everyone was eager to know what's the content. Quite honestly, I was curious too. Usually, I would open deliveries such as this at home. But today, I couldn't contain my excitement—I just had to open the box there and then.

I went to the room where we keep all the site plans and started opening the box, all the time wondering what has gotten into those folks at Abbott. I mean, have they all gone crazy and suddenly became so generous?

Opening the top, there were clear plastic bags filled with air in them; I mean, seriously, just air. I then worked my way through those plastic bags, removing them one by one, until the box was almost empty.

But as I was taking out the plastic one by one, it began to strike me that this might be a hoax! And then the anti-climax—voila! right there at the bottom of that huge box, was one small box of the "free" product!

The feeling was akin to what Christopher Columbus must have felt when he found the New World after a long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic Ocean. But after several hours turning the matter in my mind, I still can't figure out what's the idea with that monster of a box to contain that small product. I'm really curious to know what's the explanation for that!

A Sunday Workout

We have a group of runners on facebook—comprising mainly KK folks—who'd run together on Saturdays or Sundays; and as one of the Admins of that group, I have the habit of posting a summarized Activity Report on Sundays. The reports are mainly focused on our weekend activities, since we hardly ever organised any during the weekdays as a group.

However, this lately, my so-called "summarized" reports are becoming increasingly longer as I've been having a bit of trouble controlling myself from giving too much info in my reports. Besides, I sometimes would like to throw in some photos in between the paragraphs to complement my reports, but for the life of me, I just don't know how to do it through facebook! You see, I'm one of those creatures who are too lazy to learn new stuff unless if I'm really forced to! That is why I've decided to post this week's report here—since I'm a little more well-versed with my own blog—and then I will provide a link from that facebook account to this blog. I hope this is not too complicated for the members.

So here goes nothing!

I've been doing quite some long workouts over the past few weekends as my preparation for the Sundown Ultra in Singapore, so it was quite a relief that this morning we only ran a mild 21km. When I arrived at the Likas Sports Complex at 5am, I was quite surprised to see a big crowd. And not to forget that there were other smaller groups which had started even earlier than 5am.

Although we started at the same time, the front pack quickly left some of us behind, and we lost sight of them within a few minutes. Peter and I kept a steady 7 mins' pace, and some of the ladies were tagging along behind us. It was a mainly pleasant run and it felt like we could continue running that pace forever!

Upon reaching the Shell station, however, Marilyn and Ndutt (why.... oh why she had to choose that nickname of all the names out there in the world?), crossed the road. The rest of us continued running. It was just about daylight as we were entering UMS. We reckoned that it's already quite safe for the ladies then; so Peter and I decided to run a tad faster. Up the hill we went (though thankfully not to fetch a pail of water) and then the familiar long downhill after that. One big loop before climbing the hill from the other side.

We saw several other runners on our way back. But we stopped at the Shell station for hydration. Now just to be very sure that you won't get the wrong idea, we run on sports drinks, not petrol or diesel. We bought out drinks inside the convenient store, not filled up at the pumps like all those motor vehicles. Some people may get it wrong because of the mention of Shell station, you see.

It was a beautiful morning. KK has the potential to be hot as early as 7am, but today the sky was cloudy; so much so, Peter and I had to run a little faster those last few kilometres to get a decent workout. It must have been about half an hour later when we arrived back at the sports complex. Most of them had long finished their runs. One by one the rest arrived. And then Tau Sama Tau arrived in his car from who knows where, having run over 30km earlier. He had in his car a coolbox filled with much welcomed drinks.

As usual, we mingled around, chatting about running in general. I had the opportunity to share the little that I know about heart rate monitors.

It's nice to see Sarah Burns back to running again after several weeks' break due to a knee injury. She was all smiles after her run.

And as you've probably noticed, Marilyn and Jiki was up to their weird stretching routine in the background, which looked a lot like a murder was in progress. Here's a better view; see for yourself.

I'm not sure where these people got the ideas for all these fancy stretching rituals, but in this particular case, perhaps Jiki was just trying to outdo John Chin's obscene stretching routine?

Well, the fasting month will be over by next weekend, and incidentally it would be about 2 weeks to the Borneo International Marathon. Some of us will be running the "peak" long run then (but some ran it this morning). I'm guessing perhaps we will be seeing a bigger crowd next Sunday, all eager to burn off the Raya calories!

Mental Skill

I ran a long slow distance (LSD) of 31km this morning starting at 4am together with my running buddy, Dr Peter. I have run this distance many, many times in the past, and I see such a workout as just another ordinary workout. But this morning was somewhat different. You see, yesterday, I went cycling for a distance of 88km, and my legs were pretty tired when I started running this morning. In fact, I felt so tired to the extent that I wasn't even sure that I could finish the intended 31km. 

Actually, I've been cycling on Saturdays and running LSD on Sundays for a couple of weeks now, each week steadily increasing the distances. All this is within my modified training programme in preparation for the Sundown Ultra 100km in mid September.

Well, as I was saying, I felt so tired that I thought I would not be able to finish the 31km. I told Peter that I would try to run at least 25km. It was a bit of a concern that I began to suffer as early as just a few kilometres into the workout, but I somehow kept going. And by the time we reached Orange where we stopped to buy our drinks, my legs were getting "immune" from the exhaustion. Come to think of it, I surprised myself when I was able to keep going, even running the undulating UMS loop to complete the entire 31km. I felt like I have conquered a full marathon!

To be honest, I'm not sure how I was able to run the 31km with my exhausted legs. Possibly, it's because I was chit-chatting with Peter throughout the run and that helped to take my mind off thinking about my exhausted legs. Maybe it had something to do with the energy gels that I consumed every 45 to 60 mins intervals. Or perhaps the pleasant gloomy weather helped a bit too. Hell, maybe it's because of this underwear which I wore during the run?

Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me hasten to say that I did not get it from this fellow!

I have no idea what happened to his. If indeed he gave his away to somebody, I hope at least he'd wash it first.

Anyway, it has been said that as the distance for an endurance event increases, it will become increasingly about mental strength and less about physical strength and fitness. But I sometimes wonder, are we born with mental strength? Is there anything we can do to develop it? For a while now, I've been thinking that this thing about mental strength has a lot to do with mental skill too. And because it is a skill, it follows that it could be learned and developed.

I have the habit of counting my steps when I'm really tired to run. For example at the later stages of a marathon. At some points no amount of strength—mental nor physical—can help to make me continue running. But it is strange that when I tell myself to keep going, say, for another 500 steps before rewarding myself with a 15 seconds walk, I can then focus on counting those steps, and only on counting those steps one by one. It works well for me as I'm somehow able to "shut" my mind off from my exhaustion. I use this same approach in all the other endurance events too such as the ultra trail and cycling events. It is in that sense that I see it more as a mental skill, rather than strength. Of course this can't go on and on forever, but it's amazing how much more you can squeeze out of your tired legs!

So the next time you think you've reached your limits, try counting in your head by setting a fixed target of say 100 or 200 steps; and it's a good idea to count with a rhythm too. The number of counts can gradually be raised as you train yourself more and more. Just make sure you won't use this trick to beat me if we're racing against each other!

Training Advice

A fair number of athletes who've googled up for "The Most Beautiful Thing (TMBT)" have found their way to this blog because of my race reports for TMBT 2011 as posted here (Part 1) and here (Part 2); and TMBT 2012 as posted here. Some of them, especially the first-timer ultra trail runners, have asked me for training advice not only because I've experienced the TMBTs, but also because I'm a Sabahan and presumed to know a bit more about our local terrains. But after a while, their questions have begun to sound very similar to one another, and I've decided perhaps it's a good idea to share whatever little that I know here in this post.

Let me hasten to say, however, that I'm not an expert in trail running. In fact, I don't even have a proper training schedule for the ultra 100km. I am for the most part a road runner, and I hardly ever run trails unless if I've signed up for a trail-running event.

Unfortunately, I have signed up, and now training for, the Sundown Ultra 100km in Singapore scheduled for 14/15 September, and will therefore have to give TMBT 2013 a miss since the latter falls on the same dates. And that is quite a shame, because it appears that TMBT will be even more challenging this year!

Now a standard training programme for an ultra trail is very punishing to say the least. Apart from the weekday runs of not less than 10km each and often rising to 15km each, there are the so-called back-to-back (B2B) long runs on Saturdays and Sundays; and when I say long, I really mean long! But you see, I just don't have it in me to follow that "standard" training programme, so I have modified it a bit to suit my own (limited) ability as well as the amount of time I have for training. Therefore, I can never dream of finishing among the top finishers. But it is still possible to target a "decent" finishing time.

I still continue my weekday runs, usually 3 days on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and each not less than 10km. Then my weekend B2B comes in a slightly modified form, i.e. cycling on Saturdays and LSD run on Sundays. By doing so, I'm hoping to spare my knee for a bit. I rest on Mondays and Fridays, although this recently, I also swim on those days. On alternate Sundays, I did hill training on village paths (we have plenty of those), and I would peak about 3 weeks before the race with an approximate 12-13 hours of hillwork on Sunday. After that I would begin to taper for the race.

There isn't much more to share except that for those not used to the Sabah terrains, I would recommend a good dose of hillwork, especially those of you who are used to running only on flat roads. So if you haven't already done any hillwork up to now, it's a good idea to start soon. Hills, hills, and more hills. And after you have done those hill trainings, do some more hill trainings—it's almost like it can never be enough! You just have to trust me on this—we have ridiculous hills here in Sabah, and I'm only talking about the foothills around Mount Kinabalu!

So there you go, quite a simple training advice. Good luck to you!

Keluhan Jiwa

Khas ditujukan kepada Awang Md Jumat Md Tahir.

Alkisah nasib malang ditimpa kedukaan yang teramat sangat—kesedihan menyayat hati... 

Namun apakan daya, insan yang lemah ini, bagaikan dilamun cinta asmara—makan tak kenyang; tidur tak lena; mandi tak basah! Benci tapi rindu! Walau sehari tak tak ketemu, dunia bagaikan tak bererti lagi. Tidur malam terbayang-bayang dalam ingatan!

Demikianlah peritnya mangsa dibelenggu ketagihan yang tak terhingga. Hidup penuh kesiksaan, menjadi hamba si dia; manis-manisan yang tentunya dicipta di neraka. Saban hari, siang dan malam menghantui jiwa!

Buai tinggi tinggi, sampai kasau atap

Capai level tinggi, sampai tidur tak lelap

Wahai teman-teman kalian yang masih belum terjerat dibelenggu manisan yang teramat sangat; ataupun yang baru nak berjinak-jinak dengan si dia, dengarkanlah nasihat ikhlas dari insan yang sudah tiada harapan lagi untuk melepaskan diri—jangan dijangkau permainan Candy Crush Saga. Masih belum terlambat... kembalilah ke pangkal jalan. Percayalah...jarakkan diri dari benda durjana ini!