A wholesome workout

A little bit of light fare for once... to share with all my short break on a long weekend...

I love Malaysia's public holidays... today is Labor's Day holiday. Whilst I thought this was a international public holiday, apparently this is not recognised in some countries, and in fact according to a friend in Australia, some states in Australia recognises it whilst others do not.

I had a good weekend, which I would call the lull before the storm. The storm is blowing for this coming few days and onto the next 1-2 months, when work pace at my project will pick up to a full blast till the project goes live.

Saturday - We won the badminton challenge
Saturday started off a little disappointing. I was not able to watch or support my team members in the inter-department badminton challenge. I was tied up at work all morning, despite moving the morning meeting to start earlier (yes, unfortunately it has gotten to this - scheduled meetings on Saturdays?!). Thus, despite well armed with my Nikon D70s in my car, I was not able to make the trip to cheer my team members, who hoisted the trophy as anticipated. I have to give my thumbs up to these folks, what can I say when about 8 people in my project participated in the finals, in two separate teams, against each other? It can only be said that I greatly admire those who can put in their 10-11pms nights and still take some evenings off to practice, whilst others who bear the Nike's "Just Do It" style can also succeed. Diversity is my admiration for my co-workers.

Nevertheless, I managed to take a long lunch far-away in Jalan Loke Yew in town for a good sumptious unhealthy roast pork lunch and registered myself nearby in FTAAA office for the Jelita's Women's Run the next day. Yeah, somehow I justified myself for a sumptious lunch ...

Sunday - A unique all womens race
It was a rather unique all womens race I participated in. Firstly I really liked the pink free shirts. I decided to be pink for the day, unlike some regular runners who only run in their own apparel because of comfort. As I recalled in Pacesetter's magazine, women form hardly a small percentage of runners, being a more male dominated event, although it has begun to pick up a little more on the more veteran women runners.

At the starting line, I was surprised to see not as many participants as I expected, when I asked the FTAAA guy when I signed up, he said "banyak orang" (many people). The other really unparalleled instance was the usual FTAAA lady announcer did not turn up and a man replaced her instead. Then because he was trying to stall for time for the official flag-off at 730 am, he turned on the music and a Fitness First instructor jumped to the front and took the group standing in the starting pen for a 5 mins ad-hoc warm-up. It was so cool to be spontaneous! I could not imagine the guys doing this :-)

Also at the race, the other surprising thing was that there was a lot of Malay ladies participating. Probably because Jelita is a malay magazine, but it was encouraging that there were more Malay runners than I usually see in other regular public 10km races. Also, because I was on my own this time, and treating it as a warmup for the New Balance Pacesetter's 15km race, I took time to chit-chat with some of the ladies and also surveyed the "competition". The categories was also slightly unusual, as I was in a Women's Senior category for 30-40 years old. Together with the Open category, this was for 7km, whilst the Women's Junior and Veteran's category only had a short 5km. Surveying around was fun waiting for the start of the race, as it allowed me time to check out how old or young one can look within a specific age group :-)

The race itself was a bit sluggish for me as well. After weeks of non-practice, non-activity and many many late hours and weekends, the stress has taken its toll on my body, and it did not help that I had barely enough time for only once a week at the gym. The last race I did was almost 1.5 months back. I managed to make it in good time, but enroute back around the corner through the Jalan Parlimen/Dataran Merdeka traffic light, I made a mistake and stopped to a stroll. The abrupt stop made me very light headed and drained of energy, and I barely managed to walk the next 150 m to the corner of the Dataran Merdeka. Afraid that I would not be able to stand up straight much longer, I actually walked down to the carpark intending to give-up the finishing line and wash my face and go home. One lady behind me called me, telling me I was going the wrong way, but I told her to go ahead. So, there I was, sitting in my car for 3 mins, went to wash my face and returned to my car to sit down for another few minutes, very disappointed with myself. Then I did something almost absurd. I closed the car door, ran back up the steps and completed the remaining 200m of the race to the finishing line. And then I went home to sleep for almost 5 hours straight.

As a post mortem, I realised that it was not the race which nearly knocked me out, because I had the capability of running 7km with not much effort. It was my unrested state, and a very tired body that was screaming for attention. The run was a flick of a switch, a flick that told me my bulb was pretty closed to being fused and needed replacement.

Monday - Golf at Nilai Springs
My return to golf was a little less eventful as compared to my run the day before. I had not seen my golf buddy for almost a couple of months as well, and Beng, who is a member at Nilai Springs I had not seen for almost nine months.

After a good night's rest, I was amused and also impressed with myself for getting up at 545am for a 630am ride to Nilai for our game at Nilai Springs. I shot a decent game but what I was really impressed with myself was that I was so relaxed and throughout the game, I repeatedly told my buggy-mate that 5+ hours of golf, and add another 2hours of travel for the game was nothing compared to 45 mins of running 7km. How amazing the comparison is.

So, all in, I had a good wholesome workout, first the brains for working on Saturday, then the legs on Sunday, and the upper body for Monday. My body still aches, but it was a good laborer's day out!