2013

The final month of the year will come after tomorrow.

Perhaps this year is quite a fulfilling year to me, which I'd ever had. I carried out most of the new year's resolution I planned although I have discontinued some, some came unexpected, some never been carried out, yet I am still not very happy also not to say unhappy. I don't know why but I still cannot find a very clear direction and answer to the best possible life.

So, still searching.

Here are the resolutions:
1) Do more reading - did read some books, many articles, but my reading speed was slow. Need to read more books and not facebook. 
2) Learn to swim - I didn't know how to float at all, but I am now learning butterfly style after 19 sessions.

3) Join toastmaster - initially it was a firm plan to join a toastmaster club because I wana extend my circle and also improve my public speaking skill, but I had to postpone it because of new plan to learn Japanese language (with personal reason). But after completed first level of Japanese class, I decided to stop learning it because of other commitments although i love the language (also the personal reason has not been realized, but then I went to Canada). I will join toastmaster, I will, perhaps next year.

4) Practice meditation - I attended meditation class every Tues early this year, but somehow I did not continue after 2nd quarter of the year. I should make practicing meditation as a lifestyle as what I do for exercise but I lack of diligence.

5) Investment - continue learning and doing.

6) Save money - saved some, but need to keep life even more simple.

7) Transform body/ six packs abs - successfully transformed the fat botakman to a lean boy, but six packs abs still needs a lot of hardwork....

8) Run a full marathon 42.195km - successfully ran 2 full marathons in a year (the Standard Chartered KL Marathon 29th Sept. 2013 and the Penang Bridge International Marathon 17 Nov 2013).

9) Improve knowledge and practice in Buddhism - I did not improve much, lack of diligence is acknowledged.

10) Family - love my parents and my niece more, I did it but I should give more.

The wish to go to London in 2012 to attend conference (self financed) did not come true because it was so expensive. But out of my expectation, I got the chance to visit to London this year Sept.

Future plan in my mind - study MBA, triathlon race/ Ironman race, but I don't have a clear plan yet. Currently I feel uncertainty for 2014. 

What I want to do now is, disconnect from FB, lock myself in room do my reading and prepare whatever I should for December 2013.

Documentation: My Results in Past Major Running Events

One of the reason why I started this blog is to train my writing skills. But slowly due to busy and lazy, I almost forget to open this blog. Sigh!

I supposed to have my very first full marathon in my life on last Sunday 30 June 2013, the Standard Chartered KL Marathon. But sadly, it was being postponed due to the stupid haze. You may imagine how much time wasted, how much cost wasted, how many people were affected (there are total of 30,250 runners this year with more than 3000 overseas runners). 

For myself and my buddy, we can't reschedule our flight and hotel, although we booked our budget flight during promotion but because we have to come again in September, we need to spend extra RM200 for transportation + accommodation. Anyway, the organiser is not to be blamed as they were making a very hard decision to postpone it for the sake of the majority runners with the unpredictable haze situation last week.

I had run in various 10km races. But for distance more than 10km, till date I had run two 17km races and two half marathon (21km) only, but then I move to full marathon this year. Some people might feel that I am putting myself on risk or I am brave. But I just think that I can do it when I see my body slowly become stronger and my confidence increases through out this 8 months.

So today I am writing this to document my result for the past major running events for my own future reference.

1) My "virgin" run -  Penang Bridge International Marathon 2011, 20th November.
10km run:Gun Time: 1:20:35.81
Chip Time: 1:20:11.27
Ranking : 1443/3696

2) Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2012, 24th June.
10km run:
Chip Time: 01:28:34
Split 5km: 00:42:26
Ranking: 3921

3) Penang Bridge International Marathon 2012, 18th November.
Half Marathon (21km):
Gun Time: 02:49:08.66
Chip Time: 02:47:13.11
9km Split: 01:11:00.44
17km Split: 02:11:13.11

4) 17km Penang Run 2013, 27th January.
Gun Time: 02:04:01
Chip Time:02:02:56
Category Ranking (Junior Open): 187/ 357
Overall Ramking: 682/1205

5) Malakoff, 17km Penang 2013, 17th March.
Gun Time: 01:43:06.07
Chip Time: 01:42:56.44
9.2km Split: 00:58:46.35
Men's Open Ranking: 249/ 944

6) Penang Run 1st Series Result (Esplanade - Teluk Kumbar), 12 May 2013:  
Half Marathon (21km):
Gun Time - 2:12:45
Chip Time - 2:12:11 
Overall Ranking - 218
Mix Ranking - 187
Category Ranking - 98 

Running a Marathon

It has been many months, nearly half a year I didn't update my blog because I had been busy since the start of this 2013 to carry out my new year's resolution. 
Well the main motive when I started this blog is to aim improve my skills of writing both in Mandarin and English, it really needs a continuous motivation to write. But it is often burried by laziness.

Part of my planning for this year is to learn Japanese, learn swimming and run a marathon. In runners world, when we say run a marathon it automatically means running a 42.195km marathon, the so called full marathon. Running a 21km run is called half marathon while running 10km run is not categorized as marathon, it is normally called 10km race or fun run.

I started my Japanese language class since March 2013. Learning Japanese language is an ongoing process and still a lot of things to be learnt and memorized. Regarding swimming, I did not know how to swim even float in the water at all. I always wanted to know the feeling of moving in the water since many years ago but now only I started to learn swimming since March. It was a great experience in learning swimming, at the initial stage it made me realized that how poor my body's coordination and how stiff my body was when I was in the water. But it also made me realized that my learning ability is quite fast, I could float and started to learn breaststroke kick during 1st lesson, 2nd lesson learnt hand movement, 4th lesson breathing, hand and leg coordination, 5th lesson fine tuning breastroke and 7th lesson started to learn freestyle.

Let's come back to the title, running a marathon. I will be running a marathon in this coming 30th June 2013, in the Standard Chartered KL Marathon (SCKLM) 2013, my first (full) marathon in my life. I ran few 10km races, two 17km races, and two half marathons. Last year I had my first half marathon 21km in the Penang Bridge International Marathon (PBIM) 2012, will write about the improvements I made in another article later for my own documentation as well.

Running a (full) marathon, is not an easy stuff, it's killing! People often said you must run numerous half marathons then only can try full marathon. But I don't believe, I believe in a stronger leg and not the numbers of races. This is because I never ran many half marathons but I made a 30mins improvement in my 2nd half marathon this year compare to my first half marathon PBIM last year. So I ran twice in half marthon and this year I am going to run in a (full) marathon. The cut off time for SCKLM 2013 is 6 hours to complete the 42.195km in order to get the finisher medal and finisher tee. I believe I can finish it within 6 hours, but my concern is how fast I can finish it.  

So, another 30days for my first (full) marathon in my life, I feel excited! There are many training programs and guidelines being suggested by experts for running a (full) marathon such as HIIT, hill, tempo training, LSD and so on. Well, I neither read any of those articles nor have time to accumulate weekly millage. It's good if one can follow those suggestions. It definitely can improve one's stamina. But I don't have enough time already, so I'm using my very own approach, the combination of weight training, swimming + running 3x per week (if possible). I believe weight training plays an important role for stronger legs, better endurance and to run faster. So for the next few weeks I will do more lunges, squats, dead lift, and back strengthening for a stronger posterior chain.

My target is 5 hours. Let's see!