Two Months

This will be very brief.

Here is my 2-months report card.

In the last few runs, I ran with few other people. It's nice, because running with others push you to go faster (ego boost la katakan). But I also realized that I'm not that strong. My running buddies siap boleh lompat-lompat, running sideways, bersembang macam biasa, and I was hanging on to dear life macam nak putus nyawa. Haih. Still a long way to go.

And in the last two months, I've only worked out on the average once every 2 days. I could definitely do better. So that's a plus point. At current pace, I think I've made good progress, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

This injury that I'm having, it's a tough thing to shake, but it's getting better.

One thing that I find exhausting is sticking to the plan. Simon Cross calls it the Mojo. I'm slowly losing it. Working out is starting to become an effort, and results are trickling in (not that I'm monitoring closely). It's still fun, but not as fun. At one point it all happened naturally. Now I find that I'm dragging myself. I'm halving the frequency of my meals, halving the portion of the meals I take, and to be frank, I miss a good can of ice-cool Coca Cola.

I was walking around the house today and noticed this:

Ye. Periuk atas katil. I had popcorn for lunch. Plain, unsweetened, unsalted, no butter popcorn mind you (I also had tuna, so don't worry, I'm not starving myself). I don't dare pointing the camera the other way because the house is a complete wreck. If I leave stuff around for another 2 weeks, a new species of amphibian will emerge from the trash bin.

I think I will have a normal dinner tonight. A normal portion nasi goreng kampung with sup ayam and cold water. Yeah, I'm still sticking with the no-refined sugar diet.

Gotta find that Mojo back.

Here Comes 6 Again

Borneo International Marathon will be 6 weekends away. That's excluding this weekend as I am currently in my favourite phase of training called 'rest', enduring my least favourite part of training called 'injury' and 'falling sick'.

In my last 2 runs, I really took it hard. The former run, I did my fastest run ever [(I think) which is still relatively slow] and the latter run, I ran the longest since.... since... 4 years ago maybe.

In between those two, I was down with a fever, and at the moment, I'm nursing two painful knees, which I think is caused by bursitis. Things are okay when I walk, but when I kneel in prayer or walk down the stairs, my knees feel like bursting.

Bursitis is no good. It means I'm going too fast, too soon, and I don't have much time left!

Poetically, I was brewing a new training strategy while sipping tea - without sugar of course - in a teahouse (very the orang puteh). Harap-harap menjadi lah.

Solution to my problems are:

• Drop more weight
• Do stretching exercises everyday
• Core muscles strengthening 3 times a week
• Tempo running on weekdays
• Distance running on weekends (Sandakan gets less daylight. It's pitch black by 6:30pm. Work ends at 5. That's major bummer)
• Low-cal, low-fat, high-protein, good quality carbohydrate, once-a-day diet. Fruit snacks when I'm hungry.

No pictures today, the laptop just recovered from a flu as well and I'm still putting stuff into place. Everything's a mess. But here's a video:

Iron Maiden - The Wicker Man

Something I listen to again and again when running.

"Your time will come! Your time will come!"

I'm sure Bruce meant 'your time will come when we throw you into the fire', but having him operatically scream it out repeatedly, kind of revs you up.

6 is a Beautiful Number

This is going to be short and simple. It's late and thinking of stringing words to make is sound nice is, well, tiring.

It's been 6 weeks since I embarked on my journey to self-improvement whereby I vehemently put my foot down and vow to pedantically bla bla bla bla... *simple words.... simple words...*

Anyway, it's week 6 and this is my progress so far.

The tummy is getting smaller. Chest is also flatter. The hips don't lie, those are still big.

You should also guess by now that I'm a big fan of Adidas, and I don't have much running attire to go around.

And, yes, I have registered for Borneo International Marathon, signing up for 21km event. What have I done.

Training starts today. 60 days to go.

Oh by the way, IRON MAIDEN IN SINGAPORE WAS AWESOME!!!!!

SCREAM FOR ME, SINGAPORE!!!!!!!!!!! AAAARRRRHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!