Sponsorship Update – Ian’s New Shoes

In a continuing series about my sponsorship from L’Oreal Men Expert and New Balance, I just headed down to the New Balance concept store at Raffles City to collect my new shoes! I have been wearing Asics Gel Kayano’s ever since I started running seriously back in 2007, mainly because a doctor had recommended them. But now, I’m finally giving New Balance a try.

I have to say that this was quite possibly the best shoe “buying” experience I’ve had. I don’t think it was due to the fact that I didn’t have to pay for the shoes but really the person that helped me seemed very knowledgeable and friendly. I told him I was wearing Gel Kayano’s and he immediately knew what type of shoe that was and which was the New Balance equivalent. He also then measured my feet individually and told me that actually my left foot was half a size bigger than my right foot. Whaaaaat?? I’m 27 (almost 28) years old and I’m only finding this out now??? oh geez. that means whenever I tried on shoes only on my right foot they would’ve been too small! Shocking.

Another interesting thing is that (according to what the New Balance rep told us) only they carry multiple widths of shoes in Singapore. I experienced this when trying the shoes as well since the first pair i tried were a little too wide and the guy helping me noticed it as well and quickly got me another pair. I was quickly kitted up with the correctly fitting shoes and some fancy socks, both of which feel great. I shall let you know how they perform real soon!

Aren’t my blue 769s nice?

Ian called me schnookums

Iαη Hαll says (11:20 PM):hey schnookums

Which rhymes with Skookum.

L’Oreal – Because I’m Worth It!!

I’M SPONSORED!!!

I believe I have reached the pinnacle of my sporting career! Who knew that it would have nothing to do with a race!? L’Oreal Paris (together with New Balance) is going to be sponsoring me for the next year!

I’m going to have my own sponsored attire to wear to races that I don’t have to pay for myself! Oh JOY!!!

Unfortunately they aren’t sponsoring me due to my triathlete awesomeness (although we all know I am), they are sponsoring me because I happen to have the right connections and they were looking for active men to act as ambassadors for their Men Expert line of products. In fact, I just recently went for the first meetup and the gave us samples of the products which is apparently 6 months supply. I say “apparently” because I believe its more than i’ve bought in my entire life combined! You be the judge…

I did learn about the new skincare regime I should have which honestly, I was previously lucky to get the first step in. Just for reference, the steps are:
Step 1: Cleanse
Step 2: Tone
Step 3: Moisturize

Cycling in Desaru, Malaysia

When you live in Singapore and cycle, it doesn’t take long for you to get just a little bored of the roads. Its a tiny little island and you can easily travel all the way across it and back in half a day. So, The Breakfast Club planned a trip to Desaru in Malaysia to enjoy some new scenery. Technically I don’t think its actually Desaru since that’s a city but rather its the state of Johor.

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

We started off at something like 5.30am so that we could ride up to Changi Point Ferry Terminal and jump on a bum boat across to Malaysia. It was pretty interesting wheeling your bicycle through the terminal especially since everybody was used to it and didn’t even bat an eyelid. We went through customs and then packed all the bikes (there were 15 of us) into the boat. The boat was so full (with bikes) that there was no space for everybody to sit down and some ended up standing outside for the 40min ride.

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

Once we got to Desaru it was a wonderful wonderful ride. There were looong straight roads with great scenery, no traffic lights and surprisingly polite drivers. The drivers in Singapore always honk angrily at you but the drivers in Desaru would happily go around us and give us lots of space too! It felt like a “real” ride since we could actually get moving and not have to stop for ages. Not like Singapore where the longest stretch is like 5km.

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

Along the way, Akshay decided it would be a good idea to rest his wrists on the handlebars as we rode along. The cycling gods disagreed and he lost control of the bike and went flying off the bike. Luckily though he landed on the grass to the side of the road and besides a bruised knee was not too badly hurt. Thankfully because it was only an hour into the ride and it would’ve been quite sad to have to turn back then. Also, we would later see somebody that had a far worse experience with their bike crash. A cyclist from another group we saw had bandages over his face and a snapped handlebar. Scary stuff.

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

We rode about 50km in one direction right up until we were about to actually reach Desaru the town/city and then of course, had to stop for breakfast! That IS what the club is called.

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

We turned around and headed right back. By the last 10km everybody was pretty quiet since everybody was tired and we also had to go back up and down hills that weren’t so bad the first time around. It was especially bad since singapore is basically pancake flat. After 6 hours in the saddle my ass hurt as well… I mean the distance wasn’t that much but the time was!

From Desaru Cycling – 16.05.09

After we got back to Singapore, it was already lunchtime so we ate at Changi Village before heading home. All in all it was a 140km ride… My longest ever!!

10,000

Nope, its not the number of days Chunnie and I have been dating.

Its the number of page views that this blog has had!! The statistics for the site just ticked over the 10,000 mark yesterday… WOW!

The 2009 “Season” – Not Quite According to Plan

Quite some time ago I posted my race schedule for 2009 but things have not quite worked out the way I wanted. Let me start with what has already been written about on the blog.

Raw Duathlon 2009 Because of my ankle injury I was forced to pull out of the race not long after I started, my first DNF which you can read about here.

Desaru Half-Ironman 2009 I had intended to do this race but because Chunnie was going to be in town the week before and I like it when she’s there for my races, I intended to take part in the Ironman 70.3 Putrajaya which fit perfectly into her travel schedule. I then KIVed doing Desaru for another year or so.

Ironman 70.3 Putrajaya 2009 As it turned out, i decided to do this race but then not long after I got my ankle injury. I decided that it wasn’t a good idea to build up from no running to running a half-marathon in a matter of a couple months so this race ALSO went out the window!

Bintan Triathlon 2009 (Olympic Distance) Since there weren’t any races scheduled in May i signed up to do this race together with Marisa (her first Olympic-distance). But as luck would have it, I fell sick with the flu just the day before! So instead of racing I was left lumping on the couch at home.

OSIM Singapore International Triathlon 2009 Having missed two successive races (Raw and Bintan) I’m wondering whether I should try my luck and sign up for another race where I might end up having to pull out!! I’m wondering… but then again I have a feeling i’ll just sign up.

What a season so far! Based on the fact I haven’t done anything especially “long” I’m really thinking about doing the Ironman 70.3 Singapore again in March next year. Chunnie will be home, it won’t require any travel and it is well organized, we’ll see…

Cycling in Central Park

I went cycling in Central Park today for 3 reasons –

1) It was a brilliant Sunday afternoon…sunny and warm (relatively) at 18C;

2) I got too lazy to do what I’d originally intended, which was to take the train 80 mins north to go see the art museum at Beacon;

and most importantly..

3) Ian scoffed at me because he didn’t think I could cycle an entire loop around Central Park without stopping to push my bike up the hilly bits on the east side.

As it turns out, I managed to prove Ian wrong.
Well, it was quite a pain riding uphill, and I was embarrassingly slow that runners whom I’d passed earlier caught up and went by..but still, I refused to get off my bike and persisted.

It was a pleasant excursion, it’d only been a month ago since I was last in Central Park and the trees were still somewhat bare. Summer is obviously around the corner because the trees were full of leaves and there was grass all over the ground, so much so that for awhile it was difficult for me to recognize the places that I’d always ran past. Interesting how plants grow so quickly.

I did my obligatory loop, then gave up in favour of a hotdog and reading my magazine in the sun. Need to work on that tan now that it’s swimsuit season.

From Random Photos

PS OK Ian, you can scoff at me for stopping after a mere 5 miles, but I win on the uphill one.

Raw Duathlon 2009 – My First DNF

Well it turns out the ankle injury I got hadn’t completely healed because just a couple kilometers into the race I could feel it hurting. I honestly wondered to myself whether I could ever make the decision to retire from a race given that I’m competitive and just plain enjoy doing them. But after those first 10 minutes or so, it was pretty obvious to me that I wasn’t going to get through the first 10km of the run let alone the second 10km. Even if I did, it would definitely make the injury worse with not a lot of benefit either. Since the course was an “out and back” i kind of slowed down to a crawl and jogged lightly back to the start. I didn’t really fancy walking back all the way since it would take so long.

It was kind of a funny feeling watching all those people run by me as i slowed. They must have wondered what an idiot I was starting so far up front if I couldn’t even handle the first 5km of the race. Nevertheless I trudged on and sadly stopped my watch at the end of the first lap and went to meet the support crew. It was a sad day for me, more so because I knew that it was a serious injury and it kind of puts doubts into my plans for the next few months which actually has a number of races.

Since I was out of the race I decided to take up cameraman duties and snapped a few for Marisa, Revant, Phyllis and Wei who were taking part. But to go with the theme of the day, my camera ran out of batteries and stopped working.

From Raw Duathlon 2009

My birthday ski trip

This post is a tad late, but I was inspired to post it as I was looking through old photos and a very funny video of Ian, and realized that neither of us had mentioned this trip in our previous posts about Ian’s New York visit!

Well, one of the highlights of Ian’s visit was that we drove about 5 hours north to Okemo, VT to go skiing over my birthday week.

Interestingly, I thought the best part of our trip was lazing in our rented apartment -

It had a real working fireplace, and “Man Make Fire” Ian proudly tried to start a fire…

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

We had hot chocolate lazing on the couch, and watched lots of Friday Night Lights which was how Ian made a fan out of me

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

I gave Ian some “lets hit the slopes” attitude

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Ian took me out to a nice dinner, and got me my birthday cheesecake!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

I woke up one morning to find Ian busy cooking away in the kitchen – turns out he was making me a surprise breakfast! What a sweetie!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Oh yes, and we did some skiing too!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Singapore Sprint Series 2009 – Triathlon

About a week ago I went for a “long run” of about 15K and towards the end of it i started having a pain in my left ankle, it got bad enough that eventually I stopped running and just walked home. I wasn’t sure what brought it on but i RICEd it all the same (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate) and was disappointed when a day later I didn’t see an improvement, in fact it didn’t feel any better until possibly Friday. That meant throughout the week I didn’t think I would be able to take part in the Tribob Triathlon (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run) on Sunday – I was bummed! But luckily since it felt better on Friday I decided to test it out for a short bike ride on Saturday and that went well so i figured i would give the race a go!!

So, I was fit enough to race and I had my brand-spanking new Speedie 3.0 to race as well. Team Hall was there as were many members of The Breakfast Club.

From Tribob – Triathlon

Swim
It was an interesting test for me since I’ve been going for swim classes at SeaMonsta for about a month and I was curious to know if it has been helping. I didn’t find the swim nearly as tiring as the Aquathlon and despite me getting smacked in the face by somebody, it felt like it went by quite fast. My time from the race last year was 16:42 but this year i was shocked when i looked at my watch when i got out of the water because it read 14:46!! I would later find out my official time was 15:38 which is still more than a minute faster. Wow! Although I think from Marisa’s big grin she found the swim EVEN EASIER.

From Tribob – Triathlon

Bike
I made a big mistake here because I forgot to take off my cleat covers from my cycling shoes before setting up transition which meant I had to stop and take them off during the race. This felt like it wasted like 30 seconds just fiddling with them. The ride itself was shocking initially because i didn’t realize there was a head-wind and I actually thought i was so dead tired i couldn’t get up above 30km/h. Luckily when I turned around i was going about 36km/h and it was obvious there was a head-wind in one direction and a tail-wind in the other.

From Tribob – Triathlon

Run
I found the initial 2.5km lap of the run pretty difficult, perhaps I had not been doing enough run practices off of the bike or perhaps I had pushed a little hard on the bike? In any case I ended up having a time one minutes slower than last year. The good news is that my ankle got through the race unscathed. After that I stood at the finishing line taking pictures of fellow Breakfast-Clubbers. Some of them even looked like they won the race:

From Tribob – Triathlon

When the results were tabulated, I finished 9th in my age-group for the race. In the series, I went one better this year and finished 8th although I would value this 8th place finish more since there were 204 participants in the series which is more than double than the previous year.

Another piece of exciting news is that Team Hall got some publicity on the website covering the race. Check out our dear mother in the last photo on RedSports.sg. Fame!!

From Tribob – Triathlon