T minus 26 weeks...

...to my triple A race this year - Ironman Langkawi, Malaysia.

I've been training regularly the past few weeks. Clocking around 10 hours, about 210-220kms a week, most of are spent cycling on the trainer. The temperature has risen which helps a bit. I managed to run outdoors a couple of times a week for the past few weeks. The ice on the roads have mostly melted, although there are puddles in some parts that never seem to subside. I've given up avoiding puddles and just run through them, which is why I haven't started using my new Asics GT2000 trainers yet. My poor Brooks Adrenaline are already very worn out and still taking a beating.

Weather forecast for London, Ontario for the next few days. Taken from the Weather Network

The weather forecast looks promising. Finally, positive degrees Celcius everyday! We will still get some light snowing here and there but temperatures are warm enough for the them to melt quickly. With some luck, I may be able to start riding outdoors next weekend. Although, it may have to be a midday ride as temperatures hover around the freezing point early in the morning.

As if I'm not doing so already, I'll try to share my training log every week from now on. Yes, I'm one of those who overshares my training sessions and annoyingly floods your news feed with how far I swam, biked or ran today. But hey, it's my blog, my Twitter and my Facebook, so I get to do what I want haha. Plus, it'll give this blog a bit more activity as it has been quite slow the past few months.

The past few months of maintenance training has come to an end. The REAL training starts tomorrow. I'll try to get myself used to waking up early for some morning swims. I have been sleeping in everyday and only doing my workouts in the evening.

In 4 weeks time, I'm doing a half marathon at the Forest City Road Races - my first race for the year and I plan to do well to start the season on a good note.

Free birthday meals!

We celebrated my wife, Li-Ann's birthday over the weekend. Being the bargain hunters that we are, we subscribe to the mailing lists of some of the local restaurants and manage to score free meals in the months of our birthdays.

Here's one at our favourite Italian restaurant - Fellini Koolini's. My New York striploin was a bit dry, I'll ask for medium rare the next time. Li-Ann had the lobster lasagne and it was really rich!

On Saturday morning, which was the actual birthday itself, we had brunch at Maxwell McCoys. When we arrived the doors were closed but we noticed there were patrons inside. After waiting for a while, the cook came out and told us that the wait staff had gone home sick and they had call in replacement wait staff. But he let us in and we sat ourselves at the table and helped ourselves to the menu.

Burger with a generous serving of fries

Eggs benedict and you guessed it, fries!

Li-Ann had always baked her own birthday cake. But we didn't bring any of her baking equipment here. You can see that she improvised with a mooncake box from Tai Thong as the baking tray.

Happy birthday darling! I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful and supportive wife. Love you, muaks!

MH370

On early Saturday morning, news of a missing Malaysian Airlines plane shocked the nation and very soon, the world. Flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control about couple of hours after midnight on it's way to Beijing, China. 48 hours have passed since then and yet, still no clear indication of what could happened to this plane.

I do not know anyone directly who is on this flight but going through news feed on social media, there are some of my friends who are directly connected to either passengers or crew members on the flight. My thoughts go out to the families and friends affected. I cannot imagine what they are going through at the moment. I can only keep on praying that the people on the flight are safe.

Taken from Pray for MH370 Facebook page

There had been bits and pieces of information emerging, adding to the mystery and many confounding theories of what could have happened. But I choose not to speculate and urge many to do the same. Instead focus your thoughts and prayers for the safety of the passengers and crew members of flight MH370.

Life can be so uncertain and fragile. A distant relative of mine passed away a few hours before news of this missing flight. He was not suffering from any illness, so his passing was a shock to his family and friends. I pray that he rests in peace and for his family and friends to be strong to get through this difficult.

Things like this really put things into perspective and shows how sometimes, the things I fret about can be really petty and in the end of the day, not worth getting stressed about at all.

It's starting to melt!

Well... not quite. But we have been getting more sunlight and the temperatures are getting a tad bit warmer. As it should be, as we are only a couple of weeks from when it officially becomes spring. But every now and then, we get a cold front and snowstorm... and it seems that winter is NEVER going away.

Yes, I am whinging, as much as I hate whingers. But I'm getting sick of running on the treadmill or riding on the trainer. I took a gamble to run outdoors this morning. It seemed mild enough at -5C. The trouble with melted snow during the day is when it gets colder overnight, it freezes turning into ice. So the paths were pretty slippery this morning. I did slip but the fall was pretty gentle, so not a scrape. It did hurt my ego though.

After having not ran outside since November, it was difficult getting back into it. I struggled with my breathing in the cold air and somehow couldn't bring my pace up. Of course, I was being cautious too with the slippery paths. But I have been slacking off in the past couple of weeks too. Only running once a week and had been nursing a cold, which I am happy to recovered from. But now my left foot is feeling a bit sore for some reason. So I'm taking it easy.

But I hope to get back on the train soon. Winter is almost ending (I hope!) and I have the Forest City Half Marathon in just over 2 month's time. I would like to start the season with at least a decent performance.

What a pleasant surprise!

I received this email yesterday from Ironman mail. Usually an email from Ironman is a promotion for upcoming events and since I've more or less planned out my 2014 race calendar, I don't take much notice. But this particular email was something different.

 

I totally didn't expect this at all! I am truly humbled. The gift may not be much and personally, I think it's great marketing to get people to do more of their events. But it's a nice encouragement to know that I'm heading in the right direction in this triathlon world. And hey, how often does Ironman give out things for free, right?

Here's the ranking system explained straight from the Ironman website.

Rankings

 

New in 2013, The Age Group Ranking System (AGR) recognizes the best age group athletes in the world at IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 races. 

The new AGR system builds on the pilot program started in Europe in 2012. This year the global AGR will score IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 races, but will not include 5150 Triathlon Series events.

Some important notes about the 2013 AGR:

→The AGR in no way replaces the current qualification system for the IRONMAN World Championship or IRONMAN World Championship 70.3.
→The world champion for both IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 is determined at the world championship events. The top-ranked AGR athlete may not also be the world champion.
→Athletes are encouraged to double check the rankings to ensure all their results are listed. If an athlete’s name or other information is listed differently in two different races, the system might not match their race performances accurately. Any discrepancies should be reported to agr@ironman.com.

Scoring:

You may race as much as you’d like in 2013, but only the top three (3) race performances are scored. You can improve your ranking by improving on your race performance. (For example, if you have a strong performance in one IRONMAN race and two good performances in IRONMAN 70.3 events, you may choose to race another IRONMAN 70.3, improve your finish time and improve your rank.)

The AGR recognizes age group athletes in three different categories: IRONMAN, IRONMAN 70.3 and a combination of both race distances. The AGR is not connected to KPR (Kona Points Ranking) in any way.

 

The AGR allows IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 athletes the opportunity to see how their race performances compare to competitors in their age group throughout the calendar year. Rankings will be updated weekly.

I am ranked 520th out of 13,531 in my age group worldwide. And because I only did two Ironman branded races for 2013 - Ironman Canada and Ironman 70.3 Muskoka, I missed out on points for the 3rd race. The GOLD positions (top 1%) went up to 136th. For 2014, it would be tough as I only have one Ironman event, being Ironman Malaysia. But we'll see how it goes.

More info on this Age Group Ranking system here.

My best man

When Li-Ann and I got married just over a year and a half ago (boy, time sure flies!), I did not actually have a best man at our wedding. I had my band of hengdais but being a Libran, I did not pick a favourite.

Well, this blog post is about my best man. The best man in my life. This is very different from a best man at someone`s wedding. And I can`t stress that enough... as very often the best man at wedding is one who makes inappropriate jokes about groom (and sometimes the bride) in an inebriated state.

The best man in my life is none other than... my dad. My dad celebrates his 59th birthday today - just a year shy from the golden 60. But it seems that my dad is a bit like Benjamin Button and appears to be aging backwards. He recently hacked 13 minutes off his PB at the Newton 25km run about 2 months ago.

Dad with his signature HANDS UP pose at the Newton 25km Run. Photo credit: Chan WK

And judging from his fashion sense... I guess my wife can`t complain anymore about me dressing as though I'm in my teens!

Mum and dad in their matching Paul Frank t-shirts

There are many of my matters which I leave to dad to take care for at home like my life insurance, income tax returns etc. Dad is also a very handy person. When things need fixing around the house, dad always know what to do. Sometimes I take these things for granted. And I do not realise it until we need to get something even as simple as drilling a hole to put a picture frame up. In fact, Li-Ann is a lot better than I am!

Happy birthday dad! And just wanted to say thank you for everything you have done for me... and still doing for me. Missing you lots and I hope to be home more often in the future to be celebrating your future birthdays with you in person. 

Missing out on OZ day and CNY

Gosh... my last post was the first post of the year and now, we're nearing the end of January already! Partly to do with me blogging less often. Not that I'm unusually busy, just haven't found anything exciting enough to be worth blogging about. And I think opening a Twitter account has something to do with that too. I have been posting micro news regularly through Twitter and hence, not leaving much for me to blog about.

Anyway, so here's my 2nd post of the year. Nothing much has changed over here really. Still cold, cold and bloody cold! We do get a "warm" break every now and then, when the temperature moves closer to zero celcius but has been in the negative teens for most days. I haven't ran or rode outside since mid November. The problem with running on the treadmill at hard efforts most of the time, not always can my legs keep up and it's pretty demoralizing to have to manually turn down the speed. Whereas when I'm running outside, if I feel tired, I just slow down and not think much about it. I know it's the same thing, but somehow it feels different!

Well, only about 1.5 months or so until it's officially spring. And I hope we get some spring weather earlier than that. I'll be signing up for the Forest City Half Marathon soon. The early bird entry ends this month. It'll be my first race for the year... but it's so far away in 3 month's time! Well, the good thing is, I get to do some outdoor runs in early spring before the race. We'll see if I can better my half marathon PB from 3 years ago - race report here.

It has just dawned upon me that it's Australia Day this Sunday. It's funny how you miss and appreciate these things when you're away. We have occasionally gone to see the fireworks but sometimes it has been too much of hassle with the road closures and high traffic. One memorable Aussie Day ritual was the underground triathlon organized by my good friend Dennis. I did it for the last two years. Man, I sure miss those days. Wishing all my Aussie mates a happy Australia Day!

With my partners in crime - Sam and Dennis. Thanks Dennis for the pictures and organizing everything!

And in a week's time it'll be Chinese New Year! Although I haven't been back home for CNY every year, I was home for probably only 3 times in the last 10 years, it still doesn't make it any easier not to miss spending it at home with family. This would be Li-Ann's first CNY away from home too. So we'll try to have our own festive celebration on our own. My wonderful wife is going to make my two favourite CNY treats - pineapple tarts and bak kua! The atmosphere won't be like home of course, but it will still be special regardless. Wishing all my family and friends a happy Chinese New Year! May the year of the horse gallop you to plenty of happiness and prosperity! Kiong hee huat zhai!

CNY last year with my in-laws

Dad's birthday is always near CNY. We had buffet lunch at Majestic Hotel last year.