Running Sucks

The new Singapore Sports Hub and National Stadium has now been opened for about a month and during this period, the public are free to use some of the facilities. Like all the curious people, we went to look see look see. Unlike the old National Stadium which is just a sports stadium with a cluster of smaller facilities nearby, the new stadium is housed in an integrated complex. The new complex called the Sports Hub have beside the stadium, an aquatic centre with swimming and diving facilities, tennis, badminton and basketball courts. There are also beach volleyball courts, watersports facilities for sailing, kayaking and dragon boating.  The main complex comes with a retractable roof so no more wet soccer pitch There is also a 880 metres running track outside the stadium itself for the public to run around. The sidekick doing the obligatory run round the stadium The new stadium beside the retractable roof also has arrangeable plastic seats. Somehow it feels a ...

I find it weird that Mindef has seemed it fit to respond to all the cry father cry mother about the IPPT and after a review, took such a drastic step of dropping the standing board jump, shuttle run, pull up and replacing it with a push up. Only the sit up and 2.4km remain untouched. I know many people cannot do the standing board jump (SBJ) and the pull up and that is the single biggest cause of the high rate of failure.  When I did my NS more than 30 years ago, I couldn't even do 1 single pull up. As a result, we had to do pull up before and after every meal. Over the course of the BMT, most of us eventually manage to do the minimum 6. SBJ was a different ball game altogether. It was not something that we could train for everyday. For me, I was lucky that I usually managed to scrap through. However, for many others, even though they excel in all the other stations, a failure at the SBJ means they failed the entire IPPT. So after so many years, I guess Mindef has finally ...

Cyclists in Singapore have always been on the wrong side of the news. Either they are immortalised on youtube and stomp for their riding antics  or they are making the headline as accident victim. Social media here (and I think in other countries as well) are full of complaints about cyclists. Over in Singapore, one of the biggest pet peeve is cyclists who continues to cycle on pedestrian walkways, which except for Tampines town, is illegal in very other estates. Yet these cyclists ride like they own the pavements and expect pedestrian to jump out of their way when they zoomed by. On the road, the tables are turned on them when motorists forced them to the curb and in some extreme case, mow them down like bowling pins. Yet, despite these risks, the behaviour of cyclists on the roads seem to have gotten from bad to worse and worst still, even if they are the one in the wrong, they behave like they are not like this one here . Just this morning, I was running along Changi B...

What goes up must come down. And so do we. After climbing for 14 hours over 2 days, we were finally ready to descend to Timpohon Gate. We had a shower in the freezing cold water of Laban Rata, a light breakfast and off we went. Our target was to reach Timpohon Gate by 3 pm. The distance from Laban Rata was only 6 km yet it felt like 60km. It never amazed me that 500 metres seem so long in the jungle.  The first part of the downward climb was on the uneven rock surfaces and so progress was much slower. And we stopped to allow the climbers coming behind us to overtake. Its is so amazing to see these young people jumping down so easily without any fear. For us old fogeys with our aching knees and joints, every jolt felt like somebody using a hammer to hit us. Photo by Alicia Koh But thankfully, the rocky part was only about 2 km long and soon we were on the main Timpohon trail. And as we descended, we were thankful that Tony had chosen for us to summit via Mersilau bec...

We woke up at about 1 am. Or rather we were ready to go at 1 am. Light out at Laban Rata was  8.30 pm incredibly early but aside from the fact that there was nothing else to do and we had to start early to catch the sunrise at the summit, sleep seems the only sensible thing to do. But I dare said most of us didn't sleep well. Perhaps it was the excitement that we were going to reach the highest peak in South East Asia in a few hours time or the splitting headache that everybody seems to be having, none of us slept well. So at 1 am, everybody was up and raring to go. After a light breakfast where we were advised not to eat too much, we finally set off at about 2.30 am. Led by the guides, the various group moved off. I reckoned we were among the first few groups. As usual, we started off a tad way too fast. We kept mostly to our group formation as per yesterday - with Vincent and the 3 kids in front, myself and 4 others in the middle pack and a last group. One of our member was s...

Most people who goes to Mt Kinabalu goes up via the Timpohon Gate trail. Our friend, Tony arranged for us to climb via the Mersilau Trail. He said it was more scenic and it was just 2km longer. 2km didn't sound like much considering that almost all of us are runners. So we happily agreed. We stayed at the Mersilau Nature Center the night before and after another oily breakfast and weight in of our luggage by the guide/porter, we set off to Laban Rata, the midway rest point. The guide weighing our bags. Anything above 7kg we have to pay RM10 per kg of excess Each of us was carrying our own pack with just the basic necessity for today climb. We had about 1.5 litres of water each, lunch(sandwhich and an apple) from the restaurant; our own snacks, some had hot drinks; a windbreaker or jacket and headlamp. This weights on average about 3 kg. Some of us had additional gear like camera, first aid kits but the main bulk of the surplus items were put in another bag for the 3 guides...

The plan to scale Mt Kinabalu was hatched when I failed to complete the gruelling TMBT last year. If I cannot conquer the grand old dame through a trail race, I know I have to do it another way and so begins the journey to scale the mountain. I was fortunate that in January this year, a mutual friend introduce a group of us to this super friendly nice guy who has conquered Mt Kinabalu many times and he was kind enough to offer to bring us up. And so the journey begins. The initial plan was to gather about 20 like minded person to go during the June school holidays. But upon the advice of our Malaysian friend, Tony we moved the date to the last week of June to coincide with the end of the school holidays and the start of Ramadan. This was so that it will not be so crowded up in the mountain. And when we finally reached the mountain, I could see the wisdom of that advice. So we gathered a group of running friends. But because of the new dates, many people who had previously in...