2012 to 2013

A super bad flu kept me off running for the whole of the last week of 2012 and the year ended quietly for me. No big last race like the MR 25 Ultra or anything spectacular. In fact,unlike the past 2 years, there was no race for me at all in December.

For 2012, I had decided to run less and I thought I quite succeeded in that with less races, less long trail runs and even the weekdays runs were reduced. Yet after reviewing my logs, I was surprised that in fact mileage for the year was still higher than previous years. For the whole of 2012, I clocked a total of 1,502km which works out to roughly 29km a week. For 2011, it was 1,328/26; 2010: 1665/32.  

In 2012, I took part in 5 races. In 2011, it was just 3 in 2011 but a whooping 9 in 2009 and 2010.

2012 actually has been a good year for me. Other than the sprained ankle at the TNF 100 in October, I had no major injuries unlike in 2011 when I had the metatarsal stress fracture which probably accounted for the less than desired mileage then.

So what does all this figures imply? And why am I running less? Have I lost my zeal for running? Or am I getting too old for this shit?  The truth is - neither. Or at least I hope so. I am taking it easy on the advice of my doctors and friends so that I do not pick up unnecessary injuries. 

That said, 2013 is going to be a brand new exciting new year. I have already committed to 3 races, all increasingly longer in distance one of which will be my very first ultra! After photographing and admiring all these ultra runners I have decided it's time to do one myself abide even if it is the shortest ultra distance available. 

Have a blessed healthy 2012. Keep on running!

Night Trekking at Cameron Highlands

A lot of my friends had during their long ultras, ran in the forest in the middle of the night. Me? Never did an ultra and have never step foot in any jungle or forest in the night at all until now.

To pass away our time because there is absolutely nothing to do in Cameron Highlands at night, we decided to sign up for a night trek.Our guide said the whole distance should be about 2.5km and it will take 3 hours to finish. In my heart I was like lol, we probably will cover the 2.5km in double quick time but...Of cours, with our luck, it continued to rain and so here we are all decked out in the disposable raincoat in the middle of a jungle adjacent to a river, a village and higher ground on our left.

 

The benefit of having a guide was soon apparent when within a few steps of entering the trail, he stopped to show us this stick insect. And as we continued on, we became more and more aware of the little critters that were all over the place.

 

We also saw a green forest frog. In fact, subsequently we saw a few more of the same species. They were so well camoflauged that if not for the guide pointing them out to us, we may have missed them seeing that it was totally dark in the trails.



 

The guide also showed us this weird little creature. At first he mistook it for a firefly. But on closer examination, it turned out not to be but was in fact a caterpillar. And the interesting thing about this caterpillar? It glows in the dark!

Next we also saw this long legged creatures. It is as I understand a centipede although the guide claimed he has not seen it before.

More on the night trekking here

All in, the whole trek took us slightly over 3 hours out of which about 2.5 hours was spent actually in the jungle and the rest was the return trip to the car via a kampung road. So yes despite the rain, we took longer than we expected. In fact, I believe if not for the rain we could have spotted more creatures but the rain has forced them to take cover leaving us silly human to walk in the rain and waiting to get a cold!

Trekking at Cameron Highlands

Most people who goes to Cameron Highlands think of the strawberry farms and tea plantation. After all, there is no  shopping mall, theme park or anything of interest for visitors. Except the mountains and jungles. Which most sane tourists would only admire from the road and not venture into.

Anyway, we got sick of visiting farms after farms and decided to do some trekking up one of the hill. We didn't know what to expect and having heard tales of people getting lost in the jungle, we decided to get a guide although we were told it was possible to go without as most of the trails were clearly marked.

We told our guide we wanted something exclusive and that we did not want to join other people as we anticipated we will be slower in our movement. We obviously didn't know what we asked for because we got more that what we bargained for.

The guide brought us to this place. He called it a private trail as opposed to public trail, that is, trails that are known only to his company. 

We started at the foot of a hill just in front of a vegetable farm. Our first objective was the summit of this peak which involves an almost 70 degree vertical climb over soft muddy ground. 

Distance to the summit was not too long - just about 300 metres but it took us almost an hour to climb, clambering over the dense undergrowth and ducking under many fallen trees. 

 

We finally reached the summit which is just a narrow strip of rock barely 2 metres wide. Luckily we had the guide with us otherwise M would have freaked out having to walk over this area.

That's our guide leading the way.

And that's our next target, said the guide. The next peak. Gulp!

 

And so we continued our way, slithering and sliding over some areas, crawling under trees and bashing  through thick undergrowth which do not seems to have been trodden on for ages. 

 

The Princess crawling under a tree

But we were well rewarded with impressive scenes of what the guide called "mossy forest" which was actually thick growth of moss over the trees, branches, grounds and everywhere.

 

After a tired but rewarding 3 hours trek, we made our way back but not before having to climb over more steep cliff side like this one. 

Overall, it was an exhausting 5 hours trek made worse by the intermittent rain that falls every now and then and more challenging than we had expected but nevertheless a wonderful way to spend the day rather than visit the farms/

Cameron Highlands

It has always been my desire to run in a cool place. Cool as in cold. And the chance came when we went to the Cameron Highlands for a short getaway. 

Weather during the time we were there was terrible. We got our "cool" but most time it came with rain. Temperate was around 15 degrees in the morning and the fog was so dense in the earlier part of the morning. A little bit later and the traffic would have built up into a big jam so it was really difficult to fit in the run. Finally we managed to squeeze in a short run on the day of our departure.

We started off at about 7.15 am. The plan was to just do a short 30 minutes. What I wanted to do was to see how it feel like running at an higher altitude. Our hotel was at about 1600 metres above sea level which was about as high we can get start of from. 

Out of the hotel, it was a down hill run along the relatively empty road. It wasn't as bad as I thought. The altitude. Going down, we ran at an easy pace stopping to snap some pictures. We ran downhill for 2 km eventually reaching 1,500 metres above sea level which means we have descended about 100 metres only.

Running downhill

 Ok that was easy enough. And now for the difficult part. Running the 2 km back up. Temperature was a cool 16 degrees and great for running. But within a few pace of running uphill, I had removed my jacket and was sweating buckets, the first time I had done so during the past few days here. 

Running uphill

Aside from the fact that it is rare for us Singaporean to run in such weather and altitude, we also don't have any real hill to climb. And even though the ascent was only about 100 metres, it was enough to reduce our already slow pace to an even slower 7 minutes pace. And now a days later, our quads are still aching from the exertion.

But overall, I enjoyed the run. I only wished it could have been longer.