Busy for the month of September

I was not busy with work but rather busy with some schedule to prepare for the upcoming event in the early part of October. To put it simple, I registered for the inter-companies run in Pasir Gudang in Johore on 3rd October 2010. I could not understand why I have to take this 5 km run so seriously afterall it is just something routine that is being carried out every year by the group for its employees, no big prices and nothing special about a privately held cross country race run on a tarmac road either.

To give some background on this, I had moved in since a year ago to stay in a place very near to the beach where I could do some cycling and jogging whenever I feel like it. Most of the time I do it in early the morning 6:30am or about 7pm in the evening. My daily schedule would be doing a evening ride on mountain bike for 20 km and jogging for 3 km in the morning before going to work. The initial going was a bit tough for me because I had stopped exercising for the past 5-6 years when I worked overseas where the weather was simply too nasty to do such a thing compared to what it is in a tropical country. I take up this challenge partly to boost my own ego and also try to catch up with my brother-in-law, who is a few years older than me but is a good veteran runner in the marathon race. He is probably ranked top 10 in the country veteran category.

I had climbed 2 mountains, namely Gunung Bunga Buah and also Bukit Nuang,  and did also a trekking to the Pelangi waterfall in Sungai Lembing within a period of 2 months before the race as part of a cross training program for strength and stamina! Even during the week long Hari Raya holidays, I jogged 5 km with my brother-in-law just to keep fit and at the same time to get some advice and training tips from him on running long distance races.

There was supposed to be a session for my remote controlled nitro-plane, which had been fully assembled ready for the virgin flight in Dungun arranged by my friend cum coach Jaafar . I postponed the date just to give myself more time to be trained and ready for that particular event. In my mind, if I could not even win a race in a closed event organized by the company, how could I ever win one in the open race? This perhaps explained why I have to take that race so seriously! In fact I had been coughing for about a week since coming back from the camping trip of Pelangi waterfall. I was a bit worrying that coughing might interfere my breathing during the race. Fortunately it did not and I ran the race well though not perfect!

I eventually finished off  in the 6th position in the veteran category. From the race, now I know where the standard of my opponents is, so that I could do the catching up. I vowed to come back next year to improve my position to top 3 in the run.  I probably need to prepare myself and participate in the half marathon training in order to cope with those guys who had beaten me in the race. That is my target set for year 2011!