Off-topic - CNY gathering

A slight deviation from my normal blog, Had a short gathering at astrogals place on the 2nd day of the chinese new year. Bala, tiwazz, run3 and taz turned up for this gathering, we set up a mini starcraft lan game center plus one room was setup for mahjong . bala brought in a Xbox, Astrogals friend brought in some board games bought in from the states like blokus, ramis etc. Over all we had an interesting time.














run3 with astrogal on Xbox.. screamming about 90% of the time














the game ramis , leading now is green brick














Lan game center... 2.50 per hour anyone interested?














Bala still thinking about his move

Run - lower seletar dam

Well had a long run today, trying out a new long route. The route runs thru some of the factories and flats. I remember some of the in camp training i had around this forested area.

While i was at the seletar dam i notice my water bottle is running low and almost out of water. Cramps begain to develop and theres no water point insight, therefore i had no choice but force to make a u-turn back . Luckily, manage to find a provision shop around ave 6, bought a bottle of mineral water and made my move again.

Trying to mantain my hr at around 160-170 for max burn rate. In the end clocked in slower then usual timing.

Lesson learnt, I need to top up my bottle prior to hitting the seletar damn, in order to reach jln kayu. And maybe i need to look at running early in the morning while the sun is not strong kinda foolish to run at 4pm.

Next week onwards will be more interval training and timed 2.4km run/swim to train up for my upcoming incamp ippt. Wish me luck.

Distance : 13km
Time : approx 75 mins
HR : 157-169
Weather : overcast , sunny and windy at seletar dam

Run - Marina south

Had a run at marina south with the guys from Sgrunners. Let me see tiwazz, littlefoot, cosmic, meteor, balasing, kops,ronnie and shin turned up for the run. Distance covered was about 4km , considered a casual run. Chit chatting along the way. Steamboat smell nice over at marina south but didnt stop to ermm taste it.


Distance : 4km
Time : 40mins
HR : 160-177
Weather : overcast and really cooling

Swim - Clementi

Went to Clementi pool lastnite with the sgrunners gang . Had about 15 laps coz i was still having cough so not really in the mood for any long dist swimming. The rest how ever were hardworking.. and also some mini competition going on. It was a battle between 2 tri guy and gal.

Run- Sembawang- wrong turn

Made a wrong turn along the SADA camp. Must be my medication made me screwy oh well.

Distance : 10.77km
Time : approx 60mins
HR : 152-168
Weather : overcast, drizzle, sunny (3 weather in one run combo)

Swim - 30laps

Had a swim of 30laps at yishun safra on monday, total time was 43mins. hopefully i'd be able to shave off another 3 mins the next time round.

Run - Yishun - Sembawang park

Sunny day at last, been raining heavily for weeks probably due to the monsoon. So decided to head out to for a run to sembawang park. Some how this run was slightly different in term of distance and route. Instead of running thru andrew ave . I noticed that at sembawang beach there is a stretch of beach heading over to the jetty at bottle tree resturant.

So i thought what the heck running on the sand simulate the same scenario as the Real Run at sentosa . So i gave it a shot. Since its a low tide the route should be passable as this route mark A passes thru a canal.

Distance : 10.7km
Time : approx 55mins
HR : 162-172
Weather : sunny

Run - 8km - Marina esplanade - Kallang

Been raining heavy since morning, and still drizzling in the evening. Thank goodness the rain stop at about 6.50. The gang Tekko and wifey, IMD , ronnie, cecillia, zhi hui (president of running club in Republic poly) and the 5 VRP gals turned up for the run. Looks like we are the only huge group around for a run. The location was changed last min to esplanade area instead of goin upward to kim seng bridge, due to the slippy road over there.

IMD and ronnie trailed behind the vrp girls (not sure what they had in mind). Tekko was leading the slower pac, while myself , cecillia, zhihui and eddy (lead runner) was running on the longer 8km route. Somehow IMD and ronnie run up to look for us and turned out they could not find us and had gone an extra 3km run.

After all the run , we head down to boatquay to fill up our near empty tank.

Distance : 8.25km
Time : approx 51mins
HR : 165-173 (must be coped up at home too long)
Weather : Perfect

Gym training - Yishun Stadium

Drop by with Jon for a session , this has been a full week of work-out, the equipment by far one of the newest compared to other neighbourhood stadium.

Did a 20min set on the bike trainer (alpine course level 1)
3 sets shoulder press , bench press and a couple other machine.
Jon on the other hand got tired after just the bike trainer. Think his age is catching up. haha

We will commit to more of these training in future.

Supplement - How to map your run with google earth

Okay lots of my friends ask me, How do you map out your route with distance calculate ? Simple i use google earth.

Heres a step by step guide on how you can do all that.














Launch google earth and look for singapore..remember to zoom in on the location where you want to do your run.


















Select measure from tools section
















Select path from the tab in the pop up box. PS : make sure you select kilometers. If you use other metric system just select the other shown in the dropdown list. Martians metric system not supported thou..




















Now use the crosshair and start ploting your path. The distance covered will be shown in the pop up box.




















After you are done with the plotting you can save it as an image or as a location VMZ format for future reference.

Cool anit it !

Run - 10km - yishun-sembawang-gambas

New route tried out today, using the trusty google earth i managed to calculate approx 10km of scenic route from yishun-sembawang-gambas-yishun . This route is more of the obscure location of singapore, with quite minimium traffic.

under the section 1 , this stretch of road is an upslop with quite some effort to trudge over.
The location 2 mark with an X is i believe a very odd looking zinc shack temple interesting to take a look.
As for section 3 , its the sembawang park connector. Interesting coz it runs adjacent to a mangrove canal.

Distance : 10km
Time : approx 58mins
HR : 172-179 (must be coped up at home too long)
Expaned : 1 power gel at 32mins mark.
Weather : slight drizzle like misty

Swim - Monday

Meet the SGrunners gang at clementi pool for once a week swim training. Tiwazz, balasing, astrogal, littlefoot , kops, taz (surprise visit - ninja skill very high) turned out.
NB: astrogal in 2 piece man :)

Did about 30 laps with a timing of approx 40 mins. lesson learnt is that : breaststroke is a handycap , must learn freestyle.

Went to one of the nearby s11 coffeeshop for dinner, Heres a shot of astrogal big bowl of herbal chicken soup. hmmm Looks delicious ! ..but really it was quite erm tasteless according to her.. too little herb used..















opps must boycott that store liao.

Gym training session

Decide to have a regular once weekly gym training with JN as she wanted to lose some excess weight ard the tummy area.. (aka problem area).
And so we meet up at clementi stadium,
Started out with the run about 20 mins (thats the max allowed in the SSC gym) , 10 mins on the row machine , 10 mins on cycling machine, 10 mins on the cross country skier. Plus other weight machine.

Marina bay run - Runlab

Distance : 9.5km
Time : approx 55mins
HR : 165-172

Yishun Pond Run - 1st run of 2006

Decided to take it easy on this run, after i am back from KL. Too much food intake over there so i am back to burn off some of it. And today its swim and thurs CBD run and Sunday visit the gym.

Distance : 3.88km
Timing : 25mins
AVG HR : 165