Current progress....

Today is June 8. My last blog was on May 6. So it has been 1 month and 2 days since I last update my blog.
Initially I was getting busy with household stuff. My indonesian maid went back to her hometown in indonesia, and there's some delay in getting the new replacement. So we went for more than 3 weeks without helper. I have to assume some of the 'challenging' tasks; i.e. washing & drying, dishwashing, cleaning here and there, and of course the kids stuff; things that I have taken for granted all these while. Now that the new maid have arrived, I started to become lazy to update blog, after few weeks not doing it.

My triathlon training went a bit up and down. I didn't cycle as much as I want to, did lots of swimming, and still have problems with my running.

Swimming
This is the discipline that I have spent lots of time on. We (me & family) went to Perhentian island last week, and I practice the open water swim everyday when I was there (for 4 days). My swim pace may not improved much, but I am getting more comfortable with the water, and developed longer endurance. I also realized that I have phobia when swimming in the open sea, especially when the water is too deep that I cannot see the seabed. Darkness of the deep freak me out sometimes. It become quite bad, there's time when I thought there is a hand holding my back. What it was is just a leaf sticking on my back. I was struggling hard to get rid of it. This phobia can make me loose control, no matter how hard I tried to remain calm. So it's a serious symptom. Maybe because I swim alone. It's mind boggling, cause I have logged more than 200 dives, and still afraid of water. But nevertheless, even with the phobia, I have accumulated few kilometres of open water swimming last week, but not continuous swim. Maybe 500 meters at a time.
By now, my pace is as the following
- 100 meters: 1'55"
- 500 meters: 12'45"
- 1 km: 26'
- 2 km: 56'
By any measures, my swim pace is still slow than what I wished for. I'm targeting to do 1 km in 20 minutes, and 2 km in 45 minutes. But comparing to where I was 3 months ago, I actually have make great progress. I get the feeling I swim faster in the sea, but there's no way I can measure it.
I have study various swim technique on YouTube, from Alexander Popov, Michael Phelp, Grant Hackett and few others. There also a very nice videos by Total Immersion that I like the most, like the one below

Even though I have been swimming over 1 km every time I am in the pool, to swim longer than 500m is still quite tough. For the first 500m I can say I enjoy the swim, every lap after that I just have this urge to stop at every turn. It's the mental things, either the water feel too cold, or too hot, feeling too tired, out of breath, etc. etc.
My coach have taught me of how to execute the flip turn, which is quite cool. If I can do it properly, it really look like a pro. But flip turn is not needed for open water swim, but I do practise it once in a while. It's a feel good factor.
Starting tomorrow, I will have a new coach for my swim. My current swim coach have improved my stroke quite considerable, but the new coach have lot more experience on triathlon. I also need to get to know or join a group, like a triathlon group, or swimmers group, and participate in their activities, if any. I met the new coach on Saturday, chit chat, told him my current progress. After listening to my story and stuff, he said I should try to do Marang-Pulau Kapas swim marathon. What? For now the answer could be a No, or maybe not yet. That's 6.5 km swim in the open sea from Pulau Kapas to Marang. It's no joke. I need to work harder on my swim. The 2009 Marang-Kapas was in April, and I heard the sea was rough, and some swimmers have to be rescued. I took a boat before from Marang to P. Kapas and back, and it feel quite far. Now to swim those, that pretty insane. But wait and see. The new coach say I should try it. I have 10 months to prepare, so I got time. First I need to overcome this water phobia everytime I swim in the open sea.

Cycling
I didn't do as much cycling as I would like to. Cycling take time, and the only time I have is saturday morning. Even then, I cannot ride too long on saturday, and some weekend I have to go back to my parent's home. The responsibility as a father, husband and son have to come first. Everytime I go for a long ride before, that mean I have sacrifice some time away from my kids. My cycling group do plan some long rides, but most of them I just can't do. I figure, the only time I can cycle, is at night after 10 pm, after the children went to bed. I did some cycling loop at midnight within my neighborhood before, but lately I'm not comfortable cycling alone at midnight. So I get myself a cycling trainer, a Minoura, few weeks back. Now I can work on my cycling at home. But one thing about the trainer, riding on those is downright boring. The maximum I have done is 30 minutes, with average heart rate around 150 bpm. It hard to find the motivation to exercise longer on the trainer. Nevertheless, right now I accumulate about 100 km a week cycling. On a 'good' weekend, I may hit 200km. But that is quite hard to do lateley.
My pace average is at 25 km/h average pace, but that depends on the route. On some climbing stages, it could be slower, and could hit above 30 km/h on flat route. My neighborhood in Bukit Jelutong have a good 10 km loop, that have few climbs, flats and of course downhill. I can't go too fast on the downhill, since this is a residential. But it's a good training ground for the climb, push up the heart rate, and develop some endurance.

Running
Running is still painful for me. But this morning, I ran with a knee guard, ran for about 7 km with a slow pace of 8min/km, and I don't feel the pain. There's some tingling sensation on the left knee, but I still can carry on running. A friend have advised me to invest in a new pair of 'real' running shoes. He mentioned Brooks, Pearl Izumi and New Balance. Somehow Nike and Adidas is not in his list. Now I run with a Nike 'something. I don't pay much attention the the exact model when I bought it. I believe it's the Nike Air Pegasus, from the Nike Bowerman series. Actually I bought two of those. I grabbed one for my daughter, thinking that I may be able to convinced her to join me running. When I bought the shoes, I don't really know much the technical part of running. I asked the sales guy to recommend a good running shoes that I can hook-up with my ipod, and he point to a Nike+, and that's the one I bought. According to a friend, who is a devoted runner, running is an art. The type of shoes a runner should wear depend the type of feet he has, and the way he run. There is overpronator, underpronator, neutral feet etc.... i have no idea. He also suggest that the pain that I endure while running maybe because I don't use the right shoes. So new running shoes it is. By this weekend I should be running with a Brooks, or New Balance (if I can find my size, which often quite difficult).
So running doesn't progressing much at all. The past 1 months I have not do any running, due to doctors advice. The doc prescribe some pills which I have been swallowing the past 2 months. It may help, but I can't tell for sure. The only way to fix the knee is to do the operation, which I am not keen of doing. The 'injury' is not critical, it just not allow me to run long distance.

Time is getting closer to July, and I definitely need to double my effort. So these are what I have set my eyes on
1) PD Triathlon - 12 July 2009 (still a maybe, depends)
2) Putrajaya Ironman - 26 July 2009 (Have to do)