PPES-Uniten Charity Run- first race report..tadaa..

When our friends announced that they were getting married on the 26th and alang-alang I'll be coming to KL, I decided to kill two birds by searching for any races scheduled in KL/Selangor that weekend.
Ye la kan, these areas banyak je races in between.
And so I found out about PPES-Uniten Charity Run on the 25th. Wah, great! Sabtu lagi. Boleh daftar last minit pulak tu.Then I found out that my brother in Bangi would be available to babysit our kids the morning  of the race.
Canteeekk.

I told my brother we would be running in Uniten's campus and asked him whether it would be hilly.
" Taklah, flat je kat sana." Confident je mamat tu cakap.

So we arrived at 7 am. Masuk entrance gate saje dah naik bukit. Pastu turun, pastu naik. Huh, flat hapekebende.
After collecting our bibs, we warmed up a while to get our legs ready for the inclines.

Patah balik je kat mini stadium, banyak pulak umat dah sampai. Siap ada 3 bijik bas penuh dengan rombongan cikKiah. And a few foreigners who I assumed were students. Tambah best , ada jugak sesat sorang mamat afrika. Agaknya niat dia ikhlas tulus suci murni nak join race ni as a speed session kot because the organizers never offered any cash prize money.

Things started with a senamrobik session. Gelek kanan, gelek kiri, angkat ketiak, you get the picture.
Pastu bila matahari dah mula nak naik terik, maka segerombolan of runners went straight to the starting line only to be ushered back to the field because:
a. the main sponsor/donator was still giving his speech.
b. most of us didn't get our tags/rubber band yet.

We were let off at about 8 am, climbing our first incline. WW went blazing away and I didn't see him after the airhorn was err urm..horned?
He was on a personal mission to better his 5K timing. I was on a mission to keep anything below a 9 minute/mile pace.

Ok, I get it if people scrunch up their noses when I tell them I'm doing short-middle distances nowadays. Takde challenge la, katanya. Apa barang, katanya. But you know what, it's a different kind of tough.

In a 5K race for example, when you run in your 5K effort and not your usual LSD pace, it gets really hard when you start to sweat like an animal, have labored breathing and your heart feels like it's about to pop out of your chest. It's worse when your legs feel suddenly weak and your stomach is cramping and you look at your watch and it shows that you're not even into half of the distance. But you can't slow down, not significantly, or your pace will go all over the place. You think, "Why the heck did I sign up for a fast race?" and you want to stop at that water station at the 3rd km but you don't want to lose your stride. So you forge on, feeling that you'll just die if this race goes over distance but at the same time you try to calm yourself down saying that this will only last a few minutes rather than a few hours.
Eh ke orang lain tak rasa camni? Ke aku je drama?

Anyway, bila naik incline, rasa cam kaki nak putus. Bila turun rasa lega sket. Tetiba nun di kejauhan nampak cam ada orang buat latihan larian keliling padang. Aku pikir, apa kejadahnya depa ni buat latihan tengah panas-panas cenggini. Rupa-rupanya us runners had to go around an uneven-surfaced football field, siap berbecak lagi. Habisla kasutku.

Then keluar je field, masuk satu jalan ni. Lari punya lari, tetiba on the other side of the road nampak  mamat afrika lari dengan lajunyaa. Ok, so because more blood was flowing to my legs and heart rather than my brain, I actually thought he was in another race.  Then I realized we had to turn back.
Mak ai, mentalnya.

Masa dalam kesemputan memaintain pace la, aku berjaya meng-adopt seorang  pacer. Ke dia yang adopt aku? Ntahla, yang penting kami lari side by side dalam 1 mile lebih jugaknya. Berjaya jugakla taktik pacer angkat ni cuma aku takbleh borak-borak atau tegur dia sebab taim tu bernapas pun dah cam kerbau..kuhkuh.
Cuma dalam  a few metres nak abis race, tetiba ada membe dia dari tepi jalan bertindak sebagai race bunny dan berjaya membuat dia memecut laju di hadapan. Ciss, maka berpisahla aku ngan pacer angkat ku secara rasminya.
Pastu dah la taim tu route bantai kasik incline kaw punya, naik, naik,belok ,naik lagi  pastu eh, eh dah ada finishing line.

Semput la jugak. Tekak kering cam apa ntah. Nak telan air liur pun payah menyebabkan aku buat aksi retching yang memalukan.
Tapiiii..berjaya gak aku berterima kasih kat pacer angkat. Nama pun lupa tanya.

Yaa, kepada mereka-mereka yang malas baca aku membebel dari tadi dan hanya nak tgk taiming, dan dah jenuh scroll down, maka aku hanya menghabiskan konon 6K dalam 29'56".

"Wah, biar betik", kataku.Terbeliak bijik mata jap. Rupa-rupanya underdistanced in which it was only about 3.39 miles atau 5.45 K.
But hey, still able to stick to mission with 8:50 min/mile on an incliney ( as if there is such a word) route despite having an average pace in the first two miles of 8:30 min/mile ( semput le tew)
Wah, JJ dah semakin teknikal nampaknya walaupun takdela sehebat mana.. haha.

WW also berjaya dalam misi. Reached the end of the line in 24'16" and secured the 15th place for Men Open.  Achieved his PB in 5K with 22'10" . Even popped a blister running barefoot at that pace. Adoi.

Ok la, dipersilakan layan gambar.

 Goodie bag cam beg doraemon. Macam-macam dapat. Baloi RM15

  You gotta hand it to these Uniten kids organizing this race. They were polite, extremely helpful and a fun bunch of people.  

His and Hers..eh cam tuala lak.

Wah, nampak tinggi la pulak. 

 Medal guna istilah omputey gitu. My daughter kept insisting I took 5th place. Dapat apa extra? Dapat voucher kasut Newton RM100.

 WW received a smudged medal. But dah dapat, alhamdulillah je la kan?

Sekian, esok keje. 

Sengal

Ah, sengal lah.
Aku betul-betul la reserve tarikh ni nak race kat negeri sendiri. Konon nak support local small races la kan. Konon nak support race negeri sendiri la kan -walaupun negeri telah melantik AC Mizal  yang takde kaitan langsung dengan negeri ni jadi duta negeri (apa kejadahnya?)

Ye la, organizers dok gebang dari awal tahun nun nak buat race ni. Siap boh dalam website pelancongan negeri(yang aku pun tak berapa pasti aktif ke idak). Dan sebok di war-warkan dalam website-website lain.

So orang lain dok sibuk daftar Brooks, aku buat donno je. Konon nak tunggu borang race ni keluar. Tunggu awal bulan satu, tak keluar jugak. Tunggu akhir bulan satu, senyap je. Ok, takpe, closing date Brooks tengah bulan Febuari. Relax..relax.

Staff aku yang dok gian race-mengrace ni pi tepon la pihak yang bertanggungjawab (sebab aku malas nak bertanya).
" YB yang nak anjurkan race tu kata borang tak keluar lagi sebab depa belum mesyuarat, " kata staff ku.
Apa? YB? Hmph, aku mendegus. Hmph juga adalah singkatan untuk hampeh.
Ni apa cerita race awal bulan 3, tengah bulan 2 pun tak bermesyuarat lagi.
Dengar perkataan YB itu je , aku dah agak dah benda ni akan kureng menjadi.

So aku pun beralih arah, nak buat larian bestday konon kat Brooks. Tup-tup dah tutup pendaftaran.
Sori naik lori.Lari naik ketapi

Hari ni  YB tu cakap, race yang kitaorang nak masuk tu ditangguhkan. Ke tarikh yang akan diumumkan kemudian.
Agaknya baru nak sedar kot logistics susah nak uruskan last-last minit.
Hapoda.

Boo...boo panjang boooooooooooooo
boo pendek..bo
boo bawah air..blub blub blub.

Tidak Sihat

I haven't stomped my hooves in The Lake Garden for ages. AGES.
 I miss the fresh morning air, the calling of birds and gibbons from afar, nodding 'good mornings' to our usual running acquaintances. I miss the echo of aerobic instructors and their loud music booming throughout the park, I miss the slow swaying of ancient people to their Tai-Chi routines, I miss that old Caucasian man on the red bike who would acknowledge  us every time we pass, even if it's five or six times, I even miss the foul smell of animal dung while passing the zoo.

So it was high time we came back. Left the kids at my Mom's to happily pester their aunts who were home for the holidays.
I had a bad night before, waking up 6 times because of mild food poisoning.
But I was determined. Last week's Lake Garden run was postponed due to my daughter having a fever.
By Subuh I felt better. No more stomach cramps.

So we started at about 7 am. It was still dark. I feel good running on flat grounds. This seemed much easier than the raised inclination of my treadmill. I know I was starting fast, but I didn't care. It felt good passing people even though they were oblivious and walking. I haven't done this in a while.

WW decided to wear his boating shoes. Yes, he's quirky, this one. Claimed that his feet felt rough after running straight this week on different surfaces, barefoot. I have no idea how this makes sense. I thought it was already rough after all this time but I shut up.

5 minutes into the run I heard the  shuffling patter of feet behind me. It was damn right annoying. I semi-turned to WW, about to tell him to stop dragging his feet when I suddenly noticed it wasn't him. It was another guy running in a white shirt, a tad bit too close to us.
I tried to turn and give him an encouraging smile as a token of camaraderie but he just looked straight ahead with what I thought to be a game-face.

You guys know how I hate game-faces.

So I did what I don't normally do. I decided to take him for a challenge. Normal me would ease up and let the guy pass. Normal me would have shrugged and say, " This is stupid. It's not like anyone's winning,"
But that day, stupid manic pseudo-evil me emerged out of no where. I suspect it was because of I haven't raced for the longest of time.

So I cranked it up. WW just followed. I know he noticed I'm going faster than usual but he didn't utter a single word.  In the mean time, White Shirt guy is still right behind breathing our backs.
The faster we'd go, the heavier his shuffling and breathing. By the sound of it, it didn't seem to be his normal pace. Hell, it wasn't even my normal pace.
Sometimes, I deliberately went around a flock of walking people to slow him down but a few moments later, he'd be back pattering noisily behind us.
This guy was something determined.

I decided to take evil to the next step. I casually got WW engaged in a conversation, cracked a few jokes and pretend to take in the whole entire scene like it was literally a walk in the park. Like it was so easy at this pace and like emphasizing, " You better watch it, boy. We're in this for a loooong time."
And with adrenalin pumping, it did felt easy, it felt exciting, it felt like a real race.

Right around the corner of the Zoo, we followed the designated running path while White Shirt guy ran in a tangent leading him to think that he has dropped us. I wanted to chase  after him but WW nudged to our 4 mile detour to the road leading to Bukit Larut and MRSM. It was no use chasing him when we were clearly going separate ways.

When we glanced back, White Shirt guy noticed we left him and made a sudden slow down. He looked out of breath and at that instant I felt suddenly sorry to take him on like that. I could have melted his game face with a simple hello and asking him nicely to join us. I regretted not being friendly. I wondered who he was. A usual runner? A newbie? An army boy? ( Not so much because them army boys would go at 90km/hr and leave me in a cloud of dust.)


I realized that speeding so early on a so-called easy run would  get me back in the next loop.
And sure enough it did.
Padan muka.


At the end of our loops, I spotted  White Shirt Guy at the nearby playground. I gave him  an apologetic smile for my pseudo idiotic-ness .
The guy looked at me blankly. And I suddenly realized stupidly that I wasn't sure if it was really him.

Ok, so this is a stretch, but if you're a reader  White Shirt guy, I'm truly sorry. Sometimes when I don't hit the tarmac for a long time, I get to be such a dweeb.

And I'm a believer of what goes around comes around.
True enough, I'm now back with the fever I shook off four days ago.
I'm having chills to the bone while everyone else is sweating.
And I'm popping paracetamols like candy.
.

Layan

Hi.
Sorry for the late post.
This week was/is sick week.
Four days of the holidays were mostly spent indoors. My little girl got sick up to the point where we had to take her to the clinic where they did a blood test on her. Don't get me going on the whole blood taking process.
Luckily everything came out normal but she's still having fevers on and off.

By Wednesday I caught the fever and fatigue-ness hit me on Thursday.
The funny thing about running/working out  is, when you're not feeling well, it's hard to differentiate whether you're skipping the exercise because of the sickness or because of the laziness.

But I hate being down in the dumps. So I have this video to share.
Perempuan ni takde modal la tu asik post video je
Takde, betul, video ni serius kelakar.
I remember the last time I caught Rambo at the movies a few years ago, I turned to WW and whispered loudly, " You drag me here to watch this?"
But this version is clearly better. In the sense of less harsher swear words. Huhu

 This Faradyable guy is really something.
He's the same guy who posted the Teh Ais videos on Youtube.and that Louis Armstrong Gosok Gigi thing that I posted on FB.
His voice overs are dead on.
This guy is either talented or he's got too much time on his hands.

Wote

Sorry to disrupt your holidays, peeps but this I gotta share
It's too cool.
It's overplayed at our house.
Even then kids join in, " Somebadehhhhh." at the end.

It makes me miss my Paul Smith.
I haven't touched my guitar since my failed attempt to serenade my friends at our reunion.
I chickened out last minute.
That was a month ago.
I don't even know where I put my capo

Nevertheless, Happy CNY.
Now I have 4 free days to relight the fire.

Skully And Mu(r)lder

I was getting my usual evening run done when it was rudely interrupted by a phone call from one of my staff. Apparently apart from being a clinician and an administrator, I am also a counselor.
So as I was listening to the other end pouring her heart out about work issues, I noticed something weird lying at the back of my treadmill.
To my horror, it was a decapitated mouse.
And it looked fresh.
Gross.

I glanced at my children, who were on the computer playing some games. Luckily they hadn't noticed.  Had they did, they'd be in hysterics.

Where the heck did it came from? I figured it must have either been brought in by a sneaking stray cat or it must have gotten in by the sewer hole from the ground floor toilet. The latter seemed more plausible at first as the treadmill is only a couple of  meters away from the toilet. It must have sneaked in between the machine and somehow got snagged by the belt or something. But then  I thought, there should be traces of fresh blood, wait, sprays of red mouse blood on the mill and the wall but there was none.
So I deducted it was maybe brought in by an unsuspecting cat.
Bodo punya kucing.

Trying to keep my voice steady and avoid panicking ( while left hand still holding the phone to my ear), I grabbed an empty plastic bag. The initial plan was to pick up the mouse with the plastic bag but then I got queasy. No way was I going to hold a mouse, berlapik or not.
Then while the other end was babbling and me uh-huh-ing, I got a dustpan and shoved the decapitated carcass into it with a broom, put the poor animal in an old shoe box and it went straight away into the outside bin.
After ending the call, I mopped the whole area around the treadmill to konon disinfect the area.


Then I went back running. (ha)
But in the middle of it all, it suddenly came to mind.
What if the mouse really got decapitated by the belt or the motor.
The head should be  lying somewhere. Exclamation mark.
Then , right there and then I started to panic.
About leptospirosis, about the possible stench of decomposition in the house, about the possibility of other mice getting in the house.
 But what I panicked most about was the THOUGHT of finding the mouse's head

Okay, I consider myself as an independent woman but when it comes to finding decapitated mouse heads, I simply had to call the  man of the house.
" We have a serious problem" I told my husband who's miles away.
"Why don't you  lift up the treadmill and look under it?" he suggested.
" Who me? Never."
" How about getting the pakcik next door to look for it?"
" Are you kidding? He'll think we're living in filth."
"So what's your suggestion, genius?"
"You find it. When you get back." And that would be a mere 18 more hours to go.
So he agreed.
And the thawing chicken on the kitchen counter made me sick and me and the kids ended up having take-outs for dinner.

But hey presto, after 18 hours there was no stench of rotting flesh.At all.
And no, I did not Febreezed the house.
WW took a peek under the treadmill and found nothing but dust bunnies.
Weird huh.
Wuuu wuu wuut wuut wuut wuuuut ( okay, that was supposed to sound like the X-Files opening theme)

So you'd think after learning the possibilities of my dreadmill being a rodent decapitator would stop or at least cease me from using it?
Wrong.
Out of sight, out of mind, baby.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
And this girl needs to run.

Even if there is a little skull lodged in the machine somewhere.
Wuuu wuu wuut wuut wuut wuuuut .

Love Is A Losing Game

I can't remember half of my patients' name but with a name and character like Jimmy Teca, it's really hard to forget.

Jimmy is actually the husband of my denture patient.I can't remember her name. She came in with him one morning, last June, a couple in their mid 70's, walking hand in hand.
She was a bit weak and frail, always smiling and polite and counting on Jimmy for support, physically and emotionally. Jimmy was jolly, constantly cheerful with everything positive to say and thinks the world of his wife.
Jimmy would charm us with his joie-de-vivre. He would often enlighten us with anecdotes of his early years. He would walk in with a steady gait, left hand firmly holding a walking stick and when asked why, he would say it was for the 'look'. Jimmy would often act as a translator as he could speak perfect English, perfect Malay and perfect Chinese. He would never forget his 'Good Mornings!" and 'Thank Yous' and would always know how engage us in the most interesting conversations..
He would proudly remind us of his only son ,married and working successfully in Singapore . Jimmy always made sure that their  visits with me would always be pleasant. It is hard not to love Jimmy.

All Jimmy Teca wants is to enjoy the rest of his life with his lovely wife in this so-called-retiree town.

The last time I saw Jimmy Tecca, he was doing perfectly fine.

Until today.
I noticed his name in my appointment book. My assistant informed me she saw him as an outpatient, an old wheelchair bound senior citizen and didn't have the heart to put him in our denture waiting list. So she immediately booked him under my appointments.
Wheelchair bound?
I was confused.

When they wheeled him in, I almost didn't recognize him. He was frail, a little more skinnier than I last saw him, his right leg in a cast and left arm in a sling. His right eye had that crossed-eye look and he came in sans dentures which made him look ancient.
" Uncle Jimmy, what happened?"

He told me he got struck by a car, almost a month ago. Near the Lake Garden. While jogging.
He is now wheelchair bound, his right hand which has always been weak since he was a child is almost useless now, and his left arm is broken. He needs someone to do the simplest tasks for him. He can't even put food into his own mouth.
He is now alone in Taiping, living in an old folks home. He sent his wife to Singapore to live with his son.
But he is fortunately, still mentally sound.

I guess my face crumpled a bit when he told me his story.
" It's okay. It's not so bad." he smiled his toothless grin.
And I resist the urge to give him a big wholesome hug.
" Life's like that." he told me.

But I'm so mad. I'm mad at that person who ran him over.
It was a jogger's path. In the Lake Garden. It was a 30 kmph road. The signboard made it clear. I know because  I've ran past the signboard many times.
But he was ran over at an estimated speed of 70kmph
His caretaker told me that accidents like that happen all the time.
" Some people just don't care about joggers there. They don't even care if it's a one way street."

I'm so angry of this carelessness. A man's life is almost ruined just because some stupid sod thought he would get away bending the rules.
I hope the perpetrator will get what he deserve. I hope karma will bite him back hard.
Or at least, at the very least , he has learned his lesson.

Jimmy laughed as I took his impressions. " You treat me like a kid" he said.
My brows furrowed as I worry.
" It'll be okay" he reassured me as he is wheeled out of my surgery.
His hand limply flopped on his lap to imitate a wave,  "I'll see you in a bit, eh Doc?".

I sure hope so, Jimmy Teca.
I hope by God's fate, somehow you will bounce back.
I hope for your sake and for everybody else's sake, that we will ALL be more careful behind the wheel.
And I convey to all  pedestrians, runners, cyclist,  please make your self visible while on the road.

We can only try.