Orangeous Dailies

I saw the fat boy running on the treadmill every time I went to the gym at night. He was walking himself silly for a good 45 minutes to an hour every single time. This went on for months and he wasn’t going anywhere. He looked like he was pregnant and his belly wasn’t getting any smaller. You could tell that he was desperately trying to lose weight.

He was only ten. Why is this kid wasting his precious childhood in the gym when he could be out there exploring the world? This wasn’t a community gym, so there was nobody at all to guide him… and he was there all alone, every single night, walking his ass off.

I’m not a gym instructor. I’m not qualified to teach. But I feel that doing something partially correct is much better than doing something totally wrong… and I do know a tiny bit about fat loss.

So tonight, I pulled him off the treadmill. I told him I had a workout in mind which would take him only 12 minutes to complete. He smiled and seemed very interested. It was a High Intensity Interval Training workout.

I made him get on the stationary bike and cycle normally for 1 minute 30 seconds. At the end of it, I made him cycle as fast as he could for 30 seconds. That was 1 set. His goal tonight was to do 6 sets, which would take 12 minutes.

Every time he was about to move on to the “sprint” phase, I would yell stuff like “someone’s chasing you, cycle faster!” or “close your eyes and you can go faster!” He cycled as fast as he could, as if his life depended on the workout.

At the end of the workout, he was dripping buckets. His heart rate shot up to 170+. He gave a thumbs up and told me that was the most intense workout he had ever experienced. It was easy enough for a young boy like him to execute and he told he will definitely come back to do this at least three times a week.

He gave me his widest smile and a thunderous high five, before packing up to head home.

I feel a lot happier. I want to see him lose weight.

Diet? Let’s leave it till he’s seen some results first.

ID Band.

Got my ID Band yesterday.

Type “ET02” (without quotes) when prompted for a promo code during check-out (as seen on their Facebook group messages). Not sure how much discount there is because I bought it after I joined the group.

Totally eliminates the need to carry ID around when exercising. Hopefully one day, it’ll save my life.

Ahah. More updates…

Pre-race

All met up over at my place around 6+, had a heavy western dinner at some nearby restaurant, courtesy of Mum.

Eat, eat more,guys, dont race halfway complain you’re hungry.

Loaded Bin’s bike into Dad’s car and we all set off for the Esplanade river.

There we were told our bike accessories were illegal (Since there’s only one bike throughout the race and it’s going to be used for Team Biathlon, why not get three people on the bike, that was our unique strategy). Unique my balls, a lot of people in the Mens Open thought about it as well. Ended up all having to remove the back-wheel stands.

Ok nevermind that. Pang turned up! Kickass. He came all the way from Woodlands after work to support us! We packed up all our loose stuff, wore our harnesses and headed for the starting point.

Flag off! We… last!

During the race

12 checkpoints in all, after each checkpoint, we received a map, leading us to the next one.

Team Biathlon was the second checkpoint. There we got our bikes. By that time it was already 6km of running. Bin did all the navigation, near flawless. :D He scooped Donna up on the bike, took my excess baggage. Man, finally the burden off my shoulders. And I ran alongside the bike for another 2km. Finally reaching our swimming section, checkpoint 3.

Apparently one lady in some team chose not to swim (must be having her period) and their team was penalized with a 45 minute add-on to their race timing. The swimming was really short distance, just a little added on weight with our clothin and race harnesses.

I hoisted Bin up on my shoulders, above to water, to untie some knots above the pool before we could proceed. We completed this station VERY quickly, overtaking some teams ahead of us who were fumbling with the ropes. Bin + Ropes = AWESOME.  Everyone got drenched after that.

As we proceeded towards the next checkpoint (Bin + Donna on the bike, me on foot), my calves cramped up and I fell flat on the pavement. Some really kind jogger stopped to help and all the teams overtook us. DAMN! And now it was my turn to ferry Donna while Bin ran along.

Halfway through the journey we stopped.  Bin suggested we cramp the 3 of us on the bike BY HOOK OR BY CROOK. Ok fine, I sat on the front part of the chasis, Donna climbed on behind and Bin rode us all the way to the next checkpoint. Other teams just stared at us in AMAZEMENT, like wtf, LOOK AT THAT! . Too bad we didnt have a camera. There was almost 170kg of weight + all our baggages piled up on the poor bike and Bin’s thighs were GOING THROUGH hell.  Donna got scrapped frequently by the wheels, and my ass… was in real pain. We made it through the next checkpoint anyways.

And by now the exhaustion really set in, we all were totally dazed, probably never been through such shit in our lives. Checkpoints by checkpoints came and our legs were totally numb.

Then there was this bottleneck JAM on Sheares bridge (after around 14km), everybody lining up there just to abseil down the bridge. My calves CRAMPED again climbing over the railing, so Bin and Donna abseiled down first.

The kayaking part was totally messy. Donna was balancing on the kayak, while Bin and I paddled. Our shoes (inside and outside) were so caked with mud, (when we got on and off the kayak), it was really an extra burden. And when we ran, there was this SLISH SLOSH sound. Totally gross, mud-soaked wrinkly feet.

The worst of all stations came. Team Challenge : Navigation. We were given a sheet of paper, told to memorize all the answers…and the paper was something like this..

1) 225 degrees bearing, 225 metres, what structure is it? ________

2) From the structure, 120 degrees bearing, 150 metres, serial number on the lamppost? _____

3) From the lamppost, blah blah blah 225m, what is it?

10 questions in total, all linked to one another (one wrong, ALL wrong) leading us to OUR 2nd last checkpoint. And we spent an awful amount of time backtracking. We were totally lost at this point of time, and got a 50 minute penalty, because only 2 of our answers were correct.  Totally shagged-the-fuck out, still had to think hard.

At that point of time, we took back what we said about "kickin Hungry Dinos + Wild at heart’s asses". We were just happy enough to reach the finishing line.

3am, became 4am, became 5am. We were running, walking, then running, then walking. We finally reached our 2nd last checkpoint at 6am. Jumaring station. Another bottleneck jam again, so many teams waiting for their turn to jumar up the bridge. We forfeited this station as well because we had ALREADY exceeded the maximum time limit to completed the race. 1 hour 30 minutes penalty for this forfeit.

One long final abseil and we reached our final station. We ran towards the finishing line around 6:30AM and the feeling was sensational. Everybody clapping. Cheering. (lol, even though they reached way earlier than us). I’d never forget the feeling of running towards the finishing line as a team. Bin sounded the gong with a heavy smack. Ah, finally, end of race.

Total time we took to complete (with penalty) : 9 hours 10 minutes
Cut off time : 8 hours
Penalty Time for Team  BCD : 2 hours 20 minutes

Our best time without ANY penalty (attempted all stations with perfect score) would have been : 6 hours 50 minutes.

After the race

We just sat down at the finishing point and refused to move. Our legs were totally unresponsive. Totally exhausted, we didnt even talk much. Just stoned. Donna left shortly. She was so tired she even left her helmet behind for me to carry home.  *big grin*

Ok and now WHY we didnt even get a third prize. My mum’s colleague, Soo Chin (nurse, 19), and their team Stat Dose downgraded last minute to the Mixed Youth team, making it 4 teams. Medals given out to the top three teams. Bin and I DID go up to collect our 3rd prize medals. It was after the officials realized their mistake did we return the medals. LOL. But it wasnt that embarassing because everybody had already left the place. I went over to them, passed em the medals and congratulated them.

Totally nothing to be pissed about. They came in way faster than we did (hitting the 2nd place even), somemore the team consisted of 2 girls (Soo Chin + her sister) and one more indian guy. Both the girls being marathon runners, trained months before the race,  Bin and I probably gonna be lagging WAY behind even if we challenged em to a run. Their stamina was superb and their pace was damn fast. In fact the two girls were dragging their Indian teammate all the way.  So, to sum it all up, they DESERVED the medal.

And one amazing fact, A bunch of SAF Commandos joined the race as well. Clocking a fuckin unbelievable 4 hours 15 minutes for the Men’s Open, clinching both the first and third place. They were clearly PSYCHOS.

But no worries, there’s always a first try for everything. Even though we didnt come ho
me
with anything but dried m

ud, it was a real "limit-shattering" experience. We all never thought we could push ourselves so far.  I’m just damn pleased with Bin and Donna. They make really superb teammates. Donna took it like a MAN, even better. Bin endured all the pain on the bike :D There was really a lot of team work and we HAD no conflicts at all. Everyone of us was just helpin one another in every way we could.  Just…er..lacking training and preparation..by a lot!

Ace Adventure 2006 eh guys? Definitely.  

Thanks all once again for the support.