Monday, June 06, 2005
a weekend of trainings
wanted to blog last night but i ended my day too late and i was too tired, so bear with me. this post will be in chronological order, and therefore fucking long.
anyway yesterday - sat - was the day before the time trial (which was today). dum dum dum!!! had a pre-training discussion with wenting about politics. heh. yay! i have someone in the team who reads the economist too and shares my sentiments as to why it is the preferred magazine to time and newsweek. we were debating about why france and the netherlands would reject the eu's constitution, what this would mean for the future of the eu, and why on earth the economist as well as other foreign news papers rarely ever report on our beloved sunny island. that was fun. :)
training itself wasn't tt xiong (again), but i felt really really tired after tt. don't know why. is my stamina going down or something? don't know why i always feel so fucking drained after trainings, like i barely ever have the energy to drag myself around. it's not like we did a 1-hour endurance set from kallang to the esplanade and back in 2 small boats with tyres behind us for our training sessions.
yesterday's run was horrible for me too. not because it was xiong or tough, but because it was so easy and the pace was so slow and comfortable tt i should not have had any problems with it. it was a damn short run at a damn slow pace tt i can usually sustain. but yesterday my muscles totally just rebelled against me and i've never felt so much pain in such a short time. i hate it. i really hate it.
i know i shouldn't be doing the whole self-pitying thing and i am trying my best to avoid tt pitfall, to stay positive and motivated and to break my mental barrier, but it gets so frustrating when you can't even do the simplest of things. i feel like i have the capacity of a paraplegic, and i know tt my teammates have been nothing but supportive and encouraging of me, but i hate the fact tt i am slowing everyone down because i can't keep up and i'm holding the rest of the team back and preventing us from improving as much as we should because i'm too slow. it's really a quesiton sometimes of what i have to contribute, seeing as it is tt i'm really not good enough to be in the team, and all tt i am doing everytime is letting everyone, including myself, down. i'm so sorry.
i don't need sympahty or affirmation. i know i shouldn't be thinking this way. but i do. i am trying to change and to motivate myself, to train and run on my own no matter how slow i am or how much it hurts. if lance armstrong can complete a tour de france, if people can complete ironman triathlons; the human body can be pushed a lot further than beyond mental imagining. and for tt reason i should be able to push my body way past what i think i can. i shall perservere.
i went to watch 'madagascar' in the evening. just a side note: why is it tt every guy i meet tends to be late? generally i'm not petty about lateness, but when i'm dead tired and walking around town hungry and dragging around a big bag, shoe bag and a paddle, it's relatively annoying.
anyway 'madagascar' was an ok show next to what i had watched the day before, but it's SO not worth the fucking $9.50. argh. i suppose next to a masterpiece like 'shrek', it's hard to top it off. but the characters didn't really endear themselves to me, there were no villains (according to yunshan), there was no real plot, and once again i felt like there was no point to the story. oh well. maybe i'm just too old to appreciate stuff like this. but tt damn song by ali g (tt's the gratis persona of sacha baron cohen who plays the airheaded king lemur in the show) totally got stuck in my head, replete with the actions. ARGH. and now i have this tendency to go "physically fit physically fit" as well when we do jumping jacks... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
anyway i reached home around 10+, 11. but my mom was baking butter cakes, so i helped her for a bit. and then my crazy neat-freak dad made me clean up, sweep and mop the entire kitchen at 1am at night. ARGH. now THAT sucked.
woke up on sunday with a little too little sleep. it didn't really feel like time trial day today. got to kallang; hitched a ride from pinxiu's dad in his red minivan, along with yirang and lydia. it was really funny coz 3 of us were trying to squeeze into the back of his van with the cushiony-things, and we didn't know where to put all our barang barang and ended up in variations of 'model poses'. and i accidentally assaulted yirang's face with the paddle while trying to manoeuvre my way out of the van. (oops! sorry girl!)
ah ping was damn high today. must have been the sun. ooh. but we had pre-trial photo taking! so as stolen off wenya's blog:
anyway today we did warm-up with no running and jumping jacks today. probably the most-treasured warm-up i will have this season. when the boats came in, we loaded them up and made our way to 'the other side' for our time trial. ooh! and ah ma came today! now tt was a highlight! she's been my conxswain for 2 out of 3 time trials (not counting today's), and we've kinda missed her being around.
the 'easy row' to 'the other side' wasn't much of an easy row. anyway after drawing lots, i got thrown into the heats with yirang, wenya and pinxiu. i was lucky lah. melissa, angie, ah ping and cheez got thrown together. now talk about lack of luck. anyway for time trial we were to row 300m on our own in a small boat (meaning seats 10 rowers) and try to clock our best timing.
today's trial had a lot of surprises. congrats to wenya! she came in first for our set. :) and to jul who really gave vic a tough fight too. haha. although i wasn't happy with my set. dammit. when i get tired my stroke just goes haywire. front catch disappears and i just end up stabbing the water with as much force as i can and just pulling. ARGH. not happy not happy. but tt said i think we generally did really well. juniors like lydia and jane really showed their fighting spirit, and yunshan despite of her flu and being really sick, clocked in the best timing for the set among all of us!
and ah ma was my coxswain again, and as usual she was the best ever. kept zhua-ing me and pushing me (which i *totally* need). wouldn't have been able to do it without her. thanks ah ma. :)
and i rem the 'easy row' set with ah ma on my left and ah ping coxing us. now *that* was funny. we weren't exactly easy-rowing coz it's difficult to control the champion in the water when you're not pulling fast enough, so to take our mind off the tiredness we were chatting with each other while rowing, and so while it looked deceptively relaxing it was in fact even more tiring. wahaha.
went out with 2 small boats for a little 'extra practice' after tt. i am in the 'heavy weight' boat. i guess tt says something about my weight. or rather how much excess i have. sigh.
we became a little *too* high after training, me thinks. must be the effect of ending a time trial. it makes a si geena out of everyone. while walking to the stadium to bathe with vic, geok and my chick *heh*, we were conducting our own ktv session with vic doing an electric guitar ritual with her paddle and the rest of us totally massacreing green day's 'boulevard of broken dreams', avril lavigne's 'don't tell me', and one or two other assorted songs. but tt was fun. we really should bring a player and speakers to penang. then we can have our own extended ktv session there! wahaha.
most of us went to city hall after bathing. had a late lunch @ subway (again). shared a sub with wenting, who doesn't take subway's veggies. then went to church (cathedral of the good shepherd) with serene, vic and cindy. i think it's cool tt 1/4 of the team is catholic! :) but i was very sleepy during subway. i had a feeling tt i wouldn't be able to last through the mass. well. i tried. i really did.
except tt: 1) the church has no air-con and is therefore very hot and stuffy; 2) the singing was erm... non-commentable; 3) the priest was old, ang moh, and with a thick french accent tt no one could understand, and spoke reeaaaallly slowly. and so halfway during the homily i crashed out (i didn't even realise), and later i just couldn't keep awake at all. even standing up, i couldn't stay awake. fell asleep halfway through the intercessions part in the liturgy of the eucharist; had to be woken up by serene to sing the 'our father'. tt was completely embarassing. sigh.
i am a lousy catholic. :(
after church i took a bus home. parents accordingly took me out immediately once i got home for dinner at pioneer seafood restaurant in tuas. obviously couldn't eat much, don't know why they always order so much. and i was really sleepy too. wasn't exactly coherent. :( oh, but on the way back home we passed all these cool army vehicles and tanks and stuff (prob national day parade celebration rehersals @ tuas), and these civil defence and polic vehicles too. had a fun time differentiating for my parents what a red rhino was as opposed to a fire engine, and an ang qia (red car used by the riot police). times like these it is fun to be a police scholar and in the know! heh heh heh.
so excited with my life now actually. penang race, police attachment, july race, and 1 year in canada! embrace life. tt's all i wanna do now.
oops. from thurs. once again, off wenya's blog:
us playing zombies before they sabo-ed lydia and then me. :(
now playing: hotel costes - cafe de flor
anyway yesterday - sat - was the day before the time trial (which was today). dum dum dum!!! had a pre-training discussion with wenting about politics. heh. yay! i have someone in the team who reads the economist too and shares my sentiments as to why it is the preferred magazine to time and newsweek. we were debating about why france and the netherlands would reject the eu's constitution, what this would mean for the future of the eu, and why on earth the economist as well as other foreign news papers rarely ever report on our beloved sunny island. that was fun. :)
training itself wasn't tt xiong (again), but i felt really really tired after tt. don't know why. is my stamina going down or something? don't know why i always feel so fucking drained after trainings, like i barely ever have the energy to drag myself around. it's not like we did a 1-hour endurance set from kallang to the esplanade and back in 2 small boats with tyres behind us for our training sessions.
yesterday's run was horrible for me too. not because it was xiong or tough, but because it was so easy and the pace was so slow and comfortable tt i should not have had any problems with it. it was a damn short run at a damn slow pace tt i can usually sustain. but yesterday my muscles totally just rebelled against me and i've never felt so much pain in such a short time. i hate it. i really hate it.
i know i shouldn't be doing the whole self-pitying thing and i am trying my best to avoid tt pitfall, to stay positive and motivated and to break my mental barrier, but it gets so frustrating when you can't even do the simplest of things. i feel like i have the capacity of a paraplegic, and i know tt my teammates have been nothing but supportive and encouraging of me, but i hate the fact tt i am slowing everyone down because i can't keep up and i'm holding the rest of the team back and preventing us from improving as much as we should because i'm too slow. it's really a quesiton sometimes of what i have to contribute, seeing as it is tt i'm really not good enough to be in the team, and all tt i am doing everytime is letting everyone, including myself, down. i'm so sorry.
i don't need sympahty or affirmation. i know i shouldn't be thinking this way. but i do. i am trying to change and to motivate myself, to train and run on my own no matter how slow i am or how much it hurts. if lance armstrong can complete a tour de france, if people can complete ironman triathlons; the human body can be pushed a lot further than beyond mental imagining. and for tt reason i should be able to push my body way past what i think i can. i shall perservere.
i went to watch 'madagascar' in the evening. just a side note: why is it tt every guy i meet tends to be late? generally i'm not petty about lateness, but when i'm dead tired and walking around town hungry and dragging around a big bag, shoe bag and a paddle, it's relatively annoying.
anyway 'madagascar' was an ok show next to what i had watched the day before, but it's SO not worth the fucking $9.50. argh. i suppose next to a masterpiece like 'shrek', it's hard to top it off. but the characters didn't really endear themselves to me, there were no villains (according to yunshan), there was no real plot, and once again i felt like there was no point to the story. oh well. maybe i'm just too old to appreciate stuff like this. but tt damn song by ali g (tt's the gratis persona of sacha baron cohen who plays the airheaded king lemur in the show) totally got stuck in my head, replete with the actions. ARGH. and now i have this tendency to go "physically fit physically fit" as well when we do jumping jacks... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
anyway i reached home around 10+, 11. but my mom was baking butter cakes, so i helped her for a bit. and then my crazy neat-freak dad made me clean up, sweep and mop the entire kitchen at 1am at night. ARGH. now THAT sucked.
woke up on sunday with a little too little sleep. it didn't really feel like time trial day today. got to kallang; hitched a ride from pinxiu's dad in his red minivan, along with yirang and lydia. it was really funny coz 3 of us were trying to squeeze into the back of his van with the cushiony-things, and we didn't know where to put all our barang barang and ended up in variations of 'model poses'. and i accidentally assaulted yirang's face with the paddle while trying to manoeuvre my way out of the van. (oops! sorry girl!)
ah ping was damn high today. must have been the sun. ooh. but we had pre-trial photo taking! so as stolen off wenya's blog:
anyway today we did warm-up with no running and jumping jacks today. probably the most-treasured warm-up i will have this season. when the boats came in, we loaded them up and made our way to 'the other side' for our time trial. ooh! and ah ma came today! now tt was a highlight! she's been my conxswain for 2 out of 3 time trials (not counting today's), and we've kinda missed her being around.
the 'easy row' to 'the other side' wasn't much of an easy row. anyway after drawing lots, i got thrown into the heats with yirang, wenya and pinxiu. i was lucky lah. melissa, angie, ah ping and cheez got thrown together. now talk about lack of luck. anyway for time trial we were to row 300m on our own in a small boat (meaning seats 10 rowers) and try to clock our best timing.
today's trial had a lot of surprises. congrats to wenya! she came in first for our set. :) and to jul who really gave vic a tough fight too. haha. although i wasn't happy with my set. dammit. when i get tired my stroke just goes haywire. front catch disappears and i just end up stabbing the water with as much force as i can and just pulling. ARGH. not happy not happy. but tt said i think we generally did really well. juniors like lydia and jane really showed their fighting spirit, and yunshan despite of her flu and being really sick, clocked in the best timing for the set among all of us!
and ah ma was my coxswain again, and as usual she was the best ever. kept zhua-ing me and pushing me (which i *totally* need). wouldn't have been able to do it without her. thanks ah ma. :)
and i rem the 'easy row' set with ah ma on my left and ah ping coxing us. now *that* was funny. we weren't exactly easy-rowing coz it's difficult to control the champion in the water when you're not pulling fast enough, so to take our mind off the tiredness we were chatting with each other while rowing, and so while it looked deceptively relaxing it was in fact even more tiring. wahaha.
went out with 2 small boats for a little 'extra practice' after tt. i am in the 'heavy weight' boat. i guess tt says something about my weight. or rather how much excess i have. sigh.
we became a little *too* high after training, me thinks. must be the effect of ending a time trial. it makes a si geena out of everyone. while walking to the stadium to bathe with vic, geok and my chick *heh*, we were conducting our own ktv session with vic doing an electric guitar ritual with her paddle and the rest of us totally massacreing green day's 'boulevard of broken dreams', avril lavigne's 'don't tell me', and one or two other assorted songs. but tt was fun. we really should bring a player and speakers to penang. then we can have our own extended ktv session there! wahaha.
most of us went to city hall after bathing. had a late lunch @ subway (again). shared a sub with wenting, who doesn't take subway's veggies. then went to church (cathedral of the good shepherd) with serene, vic and cindy. i think it's cool tt 1/4 of the team is catholic! :) but i was very sleepy during subway. i had a feeling tt i wouldn't be able to last through the mass. well. i tried. i really did.
except tt: 1) the church has no air-con and is therefore very hot and stuffy; 2) the singing was erm... non-commentable; 3) the priest was old, ang moh, and with a thick french accent tt no one could understand, and spoke reeaaaallly slowly. and so halfway during the homily i crashed out (i didn't even realise), and later i just couldn't keep awake at all. even standing up, i couldn't stay awake. fell asleep halfway through the intercessions part in the liturgy of the eucharist; had to be woken up by serene to sing the 'our father'. tt was completely embarassing. sigh.
i am a lousy catholic. :(
after church i took a bus home. parents accordingly took me out immediately once i got home for dinner at pioneer seafood restaurant in tuas. obviously couldn't eat much, don't know why they always order so much. and i was really sleepy too. wasn't exactly coherent. :( oh, but on the way back home we passed all these cool army vehicles and tanks and stuff (prob national day parade celebration rehersals @ tuas), and these civil defence and polic vehicles too. had a fun time differentiating for my parents what a red rhino was as opposed to a fire engine, and an ang qia (red car used by the riot police). times like these it is fun to be a police scholar and in the know! heh heh heh.
so excited with my life now actually. penang race, police attachment, july race, and 1 year in canada! embrace life. tt's all i wanna do now.
oops. from thurs. once again, off wenya's blog:
us playing zombies before they sabo-ed lydia and then me. :(
# posted by Kitana @ 6/06/2005 12:15:00 AM 
