16. Saucony 30km 4th August 2019 . Personal Race Report.

A day before a group of students promised to come to a class, at 9 am. I planned out everything, as I switched on the car, the car cannot start due to a battery problem. Damn, I got to rush to my office. Well, let cycle there, just about 40 mins cycle I can still reach there. I thought I was late, and then when I pump and cycle to the office, there is no student. All of them FFK, (let go airplane), shit. I should have called the GrabCar service. Then I won't be so tired.

So, on the way I cycled back, I took my breakfast at the food court and went to a car workshop. I asked them to come to my house to fix the car battery at 10 am. Well, I the boss, my workers haven' t arrived yet, they are still Zzzz. I think they will come at 11-12 am. OK.lah. No choice I have to wait for you.

Later at 11:45, he came to change the car battery. The car was functioning again. I told him what happened to his worker, well their family are too rich. Even if I deduct their salary, they will still be more than willing. Every month I deduct RM300/-, they don't feel any pain. Otherwise, how do you find workers? Soon after he left, there was heavy rain.

Then I went and collected the race kit. I was thinking of selling off my BIB as my hamstring is still pulling. Then I tried to find out more information, whether there is a luggage keeping facility, where to park the car for the race. I cannot find such information. I asked for help in Alam Damai Whatup group, and someone forwarded me with the info. Later I filed a complaint at the Saucony FB page.

"very poor organizer. No road block information, where should we park our car. WHich route will be closed on that day.  this information not given. No luggage drop off for participants. Shit organizer. Later i found out the info in https://www.facebook.com/Mysportsdiary/posts/1289859947855489

You want to give info, give properly lah. Don;t give one piece here and there. Hell finding these informations. You put it at https://www.ticket2u.com.my/…/127…/saucony-run-malaysia-2019 then habis cerita lah. Lucky I know some runner, if not tomorow, i may missed out something.

"

36 hours b4 the race, I took calcium and magnesium pills. Sleep early at about 10:30pm. Set my alarm at 3:50 am. Then around 2:30 am I woke up. WTF, I want to wake up at 3:50 mah! Not now. Then, I sleep again at 3:00 something! Got alarm mah. But the bell did not ring!

"When I woke up, damn it was 6:30 am. The run starts at 5 am. Worst, I forgot to lock the side gate; some foreign workers went into my house to sleep at my couch. Damn, I have to kick them out. What should I do? Then I don't know what happens?"

Then I woke up again it was 4:25 am. Thank god it was a bad dream!. Thank god for giving me a 2nd chance. I rushed to the car. Damn, the car did not start again! WTF. I just changed the battery yesterday. Don't tell me I have to cycle again. Oh! I just put the gear in park mode then the car can start. It is a vehicle safety feature. Thank God.

Then I rush to the race location, put some deep heat on the hamstring. Hopely I can last for 30 km without hamstring. Well, no hamstring but cramp elsewhere. Well, I learned my lesson from my last marathon. I need to control my pace. So I keep it with 6min to 6:20 per km. when my pace is 5:50 and below I tried to slow down. I was able to keep this pace till 21km. Then I started to bonk.! Damn, it must be due to the cycling done yesterday which I have yet to recover. I was trying to make

sure I do not pull my hamstring, so my running is compensated with other muscle groups. Some parts of your muscle which you never think it will cramp started to cramp. This experience is worse than my previous marathon. Then my feet cramped cannot move at all. So later, when the cramp recovered, I tried to run 50 meters and walk 20 meters. It was working for a while. Then at KM 22, the 3hr:15min (30km) pacer went past me for the last time. I thought 3:15 is gone lah.

Then during a downhill, I ran too fast and did not recover from that. From the last 28 km, I virtually walk to the finish line. Then I reached 30km on my watch, damn the finish line is still 500m away. Damn, later the clock show it was 30.62km. My time was 3:41. Well off my initial target 3:15.

Later I saw my Alam Damai runner friend. I asked what is your time 2:47 or 2:57 I cannot recall. He said "Why so slow?". In my mind well, I run much faster than you wow! During the ADR interval training. How come you finished so fast?. Later I found out, while they took their group photo I was still running!

Now I learned my lesson, only 1 big event every month. Max 2 events but must be 2 weeks apart. Before any event, I will have sufficient rest and don' t get injured. I must start to do some weight training as my muscle is not strong enough and can get injured easily. I planned to do more BRICK training such as cycle for 1.5 -2 hours and run for 1 hour after that. It's less damaging for my leg. 


Let hope; I can achieve my dream sub-4 hour marathon — still a long way to go. Later on Tuesday, some of the Alam Damai runners did hill interval after 30km run. Well how can their body standard such a work-out, my whole leg is still in aching pain. I guess my age is catching up.

15. Why certain stall’s food is always fresh?

June 09, 2019
Some food operator depends on supplier to supply them the raw fishes, prawn, vegetable and etcetera. Some go to NSK supermarket, pasar borong etcetera to buy themselves directly. Some do half-half, where certain things they took from suppliers, specific things they will go market to buy themselves. Unless you are a restaurant with a guarantee payment to supplier and willingness to pay for a higher price most likely, you will not get fresh raw material.

Good food operators must source their critical raw material themselves and do not depend on supplier delivery. There was one Char Kuey Teow Seller whose mee is very delicious because all the crucial ingedient like prawns, cockles, bean sprouts are fresh. He goes to market almost every day to get his supply. In the past, he used to get it from a few suppliers, but the freshness is not guaranteed. It only takes one or two stocks of spoilt prawns, then most of his customer is gone.  Thus, in the end, he had given up on suppliers and sourced it by himself. The rest like noodles he can source from suppliers. Going to the market may involve extra cost and effort. Imagine your stall open at 8 am,  you need to prepare by 7 am. Thus you may need to go market at 5 am to source the material. So, some buy expensively from the nearby supermarket, freeze it and then give you a smaller prawn. Others may give you alternative meat.

On top of that, the operators are not greed. They roughly know their daily sales and most of the time there is very little wastage, all food is sold out. There is a high probability that you will not get an overnight prawn or cockles. I wonder which seller is willing to go through these extra miles to deliver their food.

14. Pointless argument or debate

In the past, I used to argue or debate with people. The debate is mainly used to get my point across on specific issues and occasions. Some debate can go seriously fierce until no more friendship. However, since 2015, years have passed and I begin to see there is no point in arguing. No matter how logical is it pointless, as in a conversation, most people already made up their minds about what they want to convey and their listening preferences. There is little hope in convincing them. All they want is freebies, SHOW OF POWER AND EASY WAY OUT. Roughly from my experience, only 5% of all casual conversation can accept a friendly debate.

My brief experience tells me that if you disagreed with someone (especially those rich and experience one) on a particular topic.  They will briefly ignore you and quietly move on to another topic. Most will think that it is counter-productive to argue with you.  However, if you are ready for a full debate (non-personal issue, no personal attack), I always on, just let me know. We are still friends after that.  I also have a policy,

a)       If you are not interested, I will stop talking immediately and quickly.
b)      I ‘m not here to convince you about my belief. You are free to believe whatever you want. However, there is little evil in my mind to cast doubt on what you believe or practice?

There are many issues such as religion, special rights, discrimination, corruption etc. Each group, parties, religion, interest group etc have the burning desire to debate, to prove their point and “jihadist” their idea. Thus, two opposite views should not confront each other as one can never change the other. It only leads to wars and fighting. In most cases, there is no point in a logical debate as everyone has an unshakeable belief on how things should work.

13. Carbon 60 Olive Oil.

Hi,

There are some studies on Carbon 60 Olive Oil. There are many claims that C60 will extend the life of rats. In 2012, there is a study that extends the life of rat by 2x. You can refer to the video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLZS1WQl_1E&t=2s

For complete information, you can refer to the list of videos here.
https://www.youtube.com/user/kjohnson1701/videos


Anyway, if you 've run out of option, why don't you give yourself a try!
Good luck.

12. Friend are hopeless! How to solve it?

All the while, I thought if I want to do anything, I ask my friend to join me. Perhaps, I ask the wrong friend. I invite my old friend (>10years) to join me for swimming, cycling, hiking. None of them join me despite repeated requests. Let alone doing business (buy/sell/etc) with them. So, you will have to join strangers for your activities. What went wrong here?

Friends are specific. Colleagues, Universities Mate, School Mate, Kampung Mate, Interest group mate etc. Each of you become friends because of some condition and remains intact (stay in the group) for the same reason.

I have a friend Mr. A who use to sell goods on eBay. Mr. A told me 99.5% of his customers are strangers. There is one customer who is his old friend Mr. B, Mr. B found out from eBay that Mr. A is selling some stuff off his interest. Mr. A did not promote it to Mr. B in the first place.

So how to solve this problem. Let said you want to do travel backpacking, but none of your friends want to go with you.

Rule 1: Find, locate, join and cultivate “Interest Specific Friend/Group.”

The solution is “Interest Specific Friend” and Meetup group. For me I like hiking, so I join https://www.meetup.com/KLhiking/  . Anything to do with hiking, I will make friends with people from this group and join them. The rest of friend I can almost forget about them because 99% of them will not be interested.

However, Old friends are friend mah! So, I will briefly inform/self-advertise a bit here and there on facebook on which nice adventure I went. When they ask, I point them the answer. https://www.meetup.com/KLhiking/

Rule 2: I already briefly told you what I have done and my interest. If you ask, I will tell you more.

So, now I am more interested in forming some interest-specific friends such as running, cycling, swimming, research group, religious group and hiking. I assume they don’t cross border. Cyclists will remain as cyclists etc. Nevertheless, rule 2 still applicable.

All my life, I been wasted my time trying and hoping to develop interest among my friends. Since I have found Rule 1, I also found rule 3&4

Rule 3: Interest are not nurtured; they came out naturally.
Rule 4: Interest-based on greed come out naturally, but they won’t last and it’s the first to go.

So, if U 1 2 come along (rule 4), pay your bills. I ‘m not going to pay for your free holiday. $$ is better used for donation to the needy.

It all goes back to the same premise (specialization), if you want to eat good chicken rice, go to a shop that sells only chicken rice and not economy rice stall.