Busy September

It has been a hectic month till date, but I'm enjoying it though.

Commenced on my swimming class and just completed my stock trading class last saturday.

The stock trading class has been pretty intense and useful.

I had been buying stocks since 2012 but had no idea of how to properly evaluate a stock to make sure it is good, and no idea of how to take profit, when to enter and exit etc. I had made profits and losses over the last few years without knowing why.
As the common saying goes: "What you don't pay in school fees, you will pay a bigger amount through losses"
Since the biggest paper loss that I had made was more than the course fees itself, I thought that I might as well go learn how to do trading and investments properly instead of continuing to deceive myself that I'll do enough self study on the various free online resources and I'll be one day become a God of Stocks.
Time to grow up and face the reality.

Sure, I had took Biz Minors in NTU, and went through classes on understanding the stock markets, but back then, it was all theoretical stuff without solid hands on and quantitative analysis done, so it was all talk in the air without working on any examples.
It was akin to finishing my 1sr read on "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and then declaring that I'll reach Financial Freedom by 40 years old, without the know how or plans on how to do that.

Burnt a few weekday nights and 2 saturdays for this short and intense course, and I'm pretty satisfied with what I had picked up so far, and signed up for the advanced class without hesitation to extend my knowledge further.
The only downside is that I have to sacrifice time with Ryan & Dear to attend these classes, but it is temporary and I know that the future payoff will be much bigger than the small sacrifice now.


Also commenced on my swimming classes this month.
Actually I started the 1st unofficial class last month, before the OD race, where I picked up some tips on the optimal swimming technique, but was insufficient to make a significant way to my existing technique.
After attending a few classes, I can tell that my technique is gradually improving, and I'm starting to be able to swim faster with less energy expended.
Of course I did my own homework and watched lots of training videos to improve my understanding as well, to accelerate my progress.
Swimming has now become more of a relaxing exercise than a strength training session like what I used to do in the past.
It seems that I am doing more swimming than running these days!


Picking up new knowledge has always been enjoyable for me, and it continues to do so with the swim and stock classes. Free online education materials and videos really make it much easier to learn, absorb and reinforce new knowledge.

I guess these courses can fulfill my goal for this year for learning new stuff, since I'm going to continue with the stock class, and probably with the swim class as well, so I won't have time to go for martial arts and will have to delay this till next year.

Learning new stuff is always good!

Race Report TriFactor OD 7 Sept 2014

Went into this race without heavy preparations nor expectations, since I was just looking to complete the race as a check for my fitness levels and to experiment with some of the newer stuff that I had learnt.

Of course there is always a comparison against my past timings on the same course, but beating that timing wasn’t top priority.

Pre race

Just my usual food the day before race, and my usual McD Fillet O Fish meal when I drove to the venue.

Used a bigger gym bag to carry all my race equipment rather than the smaller water proof bag which I had problems trying to fit everything in. Good decision.

Bike checked-in around 45 min before race, and remembered a tip from Winston on putting the bike shoes on the bike. Didn’t bring along any rubber bands, so I made do with a piece of plastic bag. Made sure that the knot is just strong enough to hold the shoes in place without dragging across the floor when I ran out of T1 bare footed, and loose enough for it to break loose automatically after I start pedaling.

Swim

Took it easy at the start and swam to the side rather than in the midst of the washing machine, as I wanted to test if the TI method will be really useful in the open water.

Swam the 1^st round mostly with the TI method, except for a couple of times when other swimmers came too close for comfort and I had to accelerate ahead to get out of the mess.

2^nd round was more of a 50-50 mix between TI and my old hard pedaling style.

Took me around 42 mins to complete 1.5km swim. About 5 mins more than what I’d have clocked with just the old hard pedaling. However, it was refreshing to get out of the water still feeling fresh in the legs.

T1

Lane markings was much better this time. With the lanes and numbers clearly marked out so there is no chance of missing my bike.

Nothing unusual this time, just that I noticed that I’m the only one who chose to wear my bike shoes on after mounting, rather than wearing the shoes first then running out with the bike.

Bike

Made a mistake in the settings after I had just replaced the battery for the bike computer the previous night. Wheel size was wrongly set, so it wasn’t before long then I realized that the bike computer was showing speeds that was definitely off the scale. So I had to ignore it and just refer to my watch.

Didn’t really thought much on how to pace the bike leg, so I just went at a pace that I was comfortable with. Hands on aero bars most of the time. Managed to clock around 31km/h on average, which given the winding race course, I should be reaching around 33km/h most of the time. Not too bad.

My quads only started to tire towards the end of the bike session, and I knew that it will affect my run..

T2

Dismounted shoeless. Ran in to transition, mounted my bike, ate a salt stick and ran out with just 1 packet of gel.

Run

Pace during the first 2km was still ok, but as cramps gradually set in on my right quad, my pace slowed to 7.48 min/km.

I had expected this to happen, and was going to experiment my school of thought that it might be possible to run off the cramps, so I persisted in slow jog without stopping (less @ water points) to see if this theory will work.

The cramps in my right quads persisted for quite some time before it gradually started to fade away at around the 6km mark when the left quads start to act up as well. Persisted with the slow jog and I gradually got faster and eventually ended the run without any cramps

Conclusion

Racing with my new Garmin Forerunner 910-XT gave me new insights into my swim leg which was not available on my old Polar RCX5.

Since I had split my swims into 100% TI method for the 1^st lap, and 50-50 for the 2^nd lap, it was possible for me to compare the swim data and see which was more efficient.

Barring the poor sighting in this swim (mostly my fault as I was too lazy to sight properly even though I could do it easily), the data was pretty evident that I had did pretty well in Lap 1 compared to lap 2.

The tips that I had picked up during the 1 hour session with TI and my subsequent 30 min of self training actually resulted in a much easier swim at roughly the same timing that I would have clocked with my old style. I can only imagine that I’ll get much faster and better when I’m able to fully absorb and integrate the TI method.

Played relatively safe on the bike this time. Wanted to lower the handle bars a bit before the race but eventually decided against doing so since I didn’t have the time to test it in training. Always stick to the mantra – Don’t try new things in a race!

The rubber band tip on tying the pedals and shoes is useful. I'll implement this properly for my next race.

Since I don’t have any more Tri races for the year, I’ll have all the time to optimize my bike.

Run timing wasn’t exactly stellar this time but it didn’t matter since that wasn’t my objective. However the an important breakthrough on outpowering the level 4 cramps (w/o using salt sticks) that I always experience in long D runs was worth it.

Lactic acid would have built up over the bike leg, and manifested in the 2^nd km of my run. Didn’t want to take the extra salt stick as it may build up my reliance on this placebo, so I persisted with the theory that if I run slow enough, my muscles will be able to flush away the built up lactic acid much more quickly than it will build up over a slow run. Pretty much similar to doing a recovery run on the day following race day. It worked!

Took quite a fair bit of will power and patience to do it though.

It will have been much easier to just adopt the same walk-run method that I had been doing in the SCMS for the last 10+ years, but I’d just walk away from this race without taking away anything.

On the same course, my timing for the last few years. Definitely much improved over the poor race last year, but I reckon that with proper prep, it should be easy for me to breach the 3 hour mark.

2012:     3:15:35

2013:     3:31:46

2014:     3:06:00

Bike distance is wrong... should be 36km instead

I perform better when there is no pressure to do so.
Best for me to do future races in a "I don't really care attitude"...