Jan - Conducted first L1 solo class in Malaysia
Feb -
Mar - First Partner conference in Greater China. Conducted my first sales training in Mandarin
Apr - Port Dickson Swimathon. First time getting stung by Jellyfish. Perth holiday with the kids
May - Busselton 703 + Taiwan family retreat
Jun -
Jul - First Business trip to Seoul. Conducted 1st FMB in Penang.
Aug - Inaugural Partner Training in Japan
Sep - First business trip to Manila
Oct - Conducted first L1 class in Penang
Nov - Completed Swim Expo Asia 8.35km for the 2nd time. Conducted first internal sales training to the swim coach team. 2nd business trip to Seoul
Dec - Completed 15th StanChart Marathon
Low Lights of 2016
- MIL having a mild stroke in Nov
- Called off the Osaka holiday which was supposed to be a well deserved break for Lishan
- Scored Silver for IPPT instead of Gold - dumb decision in losing my cool against the arsehole PTI that kept writing off my push-ups.
- Getting stung by Jellyfish during the Port Dickson Swimathon, and not recovering properly from the injury
High Lights for 2016
- Managed to break the combo and celebrated my birthday at home with Lishan and the kids
- Personal Best at Busselton 703 and numerous break throughs
- Completing the 15th StanChart Marathon and crossing the finish line together with Weicheng
- Memorable but super tiring Perth holiday with Lishan and kids
- Fun Taiwan family retreat - though I could have planned it better
- 1st & 2nd business trip to Seoul - I love the Gigantic LINE shops there!
- Getting my first direct report - finally becoming a real manager that manages people instead of just managing accounts or partners
Key Events for 2017
- House hunting - Ryan will be going to Pri school in another 2 years time. And with MIL not in good health, it will be ideal to move nearer to MIL by end of 2017
- Busan 703 - targeted next race for 2017. Registration not open yet. Time to repair the bike! Don't think I'll be tackling the full IM any time soon. Simply don't have the time to commit to a full IM training schedule. Maybe ticking off all Asian 703 will be possible...
- Another family retreat before Bro moves back to the US
- Career development for promotion to the next level
- Expansion of the Malaysian swimming business - target at 4x growth of 2016 revenue
StanChart 42km Race Report
Another new break through - not on the high side but the low.
Overslept for the race and woke up just 1 hour before the supposed start time for the race - luckily weicheng's calls woke me up.
Drove to WC's office and parked the car there (instead of the usual Raffles City) and had a long hard time trying to hail a cab off the streets, when throngs of party-goers were vying for taxis at the same time.
Ended up taking a Grab and while we were enroute to the starting point, we saw runners passing through the 2km mark, and I was mentally prepared to see an empty Orchard road start line, and start at the very rear of the entire race pack (just like what happened at Sundown many years ago)
To my surprise, my pen was still waiting for flag off even though I was late for 1 hour. And we waited for another 45min to start.
Originally thought that the event organization was going to be better this year since the event was bought over by Ironman, but it proved to be otherwise - with the insanely long wait for the flag off, as well as the non-operation of SMRT on race day. Well, given that this is their first time organizing SCMS, I should have lowered expectations as Ironman had overlooked multiple intricate logistical arrangements which were taken for granted.
Nothing much to yell about on my performance for this race.
Extremely bad preparations in terms of training, sleep, and I didn't even manage to take any breakfast this time. Couldn't find my usual salt stick container and had to use Rainie's cough syrup bottle to double up as a last minute solution.
Managed to jog till 21km, where both of us just agreed to walk for the rest of the race - even though we could have continued jogging. Minor cramps and aches came in, but nothing unexpected after 14x experience in this event. I had some chest pains from time to time, so we chose not to push ourselves either, since we were no longer concerned about the race time.
Finished the race probably around the 5h 50min mark.
Not too shabby for walking half the race at relaxed pace (not my usual insane race walking pace)
All these with no breakfast & 2 power gels only - I avoided bananas on empty stomach, and no point taking power gels as I had more than enough energy to last the walk.
