Ryan is 1 month old!

Time has passed quickly with Ryan boy around at home.
Just held his baby shower over the weekend with lots of blessings from visiting friends and relatives.

Now I really understand the joys of parenting, though it can be quite tiring and frustrating at times.
Tough feeds, dirty diapers, uncontrollable and inexplicable cries in the wee hours, crap in his pants and on my t-shirt... all these are just fleeting moments of labor and fatigue, but at the same time, these are the building blocks of sweet memories that I'll cherish for a long time to come. (and as with "bad decisions make good stories", soiled diapers make good stories too!)

I'm really fortunate to have an understanding and strong wife. I'm very sure Shan will make a very good mummy!

The "ooo it's papa" look from Ryan's eyes make it all worthwhile :)
____

TriFactor Olympic Distance Triathlon on 26 Aug 2012
Finally did my first ever full distance triathlon last Sunday.
Completed the event in 3:15hr, faster than my expected range of 3:30 - 4:00
Guess I had seriously overcompensated for my cycling leg, which in the end turned out to be the best of the 3 legs.
Swim: 00:48:58 (Rank: 284/396)
T1: 00:02:38
Bike: 01:14:35 (Rank: 223)
T2: 00:02:47
Run: 01:06:29 (Rank: 254)
Total: 03:15:36 (Rank: 260, Standard Distance Open-Male)

Take-away notes from this race:
1) Lots of room for improvement in swimming. Strong undercurrent in this race but I should still target to complete open water swims within 40min.
2) No complains on both T1 and T2. Executed well to plan
3) Plus: Did not get wobbly legs this time in the run after bike due to change in running strategy of low stride-high cadence.
4) Minus: Cramps settled in harder than expected in later part of the run - same problems for my 3 hour wall limit. Must schedule more brick training for a full run after a full bike workout to stimulate actual race conditions (did not manage to fulfill this requirement in training for this race)
5) Did not apply any refuelling strategies in this race. Probably good to explore nutrition aspect to improve performance next time.

Will be looking for another Full D Tri event to join.
Hopefully I'll be able to make it to a 70.3 IM event in 2013.

Verdict out

Quota effectively got increased by about another 5%.
Warped logic used by boss doesn't help.
I get rewarded by additional quota increase for outperforming last year.

Take that I was on a $100 quota and I did $120, this year he asks me to do $112, while telling me that my quota "went down by $8".

His reason being last year the whole team's quota was at $300, but achieved only $260 only.
So this year the team quota stands at $306 that means an "increase of 18%".

The non performing guy did $31 out of a $62 quota, and he got a huge "94% quota increase" to do $60.

WOW. MIND BLOWN


When I asked about increasing our pay to commensurate with the increased workload and responsibilities, he had to cheek to remind me that he told me that I had a supposed promotion.
Then when I asked where is the pay increment, he then responded that he only received a promotion confirmation letter from HR that states nothing else, and since the new rank pay range bench mark has not been finalized by HR, so there is no pay increment mentioned.

Well, in this case should I reserve a huge THANKS for giving me the promotion with a huge quota increment?

Time to do window shopping.
If the company is not giving me the appropriate compensation for the extra orders that I bring in, maybe the competition will.

Time to job search again...

Getting the bad end of the stick in the new work year, and seems to be taking a turn for the worst.

Met my quota for the first month of the year and tell me now that my quota needs to go up by 8%?
It effectively wipes out what I did for last month.

Cancel an old order from my side and rebooking it with another guy?
That adds another month of quota to my load.

All out of a sudden I have to clock a 14 month worth of orders for this new financial year, on top of the 50% increase in workload and at least 20% increase in quota, but no increase in pay.
And still get finger pointing at me say quota decrease 15% (via unfair & incorrect calculation)

SRSLY WTF

It is the worst possible time to be job hopping, but if the final arrangements is unfair, then I better be moving
I rarely openly post issues at work but this is getting ridiculous...

Today is Ah Di's 15th birthday

Happy birthday Ah Di!

Still miss you lots

Ryan is born today!!

Happy!

Almost there

It's week 36.

We are almost there!

Almost everything has been prepared to welcome the arrival of Ryan.

I just have to clean up the home again this weekend to make sure that boy boy gets a dust-free environment.

Gotta start spending more time reading up baby care rather than work related stuff.

I know it's bad timing to still be traveling for biz now, but I just have to get this trip done to avoid any later complications at work, especially since I had been hands off since May. 

If I clock 4 consecutive months away from biz, it speaks bad no matter what the reason is.

Have to go for IPPT again next week.

Not sure if I can claim the $400 incentive once again. 

Chin ups should be ok since I can consistently clock 8x minimum.

Always have this feeling of not spending enough time on speed training. The only good thing is that I'm getting an extra 15s for reaching CAT Y1.

Probably will clock a speed workout sometime early next week and book an ippt session in late week

31.5km run

Been too busy these few days to write down a review for this race done on last Sunday.
It was pretty interesting as I managed to figure out some new stuff.


Official results from the TriFactor page states that I have completed the 31.5km run in exactly 3 hours, so that works out to be about 10.5km/h pace on average. Not too shabby considering the minimal amount of long D training that I had put in over the last couple of months, just 3 x ~12km runs on 3 weekends, and I was targeting an optimistic timing of 3.15hr at my current fitness level. 3hr flat just surprised me.


Key difference in this race was the rain and the strict discipline on following through on a high cadence short stride combination.


Had tried the high cadence short stride combi in training a few times and ended up making my heart rate ramp up much faster than my traditional low cadence long stride combi.
However the books and techniques that I had read up states that long strides will cause a braking effect and will waste more energy and place unnecessary stress on the knees.


Given the non-optimal fitness condition with a bad left knee, and the tested and proven heavy taxation on the body from the low long combi, it was perhaps a stroke of genius or act of desperation that I did the unconventional by trying a new technique during a race.
Somehow I had managed to pull this high short combi off (the rain has definitely helped), and maintained it for the full 31.5km without any real stops (excluding short drink breaks) and kept the heart rate consistent at 162~168 bpm for about 80% of the run. 
This is in my zone 3, also my lactate threshold grey zone (since I have never managed to clearly define my Max HR to get a clear set of numbers), so technically speaking I could continue running at the same pace for the full 42.195km with enough LSD endurance training.


However, I could feel that I was starting to tire towards the end of the run (also incidentally my traditional break down point at 3hr), so this means that I will need more LSD endurance training to make this pace last through the final 10.5km.


My rough estimate is that if I could put in more training for the high short combi, achieving another sub 4.30 for my final SC 42k will not be a far fetched target.
With another ~4 months to SCMS, time is on my side now to make a difference.
Hope I can make my 10th anniversary run a good one.

Time really flies

A quick glance at my last entry and it is about my Tri early in the year.
In the blink of an eye, we are now heading into the end of June.

Till now, this year has been pretty eventful, or rather full of events for me.

SPORTS
Almost having a race every month, but ain't really performing as I'm not training properly.
Part lazy, part due to knee issues.
Perhaps I had been doing heel strikes unknowingly for a long time, and am now due to take up new running methods as recommended by Colin

TRAVEL
Did a trip to Beijing together with YQ, JS, HQ and HS.
Pretty fun and funny, but I ain't expecting to make any return trips to Beijing in the foreseeable future.
Scaled the Great Wall and visited the Forbidden Palace.
Tasted 2 different styles of Peking Duck and tried their Mala Hotpot.
Pretty much done a lot of stuff and ticked a few items off my bucket list.
Did a quick trip to BKK 2 weeks ago with Dear. Finally experienced the feel of being a tourist in BKK, but being too familiar still doesn't help... hahahaha

COMING UP
July: 3/4 marathon with SingTel Tri Factor series.
I'm srsly going to suck at this one. 3 more weeks to the race and I have only clocked like 10km at most.
Need to buck up!

August:
Very important Life changing moment !!! Welcoming of Ryan Wang!!!
Full D Tri with SingTel Tri Factor

September:
Contemplating when to join a Long D Tri with Roy at Desaru. This is going to kill if I'm going.
Super hot weather and hilly terrain will make this minimum 6 hour race unbearable..

December:
StanChart 42km again! This will be my 10th anniversary, and probably my last shot at 42k SCSM.


Side notes:
On my last trip to BKK, a Chinese physician mentioned that I have some liver problems, which is no good for people of my age. Think I better book a health screening fast...