Target setting for 703 Busselton 2016

The Jellyfish wounds have healed probably 80%, still smarting every now and then whenever I make a large arm movement which will tear the wound open again.

Borrowed a wetsuit from my friend, and tried fitting into it on Sunday after my class ended. Boy, it was an eye-opening experience. Insanely difficult to even put my leg through the pants, and trying to pull it all the way up was just energy sapping. The age-old plastic bag trick really helps though.
Trying to swim in the wet suit felt strange as well, as it changes my balance quite a fair bit, and the part of the suit being pretty constricting as well worries me a little. Bad experience from the last wetsuit swim race that I did not finish. Hopefully this time I'll fare better

The longest bike training that I had clocked this season is probably 50km - roughly half the distance of what is needed in the 703 bike leg

Been desperately trying to clock up a bit of mileage for my run over the last 2 weeks, but I'm keenly aware that my body has not been properly tuned up from my runs.

Well, I will just have to survive this race, and make it back before the cut off time.
Being the last wave to start doesn't really help...

Course cut off time is 7.5 hours.

Let's take a look at my own race time estimates:

• SWIM: Within 45 mins
• T1: 8 mins - taking off the wetsuit will take a bit of time
• BIKE: 3h 30min - and this is being optimistic
• T2: 5 mins - shouldn't have issues here, except that I may take the usual toilet break
• RUN: 3h - just survive. Even if I walk the entire course it shouldn't take me longer than what happened at Cebu or Taiwan to finish the 21km.

Targeted race time: 7h 28min
Dangerously close to the cut off time, but there is nothing much that I can do now except to accept the fact that I had screwed up the race prep with the bad injury and I'll just have to go out and enjoy the race instead of worrying about how slow I'll go.

My just survive race strategy:

• SWIM: Keep it slow and steady. Prepared the sea sickness pills and lots of body glide to minimize chaffing. Don't get short of breath or sea sick, as it will be impossible to recover with the super constricting wetsuit. Let my technique shine and forget about keeping pace with the sprinters
• BIKE: Maintain steady state effort and stay in aero position as far as possible. Keep spinning at the appropriate RPM with steady state effort. Do not attempt to surge/ keep pace/ overtake others. Maintain mid to low effort and save the legs for the run.
• RUN: No brick training done means my legs will be bricked after T2. Just maintain short stride lengths with high cadence at recovery pace to allow the legs to recover and flush out the lactic acid build up, so that I can quickly return to the normal steady state run form.

Most importantly - Do not make the same mistake at the aid stations during the Bike leg. Safety first.

Worst ever prep for 703

Probably going to suffer big time for this 703.
11 days to the race and I'm not even prepared for it.

Had not been able to train properly since the jellyfish sting from PD Swimathon 3 weeks ago.
The wounds just couldn't heal or close up properly, and gotten infected.
Finished a course of antibiotics to stave off the infection but it ain't closing up yet.

Just hope that I can survive this 703...

Happy Family Day

Took the day off together with Dear to bring the kids out to catch the rare solar eclipse.
It was a good decision.

Reached Bishan Park Macdonald's around 7.30am, when the eclipse was just starting.
Picked up a free solar filter from the Singapore Sidewalk Astronomy society that was supporting the event there. Ryan had a field day catching the view of the eclipse through the solar filter spectacles, through the filtered telescopic lens provided by the society, as well as our DIY home-made solar pinhole camera.

It was a pretty novel experience.
It wasn't a total blackout like what used to be shown on Chinese period drama as 天狗蚀日, but feels more like an unusually thick layer of cloud covering the sun momentarily.
Not observable by the naked eye.

Ryan could tell us that it is a "Crescent Sun".
Glad that he could have this educational experience at such a young age.
Afterall, this is the first time that his dad is catching a solar eclipse at the age of 34 years old!

Brought the kids to the grass field to play frisbee and boomerang that we had brought along. Ryan had lots of fun chasing down the frisbee and boomerang after their flight. Next step is to teach him how to throw them properly into flight.

Rainie had a great time walking around the grass field as well. Just let her walk and tumble on the grass, ignoring how dirty her clothes would get.

After bringing the kids back home and washing up, we brought them out to City hall again for another education trip - National Gallery of Singapore.

Didn't know that we had such an awesome art gallery, that is FOC to all Singaporeans.
The entire place felt more like we were in Australia rather than in SG. The kids had much fun playing in the kids arts exhibit. Best part is that, going on a weekday afternoon, there is practically no other visitors. We didn't have to Q at all, and had the entire place to ourselves.

Oh, it was a public transport trip as well, so it was LRT, MRT, bus all the way.
Applied for Ryan's child EZ link card as well, so he can now tap his own card to access the public transportation.

All in all, it was a really worthwhile and enjoyable day with the kids.
Can really see the joy in their eyes.

Should do this more often.

Fruitful trip to Klang last weekend

Did a solo trip to Klang last weekend to conduct one Level 1 class and 2 Basics workshop, which both went pretty well.

Set off on Sat morning at 4am, and reached the swimming pool around 8.30am - Could have been earlier if I had not set the GPS to the breakfast location instead of the swimming pool.

Ran the first Level 1 class session between 12PM-3PM. First time running the full class without any kind of support or supervision. Having done a short 1-1 coaching session in SG helped a fair bit on streamlining the issues that I'm expecting to see and tools that I will need to use. Pretty good results after the first session.

1st Basics workshop between 5PM-9PM, which 3 out of 6 students chose to sign up for the Level 1 class even though we did not have any specific dates laid out for Level 1 yet, which was pretty encouraging

2nd Basics workshop on Sunday 8AM-12PM was kinda interesting, as I was thrown the curveball of having 3 Muslim ladies in my class, so I had to be extra cautious about any kind of physical contact out of respect for them. It was interesting though, as I had to adjust my class to be even more succinct and effective with minimal contact, on the go. It actually worked pretty well in fact, that I had to innovate more to overcome the challenges and limitations. The 3 muslim ladies were pretty happy about the results of their basics workshop and signed up for the Level 1 class as well.

The subsequent 2 sessions for Level 1 classes went very smoothly, and from the reactions of the students, I probably had far exceeded their expectations from attending my class.

Having been through the same curriculum as an end-user, understanding the pain points of the end users, and addressing them proactively when I was the coach, really helped to improve my lesson plans and the way I teach.

I had only the general lesson plan in place, had no specific steps or sequence on what to teach, which actually worked pretty well as I adjusted my tempo according to the real time needs rather than following a fixed formula, which may not work at times.

Coming from a Sales background definitely helped in my communications skills and style. Coupled with the passion for the sport/coaching, it probably helped to create a warm aura of true coaching which the students endeared to, rather than a cold calculating salesman trying to close an order.

Did a debriefing at the end of the classes for my 2 new assistant coaches, and it seems that they warmed up very quickly to me as well after seeing how differently I conduct my classes. Bought them dinner after the classes and got to know them better as well. Hearing their feedback on the classes and business over an informal setting is the best way to gather honest input.

Left Klang at 9.30PM and reached home at around 3PM after numerous stops to catch the full moon + planet alignment along the R&R stops.


It has only been 9 months since I started swim coaching (or even lesser as we had to complete our long hours of training first before doing any kind of coaching), but I had learnt plenty of stuff along the way. While the business revolves around swim coaching, the skills that I had picked up along the way extends beyond that. I've got more chance to practice my communications, presentation and "selling" skills, which will be useful no matter where I go.

2015 Review

Jan - Rainie was born!
Feb - Free from HDB loan!
Mar -
Apr - First business trip to Beijing & Shenzhen. First Trip to Czech Republic, Prague. Joined TI as part time coach
May - First business trip to Delhi
Jun - First TI coaching assignment in Malaysia
Jul -
Aug - Crashed and completed Cebu 703. Family Retreat at Sunway lagoon
Sep -
Oct - Conducted highly successful APJ partner conference. Awesome Family holiday in Sydney
Nov - First visit to Orlando and Miami. Completed Swim Expo Asia 8.35km swim. First Business trip to Taiwan
Dec - First trip to Tokyo with Ryan and Shan. Completed my 14th StanChart Marathon.


The not so nice stuff about 2015:

• Bike crash at Cebu 703
• First time spending my birthday away from the whole family - felt really bad and lonely
• Spending too much time away from home, resulting in Ryan telling me to go "home" (to the swimming pool) during bed time

Key events for in 2016:

• Co-investment in the swim school in Malaysia 
• Taking over SG Swim school local operations as a part timer
• Spending more time in Japan and China to grow the channel business more rapidly
• Busselton 703
• Phuket 703

Reviewing my 2015 checklist:

• Pick up new skills (Any of interest) - Pretty good mileage with this, turning the swimming skills into business opportunity!
• Family vacation travels - Australia trip with the family was awesome. The Sunway lagoon retreat could have been better if I wasn't injured, but it was nonetheless a good getaway for the whole family.
• Complete 2 x 70.3 - Completed only 1. Given the busy schedule that I was running for my day job and TI part time coaching and training, there wasn't any possibility to squeeze an additional race anyway. To compensate, will do two in 2016 to get ready for a full IM in 2017
• IPPT Gold again (Done!!)
• Career Progression - New role (Done!!)
• Write up long term Sales consultancy business plan - Had some interesting ideas about this when I was giving some counseling to Dennis. Instead of running the Sales consultancy business alone, it may be more worthwhile and substantial to be able to pull in our network of successful Sales people to exponentially widen the sales credentials of the entire team (which can be on project-basis), instead of just building up my own sales skills over 10+ years. This will be a long term project though. KIV while I build up the sports business.
• Improve stock portfolio - this is where I actually fluffed up. Even though I can better understand and read the markets. It is after going through the lessons and subsequently applying the skills myself, then it was evident that my interest isn't really in trading. Stocks was just an investment vehicle for me to find an avenue to possibly grow my money. Looking at 2016, the opportunity to invest in the sports business, and another opportunity to invest in Bro's VC business, I may start to divest my cash positions from stocks and just use purely CPF SRS and possibly CPFIS for stock investment. 

StanChart 42km Race Report
Totally forgot about writing this, as the results was awful
Think I took around 5.27 to complete

I guess the preparations for this year was worse than last year. Only managed to clock roughly a 10km run just within the month before the run.
Was deliberately going slow for the first half of the run since I did not train, so probably going slow and keeping my legs for the second half will work better for me, but I could only last till around 23km before I started walking for the rest of the race.
Wasn't planning on going sub-5, so I really took it easy again and just targeted to complete the run without injuries.
Live to fight another day.

2015 coming to a close

2015 has been a pretty eventful year for me.
Lots of new stuff and experience, mostly for the better

1. Rainie came into my life!
2. Took up a new expanded role in my workplace - couldn't be happier that I had done this
3. Visited many new places this year outside of the usual SEA cities - Prague, Sydney, Orlando, Miami, Tokyo, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Taipei, Delhi
4. Completed my 3rd 70.3, barely
5. Family holiday at Sunway lagoon
6. Family holiday in Australia
7. Mini family holiday in Tokyo
8. Joined Team Fishlike to become a part time swim coach
9. Completed installment payments for my apartment

 There are much more that I'll need to spend more time to collate in the end of year summary


Upcoming highlights for 2016:

1. Busselton 703 - confirmed
2. Phuket 703 - TBC
3. Mini family holiday in Perth
4. Family Taiwan holiday - confirmed
5. Investments -  TBC in Jan

Had been contemplating the possibility to upgrade my bike for future races, but with the impending heavy investments, I guess I'll still stick to my old mantra of Man over Machine for my bike and use my old road bike for yet another race in Perth.
This time I gotta get over the bad habit of not properly planning my training schedule to match my races, and get a better result in Busselton 703.

Watch this space for more detailed review next week

Having fun at work - this is a good week

It has been 6 months since I stepped into this new role, and I had learnt lots along the way.
Moving from a role that manages channel partners directly, into a more withdrawn but strategic role, yet having to exert more influence on a greater number of partners across a much bigger region, through other people that you have no direct control over yet being responsible for the outcome.

Yes it sounds complex, and it indeed is not simple.
A concept that is not easily understood.
A higher value add that isn't common across the market yet.

6 months on, and I'm having fun in this role.

Just concluded our Annual partner conference training this week.
Months of preparation work has gone into this, and with even more time and effort invested into this in the last 2 weeks.

With a key objective of transforming a traditionally dull and business-centric annual partner conference that people do not really look forward to, into a high-energy, engaging and fun event that still achieves business goals, an event that people will be anticipating in the future.

It felt great to receive plenty of appreciative compliments at the end of the day.
Especially those coming from the big bosses.
I had showed everyone how business goals can be achieved while having fun doing it.


A bigger stage to showcase my skills and creativity to create fun, energy and achieve business needs at the same time.


Apart from this, last Sunday's swim introductory class went exceptionally smooth as well.

Coach was fretting over the low sign up rates from the last few sessions of introductory classes, and had approached me for advice on how to turn things around.

After breaking down the steps and identifying the issue that we had banked the entire intro class into 1 single make-or-break swim drill was crucial. Turning this around by improvising the swim drill on the go, we literally performed magic and touched gold.

Even though that was my 7th intro swim class that I had conducted so far, neither me nor my fellow coaches had ever seen swim students breaking into rapturous applause after successfully doing a swim drill with them. None of my fellow coaches had seen the same response too.

The sign up rate jumped to 71% from the low 0% to 20% in classes conducted by others.

This is a good week, and the best thing is that I'm really having fun doing my work now.
Much happier than before!

Sweet Ryan quotes

"I wait for mummy" @ the bedroom lying on the bed, waiting for mummy to come back to accompany him to sleep # sweetRyan

"daddy go work" @ the bedroom when I was trying to accompany him to sleep #mustdobetter