5 and counting

Ok I know this is one week overdue but better late than never.

So last week, I took part in my FIFTH marathon, That's right FIFTH. How I got this far, I have no idea. When I ran my first marathon in Dec 2007, I thought back then that it was just a one-off thing to see how much I can push myself. But fast forward 3 years later, I find myself running at least one marathon each year. It's always the same story every time. I run. I finish. I tell myself that it's damn painful. I tell myself not to do it again ever. But I'll do it again anyways.

It doesnt help when you have friends like Is who has been officially termed gila by his parents. This dude is going to France for an ironman next year and he plans to bring a whopping grand total of 2 sets of clothes! Along with his bike of course, which he has to pay for shipping fees and not to mention the registration fee alone which costs bout $700. He has to get up early every morning to train and (as far as I know), he's not going to get laid! But that's ok cos HE IS AN IRONMAN. IRONMAN.

(Ok la that's beside the point but I just wanted to have a paragraph about him cos he is seriously mental dok)

Anywayyy, I dont know how I did it but I did my personal best this time. I think the official race timing was 4h 50min. I find this really amazing cos if you all had not known by now, I'm kinda of a pemalas haram. I sign up for races and I dont train for them. Usually about a month before the race, I get a bit worried so I'll probably start running. But this will last at most for a week and after that I'll be back to my normal lazy self. The most I've trained so far was for the KL Marathon 2010 and even that was disrupted by exams. So I know that I was severely underprepared for this one and my only expectation was to complete the race in decent time. If you take all these factors into account, it's no wonder I'm so pleased with the results in the end.

This brings me to the point of the entry, so what actually contributes to a good race? Cos as far as I know, from my first marathon till now, I have not been doing anything radically different. I have been practicing my own pre-race rituals and if anything, I've actually done less this year. Yet I managed to somehow slash more than 30 mins off my timing, which usually falls around the 5h 30 min region.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I ran with two very fit people in Jon and Is. We ran together, side by side all the way from start to the finish. The only times we broke away were at the drink stations where I tend to take a little bit more time than them but we caught up with each other eventually. I started to sense that this was going to be my fastest race ever when we crossed the 20km mark at 2h 07 min. We did our first 10km in 1h 02 min, which was tremendously fast considering that the bottleneck extended all the way till the 5km mark so we pretty much had not much space to run into. We told ourselves to slow down but apparently Jon has no sense of timing whatsoever so ya he lead the way and we completed our next 10km in 1h 05min. So much for slowing down but ya.

I experienced my first slight hint of cramps at the 25km mark and the legs really started to get heavy from then on. There were numerous times when I really felt I was slowing them down so I needed to walk and but Is told me to hisap and pegi mampus so I had no choice but to keep going. At the 35km mark, both my thighs suddenly cramped up and this was the point when I started to scold myself for voluntarily signing myself up for this shit again. Surprisingly I managed to walk it off and made a final push for the final stretch. The last 2km was extremely torturous but with the crowd cheering us on, we glammed it up a little and crossed the finish line with our hands together raised up high.

Aside from the running company, I cannot really explain why I managed to outdo myself this time. There were a lot of times when I could have foreseen myself giving up and walking had I run alone. But these were the times when that little push from them can go a long way. And in my case it did and I'm thankful to them for that.

Perhaps, there is an even better explaination for this. Perhaps, I know the reason all along. It's actually cos... I'M A SPORTSMAN. I PLAY SOCCER EVERY WEEK. I'M A TENNIS PLAYER.

Tak.

Soccer Related

Since I'm bored and I can't sleep, I decided to look at the past GAFL results to determine who F17 are going to play against. Good news for us. Besides El Krados, they still have one more game against CUFC. However, they also have a game against Reds. Whatever it is, we still need to beat CUFC and hope our arch enemy will do us a favour after.

Anyway, to really emphasize the boredom, I googled Aeonity TLFC and found this article. Gonna post it here. One of our better games:

Good evening, this is The Shadow reporting from the TLTV Sports Centre on what was thought as an amazing last minute comeback by TLFC against Kawabunga FC earlier this morning at Clementi.

Jon The Hummer and Suff The Flash scored 1 and 2 each as TLFC surged to a comeback victory.

Yet the victory came at a price for the hosts, who were already missing many men like Syah and Irwan due to uh, injury and suspension, as leftback Nazir the Destroyer was destroyed with a quite serious looking ankle injury.

The game was only 10 minutes old when TLFC took a downturn as he hobbled off the pitch in agony after his left ankle failed under a kick/challenge from his own self.

Nazir could put no weight on his leg as he wasn't helped to the touchline and the word swiftly came out that he could not continue.

If there is any comfort for TLFC, it is that they are not facing anyone next week because, with many injuries and suspensions, they would be in trouble.

Having already suffered a loss last last week at the hands of Marine Devils, TLFC was keen not to repeat the same mistakes this week.

Yet, after a quite flimsy defence and goalkeeping error, TLFC was temporarily stunned by a um stungun fired by a player from Kawabunga whose name I'm not very sure of currently.

The opener came from an innocuous beginning as one of them won a header close to halfway.

Mr We're-Not-Sure-Who was onto the loose ball in a Jiffy, darted speedily to the penalty box by the left flank, then cut in and released a deceptive shot which looked like sommat between a cross and a lob. Which apparently was a goal.

For a while it seemed TLFC would be silenced in a manner seldom seen since it was formed seven years ago.

But as halftime came and went and a few major changes were made to TLFC, with Jon The Hummer playing upfront and Mus The Shadow playing right wing, (but in fact nowhere at all come to think of it) the game took a turn.

After a dizzying dribble by Jon going around in circles and back and forth and godknowswhat, the capacity crowd of less than 20 people held their breath as Jon unleashed a wobbling diagonal gounder which thankfully ended up in the goal.

From that point on it was a drastic improvement exercise for TLFC with The Gaffer feeling sufficiently comfortable about his side's position to remove top strike Mus (which was actually doing nothing) long before the end.

Sam's save did not prevent Siva getting his own name on the scoresheet for the I'm-not-sure-how-manyeth-time this season.

Despite being 1 goal down and desperately needing a win, TLFC was soon celebrating after setting Suff The Flash free with a mistake from the opposition goalie which allowed the TLFC forward to lob the ball into goal.

It was almost as if the opposition defence was fearful of Suff (which I'm quite sure wasn't the case) that they dare not go near him, offering the Flash a suicidal amount of space to run into every time he got the ball.

It paid off in the 90th plus minute, with Suff scoring a superb goal involving 3 touches: from Nas the Maestro's cross connected by Jon's head outside the penalty box which landed beautifully in Suff's path near the right penalty edge and the rest is as they say, history.

The Gaffer hails 'terrific' result

The Losers manager The Gaffer paid tribute to his side after a classic comeback 3-2 victory over Kawabunga at Clementi.

"It was due to my tactical genius that I was able to outwit Abinesh Ferguson and his men," The Gaffer told TLTV.

"I'm very pleased. It is a terrific result for us against a Kawabunga team which is a very good team and TLFC are back to their winning ways,

"I think I'm good enough to manage in the EPL."

Suffian Hakim was once again instrumental in much of what TLFC did - a contribution which did not go unnoticed by The Gaffer.

"Suff scored two goals but I won the game for us"

But we all know who's having judgement problems here. Even opposition Sivakumar was suportive in his remarks

"Suff did nothing la, only 2 touches and he scored the equalizer and the winning goal. He's like Mustakjm" rousing laughter from both sides, although I'm not very sure what's so funny about that.

This is The Shadow, attempting to report it Soccernet style from TLTV Sports Center at The Wall Empire. Good night.

Seriously la. We had nicknames all: The Fox, Flash, Maestro, Destroyer, Chilli Sauce Addict, The Shadow. How cool were we? And guess what, all these was 3 years ago.

Back then, our good results were far and few between. We started with 7 players and would end with 8. We got thrashed 1-5, and by other scorelines which I won't mention. Fast forward to now and we are a team who actually has 2-3 substitutes. We are even sitting on top of the table, with a high chance of winning the league.

Just hope we can continue this trend and not start our matrepness next season. If all our players are as confident as "We can confirm beat Rendezvous"-Nas, then I'm sure we won't.

Aussie Chess

When playing chess in Australia, one should say "checkmate" and "checkmatemate" to avoid confusion.