Golden League

HELLO WORLD!!!! Here are updates of my trips to Vietnam, Ipoh(M'sia) and Taiwan.

We'll start with Vietnam 3plus weeks ago. We took SQ! :D and had a fun bunch of people, i feel, one of the best team mixture. For girls, there were Shalom, Balpreet, Lay Chi and Dipna. Guys there was the 4x100 team of Cheng Wei, Elfi, Amir, PSS, Izwan and Gary. 4x400 U23 there was basically the juniors of Shalindran, GuoPei and Simon, and of course me, but i'm not a junior.haha I think Shali is probably having the most slack army/police life ever, with 3 countries in 3 weeks. And there was James Wong and Subiash too, Discus and 800M respectively.

The flight to Vietnam was really short, like the plane only levelled off for half and hour before it had to make it's descent. But no complains there! From airport to hotel took about 20mins, and hotel wasnt great, but good enough! Traffic was a blast though, and you really had to just have the courage to walk through the sea of motorbikes.haha

Competition day and I started with 400m heats but somehow i screwed up my race plan and ended up with a 50.45s. haha but managed to qualify for the evening finals which was much better at 49.77s. Started slowly this time, but picked up at the back straight. It's essential that i find the balance of fast first 200m, yet not producing too much lactic acid! Had a strong finish, but gotta work alittle more on core stability and "smoothness" over the last 100m. Finished 4th in the finals.

4X400m was the first 1600 relay since AUG, and i was the 2nd runner, a position i only ran once or twice in my life.haha But took it in my stride and moved my team up from 5th to 3rd (: GuoPei had a less than fantastic first leg, but simon was impressive at 49.7 split. Shali was good too at 50+ for 405m. haha

Vietnam was a refreshing new experience. My first time running on Mondo track, and duo-coloured one at that! Plus the use of electronic gun sound (:

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Came back to Spore on Monday evening, and already had to go CCK for my st step boys on tues and wed and was pretty shacked out on thursday, when we took a 10 hour bus ride to IPOH :/

Was the same hotel as that of ASIAN JUNIORS 2004, so had fond memories as the track gave me a PB then. But now the track i pretty old but still nice to run in. The bend is much better than in Vietnam which got some problem at the 270 to 280 mark.

Roomed with Elfi and Amir :D cos cheng wei skipped this meet so i filled the role of "buddy". haha But it's fun to room with my training mates cos there's no awarkardness or anything cos we know each other so well already. I must say apart from the long bus ride, IPOH was the most fun trip i had, just beating Vietnam but alittle bit.haha Vietnam was fun too cos the group was small, so everyone knew everyone and vv bonded and all.

Anyhow, schedule was such that we ran the 1600 relay first, which we won in 3:20 sth :D 2nd day was 400m heats in the morning, and finals in the afternoon. Heats was a breeze in 51.5, Finals in 49.75 (2nd). Alittle disppointed i must say. But i was far from fresh when i ran and knew that i ran fast, but not fresh enough to do a PB.

Ipoh Parade was the favourtie destination as SAA did not provide us with any lunch or dinner, nor did they provide any allowance so spent up quite abit on food!

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Taiwan's track was OMG.. DROOLS... blue mondo. even the 300m practice track is mondo!!! For the first time in a long while felt like it was in a real meet! The hotel was fantastic too! Roomed with National record Long Jumper Matthew Goh!

I thought i would have done my 48s there and then. The track was good and fast, and i was drawn lane 2 with lane 3 pb at 49.4 sth. so i ran my own race, but he helped pulling me along and i took him with 80m to go and pulled away and i thought at least a early 49. haha but not meant to be :/

1 more try this weekend at "Singapore Closed". haha

4X400M was good with the lineup of Shali, Lance, Simon and GuoPei. We had a good fight all the way until the end, pushing this team to a best time of 3.18.96s. Amazing how this team has been improving by 1 second every race! haha The other three are young, and with good potential ahead.

Visited Taipei 101 too. The view was sensational. The lift was ear popping. (:

The competition in Taiwan was the hardest, with my pb only managing 3rd in my heat and 12th overall. But nonetheless, it's always a wonderful and absolute thrill to run in such a perfect stadium and track, complete with superb professionalism and seiko/omego timing systems :D LOVESS IT