Category Archives: training updates

This year’s Asian Champs ended with a bang. Been waiting a year for this to happen, and I’m glad that another chapter in my life is over. The target was to make Final A, and hopefully with that, it will qualify for me Asian Games in 2010.

I went into the regatta having to get over a poor performance at the Southeast Asian Champs. Mistakes made, lessons learnt, it was time I bounced back up and make it work. Having arrived on monday night,  a day later than everyone else, again, there wasn’t any time to lose. The weather forecast was cold and rainy. But the weather took a 360 just 2 days later. The boat looked promising. On tuesday,  after messing around and taking it for a spin on the regatta course, I found out it was 6.5kg overweight. Outrageous. A quick check with Gay and I quickly seeked help to get another boat. Fortunately with the help for networking and some pr, I changed to a brand new boat. Not exactly top class, but it’s better than carrying 6 kilos extra. Gave the opening ceremony a miss to rig the new boat up. Fortunately enough, the lm1x heats was going to be on thursday, which gives me a couple of training sessions on wednesday to make fine adjustments.

Everything was in check during the Heats. Nice weather and water conditions. First chance to put what JJ has taught me into use. Focus on the race strategy and get a decent time. Hong Kong qualified directly in Final A by winning my heat. This leaves the rest to fight it out in the reps.

The reps was very dramatic. It was do or die. Only 4 of the 6 in the reps would qualify for final A and I wanted to be one of them. The need to stay super focus could not be emphasized more. My race plan worked in the heat. Now i had to take the intensity up a notch, or maybe even a few. A rather strong headwind blew this time, so that posed quite a challenge. Everyone went out of the blocks much harder, and so did I. Going down the 2nd 500m, I was still in 5th. Remained focus and stuck with the plan. It all paid off. Big big effort to make it though, a huge sense of relieve and accomplishment.

I did the best I could in the Finals and still managed 6th. Disappointing on paper, yes. But I certainly acheieved something and I can be proud of myself. Coming into the regatta, I didn’t have the experience, the support like the other big names had. I trained alone for the entire year. The only communication Gay and I had was through email and phone calls and watching videos of me rowing. Dan P monitored my training intensity with his expert knowledge and experience. We all stretched ourselves and did the best we could given the amount of support and resources we had. Wouldn’t have been able to do it without the both of them. Just imagine what we could really accomplish together if we had just a little more resource. Off the charts! JJ joined the team 2 months ago. Huge thanks to him as well. An amazing addition and in just this short period of time, working with him has made huge improvements to my races. Disappointed that he will be going back to Brisbane.

I will do a roundup of this season soon. So watch out for that. For now, it’s time to let loose!

This is it really. The big one for the year. Asian Championships. For many reasons, it felt like forever getting here. I’ve done all that I could, and really, it’s time to commit to everything that I have set out to do. Believe and leave nothing behind.

A long overdue report. Sorry to all. Haven’t been able to find the time to update on the happenings, until now.
Wasn’t exactly the most pleasant of race experience. Mauled by incomplete boats, lack of help and poor time management. There are endless lessons to be learnt.
Arrived in Pattaya at what I would say would be very bad timing. In short, wasted the entire travelling and had no time to do anything rowing related. The boat that was allocated to me didn’t have a footplate, no shoes, and a seat with a dented wheel. So not only did I have to rig the boat, I now had to fix in an entire footplate. And the footplate given to me had a cracked bracket. No one from the organizing committee was around promptly to provide the necessary spares. I just had to scamper around the race site, hoping to find a spare footplate bracket. And it’s not exactly something one would bring along when travelling. Huge mistake to neglect proper rigging of the boat.
A decent performance in the preliminary race. Just needed the boat to be more stable. I was pretty much left on my own to figure out how to set the boat up better, given the circumstances. Managed to get help couple of hours before the finals. We both agreed that we just had to bite the bullet and go.
Bad starts with a crab, but was still just a boat length down. wind was pushing me to bow side, so I spent half the time down the course correcting direction. Bugger. Super hard effort and high rates to stay in medal contention. The boat just wasn’t gliding. Caught another one of many crabs as I crossed the line and went swimming. At least it was worth a 3rd place.
Pictures will be up soon!

I’ll be departing for the Southeast Asian Rowing Championships tomorrow morning. About done with packing. I’m just left with sorting out my SiS REGO and GO Electrolytes, which I will need for the 4 days i’ll be there. Not forgetting some GO Bars. Thanks Rudy Project for the new pair of Mastermind as well!

Flight is schedule to be at 1330 hrs, but I’ll be rotting at the airport from 10am. Once again huge thanks to Daniel Loy and Dan for the helping me out!

It’s times like these that gets you wondering. Firstly I have to skip a morning training session because I have to settle the logistics, and secondly, 2 additional hours of waiting at the airport isn’t what I would call proper resting or anything beneficial for that matter.

In any case, I’ll probably whip out my trigger ball and start doing some releases. Share your ideas on what else I can do. Was actually thinking of hanging out at T3 first. But lugging around 3m long oars isn’t very convenient is it.

Give me a buzz if you happen to be in T1. If you wanna come greet me at the airport when I return on 19 October, my ETA is 1510 at T1.

Cheers

Quite a bit has gone on the past few days. Experienced some severe muscle soreness from endurance weights session on wednesday. I’ll need about a week to get used to that. For now, it’s just 2 tablespoons of cement. Weather wasn’t too nice over the weekend. Lightning and thunder on saturday morning forced me onto the erg for 6 x 500m. Time trial on sunday morning in particularly windy and choppy conditions. But it’s all good. I’m done with the paint job on my blades. Not exactly graffiti art worthy though. A good spray paint job is alot harder than it seems.

Daniel Loy has kindly offered to lend me his van to transport the oars, and Dan has agreed to drive me to the airport. Lifesavers! Really appreciate their help. It’s really nice to have friends in sport who truely supports the athletes. That’s why I’m a fan of the cycling team! Check out passi:one if you’re planning to get a bike or get stuff for your bike.

That’s all for now

It’s appalling how race details are never being disseminated in a timely manner. We’re going for 2 races, one in a week’s time, another in two weeks after we get back. Thank goodness for my google prowess, I managed to hunt down both race bulletins.

Here are the provisional schedules:

12th Southeast Asian Rowing Championship

14 Oct 2009          –        09:00 Opening of Venue for training

15 Oct 2009          –        09:00 Team Training

15 Oct 2009          –        Opening of Regatta Course

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–        Team Manager Meeting

16 Oct 2009          –        09:30 Heats Group A

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–        15:00 Heats Group B

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–        SEARF Congress

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–        Welcome Party

17 Oct 2009          –        09:30 Repechage Group A/B

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa–         13:30 Rowing Machine Championships at Central Festival Pattaya Beach www.centralfestival.co.th

18 Oct 2009          –        Finals

13th Asian Rowing Championship

Monday 2^th November             Umpire test

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Course Officially Opens for Practice

Tuesday 3^th November             Practice

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Team Managers Meeting and Draw,

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Jury Meeting

Wednesday 4^th November                    Preliminary Heats,

Thursday 5^th November.                       Heats & Repechage

Friday 6^th November.                           Repechage,

Saturday 7^th November                        Semi-finals & Finals

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Congress

Sunday 8^th November.                          Finals

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Athletes party

Just in case you’re wondering why such information is so important from an athlete’s/coach’s perspective, we need all these to plan our training to the build up. When exactly to start tapering, for how long, when we will be travelling, what time will we arrive, how many days do we have there before racing starts. Spending half the time trying to guess all these and going there blind isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do.

I’ll just focus on the fact that I now know what to do

It’s going to be tough this week. Some serious speed and race work and time trial on sunday. I’ll have to work out some time to get some nice new paint work on my blades. Want them looking spanking new for the big one in Taiwan.

Huge thanks to Patrick and Janet from 2xsfbsports.com for the SiS support! Really appreciate all that you guys are doing. I’m going to need all the help I can get.

The boys did amazingly well and I’m certainly proud of them. We learn alot when things don’t turn out as planned. I myself have learned alot by just being one of the water boys. It disheartening to think that they could have achieved more, yet its more encouraging to know they have truck loads of potential and many more miles to ride. They have the heart, they have the passion and I’ll certainly be there to cheer them on.

Website is up and running. Huge thanks to Junhan all the help. Awesome work mate.

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