Up, up, up, and… down?

From previous blog posts over the net for the stories of Kenyir triathlon, I found out that none of them skipped the issue about the hard and long climbing they had to do on the bike leg. Is it the number one factor on why Kenyir Lake triathlon is named as the toughest?

With already four consecutive weekends spent in KL, I couldn’t clock any weekend long ride with the tri gang here in JB to get a good bike workout. I leave my road bike in JB whenever going back to KL (malas nak angkut basikal naik bas daa). Not that I’m blaming on anything or anybody, but I like to think of it as a good opportunity for me to try breaking down the long mileage weekend rides into something smaller, and doing it more repetitively.

Having had loads of rains for the past few weeks, I was also forced by nature to skip the Wednesday weekly night rides. There gone another chance of doing the breakdowns of the weekend long rides I’ve already missed.

Truth be told, I kind of having a slight doubt whether have I trained enough for Kenyir or not. And knowing that most of the cycling leg in Kenyir would be climbing up those hills, my legs started to shake.

Fortunate enough, yesterday’s weather was superb with sunshine all over the place. Good chance for some riding, I told my self. Quickly after getting out from the workplace, I went to do some hill work with my trusted just-came-out-of-service road bike. Azhar told me to try one route nearby Hyatt JB hotel where there’s a nice long climb for me to burn my thighs. And so I did.

The workout did really burn my thighs out. First, I tried climbing with small crank. Next, switched to big crank, sitting down. On the third loop, I mixed some sitting and standing climbs. On the fourth and last loop of the 7km route, I just mixed rojak-campur-apakebenda-semua-ada just to complete it. Huffing and puffing all the way up, almost bursting my heart out. If I'm wearing HRM, it would already been beeping crazily. Kaki tak kuat untuk panjat bukit, gitulah jadinya bila cuba nak push.

With practically only 5 days left for me to put on some more training before starting the tapering (minus the weekend and the travelling back to KL, and hopefully no more evening rains here in JB), I’ll try to squeeze in as much training as I could possibly do. After that, I will bring whatever there is in my body and just enjoy the race. All I want is to cross the finish line, injury-free.

P/s: Nowadays I kind of fancy putting photos I could find on the internet to accompany my entry, trying to add a little bit of color to my dull write-ups.