Fighting the ‘M’ bug

Some friends used to ask me, “Are you not tired of training for almost everyday?”

Sometimes I just smiled back, and sometimes I would just tell them that I needed to train because I had races to do.

To my housemates, they only see me for few minutes while we are preparing to go to work, and another hour or two at night before we go to sleep. On Wednesday when I go for the weekly night ride, I’ll be home so late that I’ll be greeted by men under their blankets, snoring. Normally they’ll be home by 5pm, when it’s the time for me where I start my daily (or alternate days) training.

That was sort of the routine for my training, when there were races to do.

Just after Desaru, I got no more targeted or planned races to do. Actually I had a plan to do the Singapore marathon, and some friends also invited me to join Powerman duathlon in Lumut. But due to some financial constraints, I had to let them go. Fine with me though. I’m not a race ‘catcher’ or medal collector anyway.

With no planned races in the near future, and with Ramadhan coming around the corner, I switched myself to the ‘off-season’ mode. By off-season, it means that I will still do some training, but with lower intensity and volume.

And with that, I got heavily infected by the ‘M’ bug.

”Bugger!”

So, how do you tell if you got infected with the ‘M’ bug? Here are some of the things I noticed happen to me, upon getting the bug (in random order):

1. You would wish and pray hard that it will be raining or even thunderstorm at the time when you normally go out for run or swim.

2. Your heart rate shoots over the roof upon seeing a 1kg increase on the body weight even without heavy carboloading. Anything more than 3kg increase of body weight within a week, please ask you spouse/friend to bring you to the ICU for a panic shock treatment.

3. Whenever you plan for a 40km bicycle ride, the actual outcome would be 20km (or less).

4. And whenever you plan for a two loops of run (whatever the distance is for one loop), the result surely will be only 1 loop run. A three loops run plan will also turn out to be one loop run. No doubt about it.

5. A 1 hour trainer session plan will end up with only 20minutes (trainer = static cycling device).

6. A plan to do some swim will end up with nothing!

7. The sun at 6pm ‘feels’ as hot as it is at 1pm. Hence, you tell yourself ”Are you crazy to go out running at 6pm with that sun on your head? Don't be stupid ok!”

8. You would classify dreams (while sleeping) having anything to do with swimming, cycling or running as nightmares. Even to have a view of a swimming pool in your dream is already bad enough.

9. On a fine evening where the weather is good for a run, and then you receive an email from the customer which at the end says, "I would appreciate if you can give some feedback by end of next month”, you would immediately rush to settle the requested job on the same evening and make that as an excuse for not going out for a run.

10. Lastly, you’ll end up writing a blog entry with the title “Fighting the ‘M’ bug”.

Oh ya, ‘M’ bug is also known as the M4L4S bug.

”Bugger!!!”

P/s: My housemates have started to ask why am I home so early...

A colleague drew this on my cubicle's white board, and I wrote the dialogue