Once again

Last night after my weekly Wednesday ride, I was thinking what to write about in the blog for today. No clue.

Just before I went to sleep, I tried to think of an idea of what to blog about. Fail again.

As I was driving to work about few hours ago, my face was like those university graduates who are sitting in the examination room, scratching their heads looking for the answers to the exam questions. And still I have no idea of what to write.

Luckily I don’t get paid to update this blog as my main source of income, or else I need to start learning how to become a fisherman, or farmer in order to feed my family (and myself).

You see, it’s not easy to maintain a blog, to actively updating it.

And it’s not easy either to maintain a family, a career, a friendship, and a little hobby of doing triathlon or sports, all at the same time.

So, what is easy in this world?

Well, you choose.

Everything can be easy, and everything can be not easy.

It’s in your head. It’s what you think.

If you think that things are easy, then they will be easy. And vice versa, I don’t need to spell out everything. I’m sure you get what I mean.

And I guess maybe that’s why when we see someone in trouble, we tell them “Hey, take it easy ya!”.

Err, actually I wanted to blog about something else but I’m not sure why I’ve written all the above.

Actually I wanted to write about endurance. Triathlon and marathon and some other similar sports are an endurance driven sports where even though some people can do them fast and some people can’t, they all have to endure so many things before they get to cross the finish line.

First, they have to endure the demanding training. Some people train hard almost everyday, some people do long hours training on the weekends, some people even wake up as early as 5am in the morning just to train. I bet some people might even have to endure the micro arguments with their spouses for spending more time with the bike than with their family.

Then, they also have to endure the grueling race itself which have so many non-controllable challenges. The hot sun, the limited water stations, the rain, the choppy waters, the jelly fish, the strong wind, the sudden unexpected stomach ache during a bike ride or run, the cramps, the need to pee, the puncture tires, as to name a few.

Oh ya, they also have to endure the pain!

I remember in some conversations that I had with some friends who do not do endurance sports, it’s quite interesting to see their comments.

“Eh Nik, you ran 20km ah? If me aaa, I will die 3 times already leh”,

“Wow, you cycled 100km? That’s very far you know. You pengsan or not? If me aaa, to drive a car for 100km also tiring you know”.

Maybe you think I made up above comments to spice up my blog entry today. OK, I'll let you see it to believe it. These are the ones I get from my ex-school’s blog on an entry about me completing the SCKLIM 2009 recently.

Now, do you believe me? Not my intention to brag about it, because I have nothing to brag about. Many other people have done up to 5 marathons or 2 Ironman triathlons. I just wanted to share with you the diversity that we have with people surrounding us which is, nothing but interesting.

On the external point of view, they only can see the distance we have to endure. They can only see the long hours we have to spend to complete the training or races.

But, they cannot see the pain that we have to endure.

I mean, they cannot feel the pain. They won’t know how painful is the pain.

I can say that 80% of the times when I train or race, they were all painful. Some were very painful, some were only a little bit painful.

When I first started to run, I couldn’t even run 1km because it was painful. Same as for cycling, where I fell asleep for 30 minutes on the sofa right after cycling for only 15 minutes during the early days. I don’t want to tell about the swim, it’s even worse.

But one after another, I brought up my pain threshold one level to the next with every success of enduring the pain. Perhaps, this is where we start to taste the fun of having the pain, where we subconsciously gets stronger.

Enduring the pain throughout the training or races, is something that I also use to help myself endure some difficult times in life. It helps me with my self-training of not to give up as easily as I used to be. I feel much better knowing that I can endure something that is hard, tough and difficult, and painful.

The thought itself makes me feel stronger.

It makes me want to go further.

Well, doing Olympic distance triathlons that consume around 3 hours or more, is already painful.

During the 42km run, i.e. marathon, which I did in the end of June, the pain that I had did stop me at few points of the run as I couldn’t hold up the pain in the legs any longer. But, I kept on going and it took me more than 5 hours to complete it.

This Saturday, I’ll be at the start line of the Desaru Long Distance Triathlon, which will consist of 2km of swimming, followed by 90km of cycling, and a 21km of running. It may take me 6 to 7 hours before I can cross the finishing line, and I know it’s going to be another episode in life where what I have to do is to endure the pain, once again.

As this is my first time doing a long distance triathlon (some call it as Half Ironman), my target this time is just to finish it, injury free, smiling.

”Hey Nik, take it easy ya!”

Yes I will.

P/s: Oh ya, wish me luck and pray for my success too ok! Thanks. And good luck to others who are also taking part. See you there!