The beginning of the end.. Which is the end of the beginning .. and ba ba ba...

Hell yeah, blogs. Formerly known as personal homepages.

Join me on what i reckon might be the maddest and kick-ass real-life "project" of my life. (besides trying to find out if i could become a bona-fide singapore idol a few years back *1) <---- *1 means asterisk 1 = details below at end of post)

It all started as a joke on MsN. booshee was asking me to compete with this BJ guy that i got to know on the bike forums. And no. BJ is not blowjob. his name is black**** and no, i am not a racist or a flyin' homo. So booshee was telling me, challenge blackj*** (yeap, his real name instead of calling him the b-thang) to something impossible, something like the Aviva Ironman 70.3 in Sept 7 2008.

It's a long, long road to the Aviva 2009 for our "secret" young triathlon prodigy.

I laughed, then made the mistake of asking him what exactly does the Aviva Ironman consist of? He told me matter-of-factly. He typed some random numbers that my body and mind could not quite comprehend.

"1.8km swim, 90km ride and 20km run." (mm yes, the zeros are real.) The 70.3 actually stands for the total number of miles you plod throughout this insane event.

http://www.ironman703singapore.com/index.php (the link to the insane event i mentioned earlier, with links to quite insane contestants, which will lead to insane thoughts of actually joining and being able to complete it.)

Now, a bit more about us.

I am 31.8, soon 32, and recently got through a near-fatal bout of chickenpox.
Actually it was not really that bad, and as a side-effect of the fearful disease, i got much slimmer because of it (the 2 month porridge-only diet worked wonders). I lost my age-old moniker "Fatboy", about 3 whole inches in girth, a whole lot of respect for plain porridge, and about 6 kg of pure "weight" (read:fat). -->

The new me have been trying to keep fit with periodic tennis sessions where i aim to be the next over-the-hill tennis star, some sporadic swimming, and quite a bit of cycling where i aim mostly not to crash and maim myself (i do mostly road, and a healthy sprinkling of off-road stuff) with my beloved Litespeed bike.

Booshee is 34, soon 35, and recently got through a hoop. In case you think that he is a circus mutt, he is not, and ...um... he didn't recently go through a hoop.
He loves cycling casually (read:mad light gearing w/ his pushy salsa frame), and sprouting half-cantonese nonsense (old-man wisdom he calls it). --->

Boosh does tries his darnest to remember everyone (cough:the owner of a particular LBS in the east of singapore) who had been bad to him, slippery grip and all, but due to his advanced age, he sometimes fail miserably.
In short, he is rather anal about life, but pretty comical and dry when needed to relate to it.
For a free trial and limited period only, do ask boosh about how he got his XT branding scratched off his bike brake levers.
(clue: hougang bus-stop, faceplant kinda, but he will say jungle trail, manly 10-foot drop, rescuing cute blonde girl named Alice or Lucy.)

Cutting to the chase, you can see that we are not exactly the optimal candidates for the Aviva Ironman 70.3.
But somehow, the online conversation got really heated up with very logical and egoistical phrases like "fit fit man!", "throw the iron-man t-shirt at francis!", "I dont know if I can swim 10 laps without cramping, man", "lycra tights with no shirt lor!", and other assorted triathlete-based gems.

We decided that joining this year's 70.3 is quite a lost cause, unless we wanna end up in a cosy coffin with bulged up hearts, ripped out lungs and purple-ish bloated intestines. Putting our tattered pride aside first, the two of us figured that training for the O.D.(more on that later) might be better and way more realistic in the next couple of months, allowing us to gauge our progress.

I also came up with a cool workout/training plan that will tentatively start in the first week of June and we will increase the frequency when nearing the Aviva 70.3 this time next year.

The timetable will make us train three times a week on Wed, Sat and Sun. The draft goes something like this:

Gruelling Timetable Draft of Doom

Wed 8pm - 11pm, Sat 3pm - 8pm, Sun 4pm - 9pm
This is the initial planned training route (by week 3):
1. 10 laps of swimming at Tropical Spring condo (less than 500m),
2. change into bike gear, a bike ride to East Coast Mac and back to the condo (16km),
3. drop the bikes, then a jog to the bike-connector underpass. (5km)
4. drop to all fours, crawl back to Tropical Springs condo, hydrating oneself from the tube dangling outta the backpack, gasping for air and salvation.
5. wonder why the f**k are we doing this.
6. wonder why the f**k are we doing this again in a couple of days.

So wish us luck ( blatant selling of souls preferred), and for those who wish to join forces conquering the first stepping stone, which is called the O.D.(olympic distance) with me and booshee are more than welcome to try.
There are barriers to entry to join us though. Sorry, no one ever said this was going to be a cakewalk .

The main criteria is that you must be as "fit" as us (meaning: do you have 2 arms and 2 legs with a minimum of five barely workable basic senses?
If you answered yes to the above, you qualify.), and that you can fit into the "gruelling" 3-day training schedule that i cooked up.
Also most importantly, do you have the THREE things needed to do a triathlon? *2 (quoted from Adenan, the bikelabz tech)

*News Flash* : the O.D. event is a step-up triathlon event comprising of a 1 km swim, 30km cycling, and 10km run. (41 km nia, and you get to prove you are olympic-ready. don't you always harbour closet olympic dreams inside that body of yours?) ---->

*the initial training route shown here is only half of the O.D., but should be a good indicator of when we should quit/bail/chicken out or just flat out *horror* consider this whole thing a bad idea.*

So watch out, mundane and unfit singaporeans !!

The "What's Up Buoyz?" *3 are coming to paint the tri-town scene red, albeit mostly with their own blood.


p/s: Can we not wear Lycra ?

p/p/s: Do vote on the right of your screen, on the outcome of this life-changing event.

*1 No. I was not even the choice of three crap bi-sexual, tofu-munching, overaged and underqualified judges, let alone singapore's choice. you dont know talent, man. no, really. you dont.

*2 Swim, cycle, jog. What did you think it was? Rocket science?

*3 Vek's brainchild at a pasir ris coffeeshop, when he was half brain-dead on a monday morning at 3 am.