I Think It's Been The Worst Ever Week

At 32.8K I think it has to be my worst ever week for running. A mixture of bad fortune saw my youngest brother admitted for slipped discs and so my Mom had to return back to Penang to look after him. So my wife had to take leave from work for 3 days to join her in Penang with C1 and C2. That move was to relieve my Mom of the load.

You'd think that being here alone would leave me with aeons of time to train. Well, it did - for a few days. Then work took over, and audit preps and my fortune had to be really low, coz my boss asked me to run point to troubleshoot a production issue. I don't know what hit me but I wasn't even part of the project!

Then Friday was my medical examination which thankfully I passed with flying colours and I'd wanted to leave early from work the same day for a short run to take me to Saturday's 24K. As things turned out my brother was scheduled for surgery on Saturday and I had to drive back from KL very early Saturday morning. I'd planned to leave right after work on Friday but decided against it since I suck at night driving and I'm more of a morning person. So I woke up at 4:30am on Saturday and made my way back to Penang. On my way out of KL, I passed near the Saturday Group's training route and I was a little upset at not being able to join them.

My brother's surgery went well and some tissue and disc stuff were removed. The clan sans my Mom drove back to KL this morning and my Mom stayed back for another week. As a result we have to modify our week's plans somewhat by sending both C1 and C2 (whose 2 lower teeth had sprouted!!) to C1's previous Nanny during office hours.

I'm into contingencies now - from resources to training plans. But I've got some plans - yeah, I've always got plans. In fact, through all the challenges that I've encountered for this marathon training, I've had backup plans. The problem is staying with it. Backup plans are cut so thin that any minute change to it will scupper it and you might as well don't have any in the first place.

There's just another week left for actual mileage work. After that it's active taper and some sharpening sessions. So I've resorted to some desperate final push towards completing this week. I won't so far as to say that this week will make or break my race confidence but it comes pretty close.

I took a few shots of the Penang Bridge as we drive back this morning. You can see from the first photo, that the banners are all up along the coastal highway. If you've been driving along the country's expressways, you'd also have seen the event being publicized on the electronic boards. I think the organizers have thus far been doing a great job in promoting the event.

The banners are strung on the lamp-posts along the divider. 2.5K to the finish!

The base of the 1K climb to the midspan. If you don't have GPS-enabled watches, you can rely on the distance markers on the bridge dividers

Nearly at the top! Should be between 10-11K here. Notice there are concrete dividers on the left. These are part of the on-going lane expansion project. This is also a rare spot where you can see the other side of the traffic.

Coasting down the other side of the climb, you can see all the engineering barges already working on the piling for the lane expansion project. You can also see how far it is to reach the Butterworth side.