Diary of an Old Pair of Legs: My Year End Report
Running on Old Legs.
Diary of an Old Pair of Legs: Running or not.
Training Log for Nov 2016 to Jan 2017
Running - 30km this month [2539 km. total for the year]
Ascent - 56mtrs. [9104 mtrs.] Ậ training pace 5:57mpk.
Cycling- 190 km [925 km]
Firstly, I need to make a sincere apology: To all my regular readers I am sorry for the lack of content over the past few months. As is evident from my training log, the past three months has been a period of not very much has happening.
A very persistent Achilles injury has stopped my racing since the ill-fated CompressSport 100 trail back at the beginning of November. After almost three months of rest, stretching, cycling and, initially gentle running followed by no running I am hopeful that next week will see me back on the road, working towards race fitness again.
My intended return event for 2017 was sorely missed, the Conquer Kiara Trail would have been my perfect start to a new year, a year that will be less busy than 2016, but filled with handpicked major events.
The omens were good,
The perfect bib number for starting a new year
the perfect bib number, running on home turf with the best of friends at Mont Kiara Running Club (MKRC) and due to the event date it meant that I would have been running on my first day as a sixty-eight-year-old.
But not to be.
I am hopeful that my return event will now be the Nuang Ultra Trail at the end of February, fingers and most other things crossed.
So, a quick look back at 2016. Until November I had a very busy and satisfying year of mixed events.
The years events ranged from 10k to 60k road runs and some fantastic trail runs, highlighted by the Cameron Ultra and TMBT, The Most Beautiful Thing or The Most Brutal Thing as I have become to know it.
It would seem that my love affair with trail running, and of course getting down and dirty, is going from strength to strength and 2017 will be more of the same as I look to become a more accomplished trail runner.
Who said that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks?
2016 also proved to be a year of firsts:
My first Relay event at the 100km Great Relay Kuala Lumpur, with three great mates we made up the Mere Mortals relay team and produced a solid performance, but, more importantly we created a lifelong bond of friendship.
My first Ultra event at the Back 2 Endurance 12 hour, run with some great friends from MKRC. This year I will return to earn my gold medal.
My first Duathlon, in fact my first competitive bike ride, in which I attained a very satisfying ninth place finish.
This year I hope to return and compete in a mixed team with my best friend and wife, Dee. She riding and me running.
My first age group win on the trails at the XTerra Malaysia Trail in Langkawi.
This year I will return to defend my title along with an ambition of braking the three-hour barrier.
Hopefully I will soon be back into a training regime, to begin with I can start back by just running, purely because I love to run.
No set distances, no pace notes and no drills. A short period of pure pleasure, enough to get fit but not so much to get fast, if I ever was!
So here's to a New Year, if somewhat later than expected.
My last note is to thank my support team of one from the bottom of my heart:
Without your support and encouragement
I could not do it.
Is some form of event control coming?
Some months back I reported that there was some form of regulation of sports events being considered at ministerial level.
Well, it would seem, that it is moving forward, somewhat slowly and, unfortunately, behind closed doors. I cannot fathom why those most effected by such legislation are never involved in the decision making. The ministry of sports could have requested input from the grass roots of sport by asking the relevant sports bodies to get feedback from us, those that will pay the consequences for what will finally be implemented.
An interesting workshop at KBS back in November where it was announced that the Sports Act 1997 will get a revamp, soon!
It will attempt to ensure that there will be no future sports events that are without a sports commissioner’s license. In addition, if the event organiser is charging participants, there will be a requirement that they are sanctioned by their national or local sports federation. Here I can see the first problem. What happens when a sport has no registered national or local federation?
Take Trail Running as an example, is there any federation in place here in Malaysia? There is certainly no official federation so what will be the answer, will it be required for organisers of trail running events to get sanctioned perhaps by the Malaysian Ultra Runners Association (MURA) a very fine organisation, but, a self regulated optional organisation and as to yet solely involved in ultra events, predominately, if not totally, road races. Or, perhaps the Malaysian Athletics Federation (MAF) who certainly have no knowledge of trail running, indeed it seems to me that they have little knowledge of competitive athletics at all.
On the positive side: The con men may disappear.
On the not so positive side: As future event organisers will have to pay both the sports commissioner and their federation a fee, race entry fees will rise. [The sports commissioner will also impose a refundable deposit on top of any fee]
On the negative side: Many of our beloved events may be forced out of the market place by over zealous bureaucratic requirements.
I doubt that any organiser will refrain from passing the increased cost burden onto runners and therefore registration fees will increase.
We can only hope that the fees charged to organisers will not only be fixed but that they will also represent the cost of administrating the process and not be permitted to become a money-making exercise for the commissioner or the federations.
The improvement to the act needs to ensure that the con men and inept organisers are not replaced by greedy commissioners and federations setting their own huge fees, as they deem fit, for them to declare events legal and permit them to take place.
Malaysia’s running scene is already one of the most expensive, when entrance fees are calculated as hourly units of the minimum wage, in Asia, and, neither do we fair very well against Europe and the United States for the majority of events, big city marathons apart.
As of yet there is no mention of penalties for anyone who fails to comply and, alarmingly, federations will be exempt from obtaining sanction from anyone.
fed·er·a·tion
ˌfedəˈrāSH(ə)n/
noun
an organization or group within which smaller divisions have some degree of internal autonomy.
So what is to stop any group of events from joining together as a federation and bypassing the regulations?
It will be interesting to see if there will be a ‘one stop’ application and approval rather than the current system where organisers need to approach various authorities to get approvals for each segment of their plans. Often, I hear that this system is very long winded and ineffective, some events do not receive final approval until just weeks before their scheduled event date or changes to requirements by one or other of the authorities just days ahead of an event.
Both sides need to be improved to ensure a smooth and consistent process that can be completed in a reasonable time scale.
There needs to be a transparency in how the approvals are made. A standard documented system needs to be in place that ensures that the organiser knows from the very outset exactly what is required. This would then enable only events that meet the required criteria to apply, therefore ensuring that the approval procedure will be swift and autocracy free.
Happy Running pada kaki tua, atau muda..
When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
TIP OF THE DAY: One of the skills that separates the good runners from the almost-good runners is an ability to focus their attention for the entire period of the race, whether it is a mile or a marathon. Dissociating is a good strategy for beginning runners, but not for people who want to run fast. When your mind wanders during a road race, inevitably you slow down. If you stay focused, you learn how to concentrate all body systems to sustain a steady pace, conserve your energy and maintain your running form. How to learn to achieve this? It takes total concentration to run fast on a track; once you master this skill, you can transfer it to your road runs.
