Brand New Swim Start to A New Year

New Years’ Day: This morning, about 18 people turned up for our fortnightly open-water swim at Tanjong Beach, Sentosa Island. Since it was the first day of 2011, so it was an encouraging turnout since we expected many to comply with the late-night revelry. Why wake up early to swim and run when you could have slept in? Sleeping-in can be a luxury for athletes-in-training! The logic of the endurance athlete leaves much to be desired, at times, when we choose tougher choices (adapted from Carly Fiorina’s book on her days at Hewlett-Packard).

Led by our amiable leader, Matthew we elected to either swim 4 or 6 laps of the slightly choppy lagoon; our fearless and friendly leader in the saline pond has been instrumental in sustaining the longevity of these swims in recent years. As it was a high tide of about 2.9 metres, each lap was about 400 metres. For those in this group new to triathlons, and attempting their first biathlon (Singapore Biathlon) in February, it was a useful session to familiarize oneself to open-water swimming. I benefitted much from this group swimming sessions, over the years, as I built my confidence through each race and practice sessions. After each lap, Matt offered quick pointers to our new swimmers.

After the swim, we changed into our running shoes and ran about 4.5K. Many of us commented positively the colourful K-Swiss K-Ona worn by Gary, our American expatriate friend; his model has colours of the German flag. Sin Guan and I ran it reasonably fast, mainly to test our running legs after our respective marathons about three weeks ago. We crossed the end line at about 22 minutes with Richard Leong snapping a photograph of us. John ‘Cookie’ Cooke from Perth came in a strong third (he did a 11:37 in his sixth Ironman at IMWA three weeks ago) with Matt following up on this swim-run brick session. After everyone safely returned from the run, we took a well-deserved group picture.

After washing up, we adjourned to Vivo City for our post-training feed; it is important to nourish our body within an hour of physical activity so as to allow it to repair itself. We indulged in conversation, mostly orientated around which races and training sessions to consider for this year. Ironman China was an event some were seriously interested in considering, although some of us were uncomfortable with first-time races and their likely disappointments.

One key, take-away lesson was: There are no easy Ironman races, let alone endurance races. The easiest Ironman is the one we pop into the DVD player. Have a good year, everyone!


Photo-Credits: Happy group photographs by professional photographer and designer, Richard Leong