Kayak Away - courtesy of Cindy Goh

So blow by blow account for first day:
 
Started with lung-bursting 2k run to bridge abseil: we were definitely out of our league in 2k sprints. 15 out of 16. 
 
25m Abseil into lake waters: Hadi had cramps in the water but we swam to the kayaks 100m away fine. 15 out of 16.
 
Leg-numbing 6.5k kayak to rainforest: We overtook two teams on the kayak leg, thanks to our relative strength in kayaking, compared to running. 13 out of 16.
 
Slip-sliding 1k run through rainforest: It was all mud-extremely slippery and slow going for a 1k struggle.6
 
Ass-numbing 4.5k kayak to bike transition: Still strong on kayak, maintaining position 13 out of 16.
 
6k bike on road: 2k in, my left pedal finally gave up. Spent five minutes cable-tying it to crank. But it still dropped off anyway. Ran/bike while Hadi towed my bike to the start of the 2k downhill off road.
 
2k downhill off road: Gravity & momentum brought me down the hill ok. By now, caked in monsoon mud. Learning how to ride with one pedal.
 
2k uphill off road: Pushed, cajoled, cursed our way uphill. Took turns riding Hadi’s bike which was still towing mine. Ran on uphills too to prevent tow-line from breaking.
 
6k bike on road: Back to the bike transition. Limped back with Hadi towing me and occasionally running alongside bike on upslopes. By now, both teams we overtook on the kayak had overtaken us again.
 
4k road run to finish: Towed Hadi on run back because he busted his legs towing me on the bike. Crossed finish line in 3h 38 min. Position 15 of 16. One minute behind 14th placed team. First team finished in 2 hr 45 min. Podium finishers were only minutes apart.
 
The race director got my bike cranks changed today so tomorrow will hopefully be a different story.
We expect to improve our finish by two places tomorrow. But no stress, cos we are not here to win the USD 15,000 prize money. We’re here to make friends, enjoy the race and try our best. I think we did all that splendidly today. Instead of getting cranky over the crank, we had a great time working together as a team!

Skate Chase - courtesy of Sham SNR

What an epic day, its been along time since I’ve been smashed so hard for so long, so today’s stage will take the take for the physically toughest endeavour I’ve had to do within a time limit.
 
Roller Blade 8km: Race started with an 8k roller blade around Taiping Lake Garden. I managed to smash my knee into the tarmac when avoiding a car while warming up. Hadi being the srong skater towed me and we managed a respectable 22 minutes for the 8k. Top 10 position of 16..
 
Bouldering 1.5km: Never my favourite, I managed to smash all my upper & lower joints over 1.5km. The most painful way to cross a water obstacle is boudering on slippery rocks. I was bleeding from both knees & elbows, bruised my foot, stubbed a toe, bruised half the length of a shin and jarred a knee. By the time we were out of this section, we were ranked 14.
 
Hill Climbing 5km: Those who complain about “cheong sua” back home should try this out to understand the depth of our suffering today. The Malaysian rain forest is thick enough, add in wet mud, thorns, tricky course marking and 80 degree ascents and you have the perfect torture machine. We were climbing and descending endlessly for almost 2.5 hours. Each time we thought we were near the waterfall abseil point, we were wrong. It was the most painful trek I’ve done. We sucked our hydration packs dry well before the finish and were on the verge of heat exhaustion by the time we got to the abseil point. The last 50 meters were almost near vertical and i’ve never moved so slow & deliberately before – not because I was careful but because I was so damn tired. Seriously thought our entire race for the day was in jeopardy at this stage.
Thanks to Hadi who towed me for long stretches and who was ever the jungle-man in negotiating obstacles and finding markers.
 
Waterfall Abseil 60m: Our saviour cos the cool water was just what we needed. I’ve never taken so long to abseil 60m because we were enjoying the cool water to cool our over-heated bodies. Definitely took much more than the required time at the waterfall – but it was worth it cos it kept us in shape for the second half of the day. BTW, Pa & Ma met at this waterfall?!
 
Bike 24km: Running to the bike transition, we realized two teams ahead of us had heat exhaustion and were being tended to by doctors. The waterfall dip saved us and after having a little down time in the transition point, we pushed out of transition in position 12!
The road / plantation route was manageable but it was a sweltering day for the first time and the heat zapped us once again. Fortunately, our bike tow & drafting saved the day for us. The Japanese revered from their heat injuries and overtook us midway through the bikes.
 
Kayak 7.5km: We pushed off the kayaks in the tidal mangrove swamp ranked 13 – which turned out to be our final position.  The kayak was magical tough it was still excruciatingly painful due to the darned seat and abrasion on the back.  The mangrove swamp was absolutely beautiful. Then, we passed by an entire fishing community village on the river – can u imagine every fisherman family got their fishing trawler parked outside their house along the river? That’s how it was like. Absolutely dirty, but what a magnificent sight!
 
Well, after 6hr 30min, we managed to complete the race as the last team to meet the cut-off! Phew! I am so smashed today. So not bad, we improved over two positions in a very strong field.
 
Now all I need to do is to recover.

Bike-a-Hike

Started the day with a fast and furious ride up tarmac road before turning off into gravel and subsequently rocky slopes and streams.

The bike was punishing due to the many uphills that we had to hike-a-bike through given our less than stellar climbing skills and sore quadriceps. The steep and sudden drops into streams also ensured a harrowing ride as I end-overed one of them (fortunately with sufficient speed kill to avoid injury). As is becoming customary, we were third from bottom in the biking. The first team from the first day from New Zealand suffered a serious injury to one of their number as he lost control on a downhill and crashed into a ditch. Although he completed the race, he was eventually diagnosed with a cracked vertebra and was not allowed to race on the final day. Anyway, we missed a turn-off the trail on the bike and were on our way downhill when the NZ team stopped us and told us to turn back cos they had just gone all the way down the wrong way. Moreover, they had seen a big cat’s (tiger?) fresh prints and no bike tyre marks. We were grateful for their advice and found the turn-off after tracking back. The single track from the turn off was so slick that Hadi end-overed three times on the way down the 200m stretch. I had gone down ahead of him pushing my bike all the way down but he thought I rode down and tried to chase me, much to his painful experience.

After reaching the rafting transition station, we put on our life jackets and jumped into our RiverBug six-man rafts with a guide. The Musi River we rafted down was the exact same one we went with YuenLi for our rafting lessons in 2006 before XPD! What memories! Though we’ve been there before, our control of the raft sucked, practically getting stuck on every rock we encountered. We were overtaken by two teams on the 8km rafting section, much to our collective disappointment with our coordination. We got out of the river for a 10km run to the cave called Gua Temperung. It was starting to get really hot and the two caucausian teams who overtook us on the rafting were not up to running in the stifling heat. With Hadi towing me, we jogged-a-walk to 12th position, overtaking the two teams on the run and reaching the stream leading to the cave none the worse for wear.

We scrambled for about 1km along the stream before hitting the entrance the cave. Just outside the cave entrance, Hadi slipped on a small mud slope and had a heavy fall. I feared the worst as I though he had either broken or badly sprained his right ankle which was stuck on between rock and root. Fortunately, he got up fine after prolonged groaning. The Race Director had said the cave route was straight-forward – “just follow the river flowing through the cave to the exit.” While that was true, it was far from easy, the cave ceiling was low and sections of the cave more than 10m wide so we groped around in the darkness for the correct path to follow. I was wearing the small Petzl e-Lite which did not provide sufficient light penetration in the darkness. Fortunately, Hadi had his powerful searchlight of a torch to light the way and he led the way through. We crawled, rolled and slithered our way for another 2km through the darkness. We maintanined our position throughout, and overtook tourist groups sauntering through the cave. As we got out of the cave back into daylight, it was a 200m run to the finish line. We finished in our best position yet – 12th out of 16 teams.

Runaway Bike

The fourth and final stage of our race started with lots of apprehension over the “killer hill” after the exhausting climb on Taiping’s highest hill on the 2^nd stage. It didn’t help that Race Director Uncle Chan told us during the race brief that the “killing hills” was a series of four hills whose name is translated to mean “Leech Hill”! Without better knowledge, all teams naturally planned their pace around the hills that were to come up at the third quarter of the race.

The day began 0800 with a 12km tarmac ride to the padi fields. Passed through 5km of gravel before hitting the padi fields. The ride through the edge of the padi fields was surreal in the morning sun and quite slippery. We had kept up with the main group until they dropped in the fields. From the fields, we returned back to the main trunk road for a 42km ride to the kayak transition near Lumut. 

Hadi and I took turns drafting and eventually finished the 69km bike leg in 2h 15min in 12^th place out of 15. The NZ team who won the first stage had pulled out following yesterday’s crash by one of its members that left him with a cracked vertebrae and ribs.

After pulling on our lifejackets and harnesses, we squeezed in to the cursed kayak for a 4km kayak in the Malacca Straits to Pulau Pangkor. The kayak was uneventfully short and after hitting the beach, we did a 60m abseil before proceeding for a 6km run to the “killing hills”.

By now, it was close to mid-day, the sun was out and the heat stifling. As we ran through Pangkor town to the bemusement of locals, we sought shade in the trees, shophouses, wherever there was a shadow cast. When we finally reached the foot of the hill after slogging on the rolling course, the first thing we did was to top up our hydration to the max. Memories of running out of water on the hills in Stage two still spooked us.

As we took off from up the steep slope, we were mentally prepared for two solid hours of slogging through mud, thorns, gradient and leeches. It took us almost 45 minutes to reach the first crest and even though the vegetation was not as thick as the 2^nd stage, I was not looking forward to three more similar climbs. Miraculously, the transition to the second, third and fourth crests were relatively easy with a lot less descending and climbing than expected. Within 90 minutes, we were descending the last hill and on the way to the foothill for our final team biathlon leg. 

The “local bikes” provided for the teams were generally too small for us, had worn brake pads, low seats and non-shifting gear. We took the first bike that had two working tyres! What a regret! We should have tried out a few more. I could hardly pedal the bike, my knees came to my stomach when pedaling.  On downhills, Hadi would jump on the top tube and we would have a romantic rush downhill with him screaming for dear life! That was fun!

We crossed the fourth and final finish line of the race in 12^th position, both relived to be out of the sun and despondent that our fun was quickly coming to an end. 

And it turned out that Uncle Chan was screwing with our minds about the “killer leech hills!” Darn it!

Just last Saturday, I managed to load my Salomon titalium skates on the Salomon Raid Revo 30, strap it up so not to bounce around & off I set foot to meet Phebs for the skating leg. Took me 30mins for a 6km run with that load. I was drenched the moment I hit the “transition area”. But good thing we started skating at 6.45am as it was getting slightly brighter. With the wonderful sunny day ahead of us, what’s more could we asked for.

Run & Roll with Phebs

Complete with a fun Ride in Ubin

 A glance thru the swamp of 60 teams at the start line, we know instantly that we are up against the best racer there is in this region. Some 18 Malaysian VAT teams (Police Commandos), Powerbar Malaysia, Salomon Powerbar, Singapore’s very own SART teams and many other local competitors and those from Philippines, Russia and Denmark as well.

Just a week before the Perak Irounbound 09, I was struggling trying to cook up some stories not to go for this one, especially when my race partner is a cyborg named Keith. Fortunately, I found a hidden switch to moderate his running speed. Phheewww!

Not long after a start run & river raft, all teams were thrown in the nerve wrecking scrambling trail of Perak. Here’s the make or break for most of us. With our legs working harder than usual in keeping our balance on the undulating trail along the stream and boulders, our eyes, were forced to work even harder in spotting the black and yellow tape/strip markers which blend efficiently amongst the trees.

Oh boy that was tough! It’s even tougher for the VATs as they keep bumping into us, just because they lost their way and were forced to back track into our path.

Picture this; we are no different from a bunch of headless chicken, scrambling to find our way out of the slaughter house.

But soon enough, they pulled their vanishing act right before us, well, even before I could finish shouting “BRO!! OVER HERE!!

What was left were the only 2 headless Singapore chickens still puzzled over what had hit them. And ya, I owe Keith a plate of Chicken Rice for eventually getting us out of that mess.

Chicken or no chicken, going upstream and over slippery boulders may suggest that those long-gone-speedy-athletes-leaving-us-to-eat-their-dirt, are actually mutant water spiders. Once you see them and they are gone the next.

By this time, I lost control of my motivated cyborg, probably the handle stick got stuck in between those trees and broke.

And what happened to me? I was struggling with my slippery shoes on those even slippery rocks, trying to catch up with him. “Oiiii you should have come with a remote control!!”

For a while, we were enjoying the chase, all by ourselves, remote from any other teams, suddenly Keith’s scanner picked up a heat motion with tremendous speed, picking up behind us. Then we came face to face with some super human racers. With shoe soles that were no better than mine, these teams practically zoom passed us by running and leaping away effortlessly.

They made it look so easy like kids running around in their playground. Steep slope? No problem. The steeper it is, the faster they go down.

And there we were, clinging on to trees & branches as we struggle thru and yes, still with our jaws wide opened and a long “wwwwwhhhaaattt?” conveniently eating their dust…..and not to forget our occasional drama-mama-signature-scream; OOUUCCHH!! – due trip and fall over roots and thorns.

Unfortunately enough, some foreign dust particles has corrupted Keith scientific name memory hard-drive, resulting him insistently naming a deer, Mumtaz Santiago.

(Wahaha! Bro if you are reading this, I just can’t help it. You were forcing that poor marshal to forget & forgive what animal scientific names he had learned thru high school. Wahahaha!)

Well, so much for the zoo mystery test. Finally, it was only closer to the end point that my cyborg Keith, after weighing some lost time and gain in navigation and animal scientific names, brilliantly drew us, Team Ecorace, back into the ranks. Weeeeeeeee!

Singapore Adventure Race Teams

SART in the water

Leap of Joy

Team Ecorace bagged Dynamic Team Award

With half the time gazing down the map on my bike and occasionally suffering blind spot each time my head light bounced off it as I looked away into the trail, it all looks so famimiar now. Probably the only difference is: We are racing in our reds and not clad in the long green camos. But the enemy and objective is definately real: TIME.

Chasing after the front team is no easy feat, let alone completing this race in 4hrs as targetted. Adventure in Motion crossed the finished line with a magnificent time of 4hrs 46mins. And where are we?

We got ”trapped” in our slow mo zone instead resulting in an hour behind them. Well, at least 4 other mens team were, still pounding our way checkpoints after checkpoints along the park connector. At 2 in the morning, we definately served as light entertainment for lovebirds in the park, who remained oblivious to us.  

Meanwhile, deep down inside me, I was still gripping with the fact that we’d lose each other along the trail. But for the meantime, we all each have our cramps to worry about.

As mentioned in the pre race briefing, the night trail ride was indeed the highlight of it all. Here, it’s a make or break for most team. As usual, we got carried away riding there for awhile. I wish the single track could be longer.

Soon after we were on the foot race again, dragging our feet across the long grass, it sure made the run seems so endless. With every challenge that drained off my energy level, I can’t help to wonder. What’s next Joanne?

We found out soon enough as we got on the bike and rode off deeper….swallowed by the mist & darkness of Serimbun area.

Keith is seen here kicking the timer with the hope it’d jump backwards to 4hrs flat. Kidding ya.

Special thanks to my lovely wife, Kris Chua, for picking up the 3 mad dirty boys with their bikes, back to civilisation. Yeaaa..

But many, many and many other people knows him as Keith the lungless one who has long fall in the league of other lungless ones: like Clarence, Chee Meng, Joseph, Charles and God knows whoelse.

Frankly I like him more as Mr Gan. (You can let go of the poor koi’s tail now, Mr Gan)

With barely a week before our major race (Ace Adventure Challenge 08), Team Adventure Madness did our final prep run & oh boy, was I in for the kill. Suggested route was, ECP carpark F2 to Wimbledon & back. 6km in all. Ah! Chicken feat, I thought. I thought WRRROOOOOONNGGG!!!

Just a 100 metres from the start point, I was already breathing wildly and what was he doing? Nothing. Probably farting away while he ran (I believe this is also a turbo converter for some).

1 kilometre, my eyes started to twitch.

When we hit 3km, I started to wonder: is he human?

By the time I hit 5km, I was already…well….breathing thru my sorry ass.

The last sprint after the Bedok jetty mark to end point simply deny me of every possible air there was on this planet earth.

I had the sudden urge of jumping on his back or even grabbing his leg with the hope that he’d drag me all the way to end point. Well, probably I’ll be dead by then. Well Done Mr Gan!!

www.racesomewhere.com

Nomad Adventure Race Eco X-Treme 2007 had seen many teams roughed it out for the podium finish. But slowly reality sink in, as teams started dropping their gears struggling up Fraser Hill before their final checkpoint. It was a 33km uphill road ride that separates the mens & the boys.  

Joseph, with whom I formed up Team Klimax Singapore, checked into the skill test, late the day before. We had no idea whom are we racing against. It was only during dinner that my jaw dropped automatically at the sight of other teams. Singapore very own elite racing team Adventure In Motion, Singapore Civil Defence teams, Singapore Police Force team, Malaysian commandos & police teams plus not to forget Malaysian elite racing teams who are also known as powerbar Malaysia and Eco Wizard. These super human will give us a good thrashing i supposed. At the far end of the dinner table, there stood a pair of humble being, Taiwan Extreme. Gulp! Are we dead yet? Nope, not till we catch some sleep we ain’t!

Wakie wakie. Morning breakfast wasn’t so bad afterall. But the wait for flag off, was. Between the upset stomach and the anxiety before the whistle blow, I was contemplating of displaying my ultimate speed, zooming past the swamp of racers before I ram into the toilet door. Haha. That didn’t really happen. They wouldn’t know what hit them if I did. But probably the smell could give it away. FYI, I choosed to store the “extra weight” in my even upset stomach & with the hope that it’d get converted to energy to drive me further into the race.

Fat hope. We were whacked big time by the Malaysian Forest Police and the Alishans (Taiwan Extreme) further tarnished my race ego from 1st placing to third.

At the foot of Frazer Hill, I fell off my bike helplessly with my quad muscles trobbing faster than my brain was. There was really nothing to it only my deep breathing & the pain I had to deal with, still in agony, I looked up only to see Joseph far ahead with his are-you-dead-beat-yet-look on his face.

Before I could give out another cry, the Alishans rode passed me & shouted encouragement to us. COME OOOOONNN!! It fade away as they rode themselves ahead of us but the memory and agony racing with the best didn’t.

Taiwan Extreme is seen here hot on our trail behind Joseph. And what was I doing? Taking this photo lah. DUUHH!! Probably that’s why we lost to the Alishans…..

I succumb to the fact that 3rd is not bad afterall. Those giants have more than a Bukit Timah Hill to train on and if ever we want to come face to face with them, we’ll have to multiply that effort more than anything else. Indeed we will. Someday. Somewhere.

The only fight I had right there & then was the temptation to eat more right after Ramadan. Well, hell no, I see a long flight of stairs to the summit..