Return To IM Langkawi - Bike Training

Saturday, 31 December 2005, Last ride for the year - started at 8.30 a.m. Plan for the day was to do some hill repeats at Genting Sempah. I started the ride from the OAH car park with the LeTua guys (Sham, Zamani, Shukor and others) and they rode to Genting Sempah and back. I shot to the front after an extended warm-up. Before the little waterfall, I thought Zamani was behind me but was surprised to see the young bloke when I looked over my shoulders. I pushed a little and dropped him effortlessly. When I looked back again, I could only see another rider in green jersey but I could not make out who it was. I pushed off the saddle several times and reached Sempah in 55:23. I was surprised to see Shukor coming in behind me – he was the rider in green jersey I saw earlier. Then it was Zamani & the young bloke together followed by Sham and the others not too far behind.

After some 30 minutes chat with them, I went on to do my hill repeats - solo. It was my usual 8 x McDonald’s Climbs. For the first time, the 8 repeats felt easy and before I knew it I was down to the last rep. On previous occasions, I would start to feel like giving up when I got to the 4^th or 5^th rep. But today, I was hungry for the next rep. Attacked off saddle twice in the last rep and logged fastest split of 4:21 and was 14 seconds off personal best of 4:07 recorded on 12/2/05.

	31/12/05	23/7/05	2/7/05	30/4/05	26/3/05	12/2/05
Rep 1	5:12	5:47	5:18	5:14	5:30	4:58
Rep 2	4:45	5:29	5:05	4:52	5:16	4:38
Rep 3	4:51	5:03	4:51	4:54	5:01	4:36
Rep 4	4:47	5:00	4:36	4:46	4:48	4:19
Rep 5	4:33	4:44	4:40	4:40	4:40	4:07
Rep 6	4:34	4:35	4:40	4:27	4:34	4:13
Rep 7	4:29	4:28	4:31	4:32	4:18	4:27
Rep 8	4:21	4:53	4:50	4:24	-	4:36

I thought of adding a couple of bonus reps but decided otherwise as I needed to conserve for tomorrow’s long ride with Don Khor and gang. Cruised back to the car park and finished the ride at around 12.00 p.m. Was relieved that I have recovered fully from last week's bout of food poisoning.