Tag Archives: Running

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Boston Marathon is one of the races that I aim to go and I have deep respects for the runners who are taking part. I do not have much to say about the tragic incident but I am a Runner, and this incident deeply saddens me. As I watch the news about runners who lost their limps, I could feel for them because this is the most painful thing that could happen to a runner – losing the ability to run.

I caught this post off my twitter feed, and I took down a quote on it.

Don’t glorify the terrorists and their actions by calling this part of a “war on terror.” Wars involve two legitimate sides. There’s only one legitimate side here; those on the other are criminals. They should be found, arrested, and punished. But we need to be vigilant not to weaken the very freedoms and liberties that make this country great, meanwhile, just because we’re scared.

via The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On – Bruce Schneier – The Atlantic.

There is no doubt. We should not be scared but this also triggers the thought that I or rather us (my friends) should be more aware of our surrounding and take notice of national security. Because IMHO, most singaporeans take our national security for granted. #runstrong

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My first 1000m Trail Run

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tl:dr I just completed my first 1000m trail run. In case you wonder what is 1000m to an Ironman finisher. This 1000m *is not the distance but the altitude, together with strong wind and the fluctuating cold weather, this is also the toughest trail run that I did after The North Face 50KMin 2010. This run certainly opens up my knowledge about trail running and further propels my love for running. Furthermore, I really learn a lot on this run both in terms of life and running and I have to share it with you. Continue reading →

It’s doomsday and I’m blogging.

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Looking back 2012 - Bryan Lee

Initially I wanted to write a blog post titled my unexpected journey 2012 before doomsday. So I took some hours off yesterday thinking how should I start and this morning I started to craft the post, hopping I have it out in the evening .

But something happen today, my Mac went dead. It went dead because I tried to mess with the hostname in terminal. *protip; do not mess change your hostname unnecessary in your terminal. (I did this during a Python Training Class :P )

Usually, I would have gone crazy, blank and lost (you know that feeling when you are working on MS words and the things just crash on you and you had not saved the file.) #fml kinda of feeling

But today, I was a little bit more calm. I was calm because all my important stuff are in the cloud. So today, I really want to say Phil Libin and Drew Houston, you guys made a difference to my life today. And to whoever came out the great idea of cloud storage, give the man a tiger!

Family at Blk71

I’m restarting this post just a minute past doomsday. Because I just got the rest back from time machine. (Yes, Steve you made a difference too) So here’s my sharing of an unexpected journey in 2012.

tl:dr: For the past year, I been having fun, making new friends, learning new skills, making hard decisions that I sometimes regret but had to move forward and gaining lots of experiences in my startup journey.

My unexpected journey in Startup life

Intraix has started with an idea in 2011 and turn into a running business in 2012. Are we doing what we first conceived. No. Low cost home energy monitoring system (HEMS) just doesn’t make sense locally yet. So we pivoted (the word that Startups love to use) to Building Energy Monitoring. In another words, we are an Enterprise startup (lots of buzz around the word Enterprise among startups too) You can see our live demo here.

Tribesports vs Bikeroger.comWe also accidentally a pretty strong community for Bikeroger.com. Yes. It’s a startup too. People have ask us why are you not focused? Well, this calls for another post but the community we build is even strong than Tribesports. (Not I say, fanpagekarma say) We did not even know we are building a community, we just wanted to use Facebook to publicse our services. But as the crowd grew, we do less of selling and more of engaging. And I learn so much about community building from Bikeroger.com.

Also making a significant contribution to my startup life is Blk71…(Yes, Yes, I know. I talk a lot about Blk71) I posted that Blk71 is like a big family to me, but I like to give a  BIg BIg thank you credit to the guys and ladies running the show. They are the ones that makes Plugin@Blk71 special.

Thank you. Agustiadi, Peck Ying, Liana (who has her own fanpage) and Cheng San.

My unexpected journey in Running.

Evernote Fitness Ambassador

I blog about my startup life, sometimes about tech and even my love for running. But I never expected that my love for running would bring me the following.

1. a chance to write for a magazine – I had the opportunity to write a 3 page Okaley Review for Run Singapore. The magazine is now on sale :P

2. becoming an Evernote Fitness Ambassador – I love Evernote, it is my most commonly use productivity tool. I even used it as my training log. I blog about it and with my love for sports, I wrote in to apply for the Evernote International Ambassador program. I went through the interviews and proud to say. I made it.

Team Bikeroger ekiden

Also I ike to introduced Bikeroger Ekiden Team. I wrote about having pre-race jitter but it was all worth it. Out of 300 teams for the Ekiden race. We sent 2 teams and we got 11th and 24th placing. You guys are amazing. And I clocked my personal best at 8.8km – 38:35mins

My unexpected journey in Learning.

Now where you are spending most of your time in a workplace full of geeks, you will soon become a geek (in my opinion). There are many talents in Blk71 and there can be so much to learn from them. I’m a business student but I have not picked up HTML/CSS skills (Thanks to @zackyap, sorry if I keep bothering you why this? why that?) that I practiced it on my Tumblr, hopefully I can create beautiful Tumblr themes that thousands use.

Also, iOS programming. Some says it’s tough to learn it without programming experience. One guy wants to show that everyone can code, so on Sat/Sun he will spent sometime to teach me iOS. Our common goal to turn me from a iOS noob to ‘coder’ (even if that means creating a simple RSS reader app) I’m using a 30 days challenge app to monitor my progress. You can see it here.

Sorry for the super long post, but i’m sure you can feel that I love writing :D .

Finally, I love startup life and I really hope to see the startup community grow in Singapore. So I took the initiative to create 2 little side projects. (to do or not to do side projects, you can read it here)

1. Startups in Singapore - It is a rotation curation projection (@Khyathi92 from WeBlog is also helping out in this project). 52 weeks, each week an entrepreneur will be tweeting from a common twitter account and they can share their startup life experiences. Why I do this? I really want people to know more about our Singapore startup culture and I hope this would be a good way to share different experiences.

2. PSDPY.COM - A simple side project with Weileen. It’s a job portal side for startups. One problem that we faced while hiring for our own startups, it hard to find good talent. Job sites like Job.db or Jobstreet does not cater to the crowd of Startups and many times these job sites does not bring in suitable applicants. PSDPY.COM is a free to post jobs site, everyday 3~5 tweets will be out to share in the startup twitter verse.

I would love to hear feedbacks from you about these side projects, if you like to join in. I’m most welcome.

p/s It’s 02:21, i’m still alive and have finished my 2012 wrap-up :D #backtowork 

Running the Safra Army Half Marathon 2012

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Just last week, I had an awesome run with my friends over at Safra AHM. I am slightly disappointed with my timing because I was aiming for a 1:45:00. But this also pushes me to work harder for the next race. Thank you Weileen, Coach Sham and Weesan for your pacing, otherwise I would be further behind my goal.

Something to comfort myself: just 3 weeks before AHM I had to attend my annual ICT, which slightly broke my training momentum, still this is not an excuse.

My form breakdown:
0-5km: start out fresh. Running side by side with Weileen at a pace of 1km – 4:55 which was quite inline with our goal.

5km-10km: form is good. Caught up with Coach Sham and Weesan. Sky was still dark and the only thing in my mind was to follow coach’s footstep. Left right left right hiding right behind him just making sure I do not step onto his feet. I also started to drink at every interval drink station.

10km-15km: Weileen broke away. I remained behind Coach and sometimes behind Weesan. A lady in purple sports top joined in to our running group. Pace slightly drop to 1km – 5:02. I started to feel fatigue and began to pour water over head. This pouring of water overhead served as a wake up call for me “hey, do not STOP now”

15km-21km: Every one kilometer seems so far away while at the same time I started to feel energised. Because each and everyone of us know we are finishing.  And finishing means our suffering is coming to an end. Towards the last 5km, the slope up Nicoll Highway was tough, each step was heavy as hell. Weesan was just beside me and we both hear Coach screaming “come on, you do not give up now. step by step” With this we ramped on.

Crossing the finishing line, I have one thing in mind.

finally, the end of my suffering.

This 21KM, I did not walk a bit. I am proud of myself. I finally understand “train hard to race easy”.

Do you have an memorable race to share? I love to hear inspiring stories. Because when I hit a wall, I will remember your story

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My first marathon with EVO Barefoot

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Tokyo marathon 2011 (PixUp)
I would like to sincerely thank Barefoot Store Singapore again for giving me the opportunity to try out their EVO Barefoot.

The Experience

It certainly not easy to run a full marathon with EVO Barefoot because this is my first time going such distance with a minimalist shoe. But I have to say the experience is good. The shoe is light allowing me to lift up my legs with less effort.

Also I had my socks on during the start of the race, but i removed it because II feel that without the socks it allows me to feel the ground > This is important because usually at 30KM I will hit my peak or I would start to stoned :) but with EVO as it allows me to feel the ground I was able to enjoy the run much better as compared to normal shoes.

However, because this is a minimalist shoe… there is not much support for my arch especially I am a serious flat footer. During some part of the run, I did feel aching around the arch area but this was solved some stretching on the feet. So too all flat footers I believe with sufficient training this would be a great alternative shoe for flat footers because it is so hard to find good looking and light flat foot shoes.

My Marathon Singapore 2010 (SCMS 2010) experience

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Another challenging day for me again :) but its feels great. The ability to push my limits and to know where is my boundary.

This year the Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore 2010 (SCMS 2010) have a completed different starting route as compared to the past. For the 42km, which I took part in, it started in orchard road a very unique and refreshing feeling plus it starts at 5am thus helping most runners to avoid the late morning to afternoon sun (if provider if the runners are able to finish early :P )

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

This is yiyang and me taking of routine photo at the baggage area. Last year we did the same thing too :) so maybe we could start collecting our marathon photos from now on.

We met at 3.30am today, check in our bags and off we  go to the starting line. Yiyang and the barefoot team was doing the record of having the most number of people crossing the finishing line at the same time. I did not took part so I went straight to the starting point. The starting point was well organised, it was categorized according to different target time. For example, I chose the under 5hrs category upon registration and was given a green tag so I could join fellow runners and pacing clocking under 5hrs. I did know of this till I got to the venue. So the starting was very good, runners have space to run and because you are running with fellow runners of similar pace, there is no need to stop or walk. Kudos to the organizing team of SCMS 2010!

In fact I was hoping to do my PB. My best time for marathon is still 4hrs 17mins clocked in shanghai. I was hoping to achieve something better or even sub 4hrs if possible. But I know it would be tough because work and my work do not really give me much time to train, but nevertheless, I must push on to try.

I started off pacing with the 4hrs group, going at a good pace. Till I reach the Chinatown area where I had to pee :( when I came out …booo they were long infront of me. Eventually I managed to catch on at the east coast area. I check my timing. I was feeling pretty good just that a bit sleepy. I was doing 55mins for my first 10km. Clocking a 2hrs a the halfway mark.

As I start to reach from 22km to 25km. This has always been my weakest link.  Because there is such a long way to go. Sun was rising and the sky starts to get clear. I slapped my face a few times to wake myself up from the sleepy condition and continue to push on. On the 25km, I lose track of the 4hrs pacing guys so I relied on my watch on the pacing. This is also the time that I start to remember it not how fast to you at the start because I start  to see runners who I had past in the early stage catching up with me. Its about how long you can last :) at least I know from the bottom of my heart that I walked less than I used to in the past.

The toughest route will have to be the route crossing from East Coast Park to Marina Bay Sun, we cut through a construction site and a beautiful park. It was a visual treat but there was no shade thus when the SUN shines…. I feel like a lobster under intense heat.

4.05hrs I reach the 38km mark. I though I still had the chance to finish at least below 4.20hrs. But I was wrong, the 38km mark was the zone that all runners from 10km, 21km and 42km converged. This created a massive human jam at the bridge area, furthermore people who are tired starts to walk, they would break the momentum of the upcoming runners. From 38km to 42km. It took me 40mins to do my last 4km !!!!

I completed the race at 4:41hrs better than last year but much behind my target. The only comforting thing is I manged to hold on 38km mark . I certainly need more practice and training. Till 2011, I would set my goal at sub 4hrs wish me luck.

The 42km Route

The new improved Terra Plana EVO II (No Mistake)

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I would like apologies to all Evo lovers. In an earlier post, I mention “I received a new minimalist footwear from barefoot. And because I was not sure of the name I called it the EVO2.“

I made a mistake. Because there is a new EVO2.

The minimalist shoe I had received was a new model named “Ultra”. It is a new additional to the minimalist shoe family among Terra Plana.:)

Now for the “No mistake” True Blue EVO 2

The New EVO 2 :) Hope I clear up the air here. I will post the updates on “Ultra” soon.



Training Log: Tempo run

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Each round – 850m

Ran 10 round – each round averaging about 4.30mins

I was feeling great starting from round 1 to 5, but from round 6 onwards steps start to get a bit smaller but breathing was still good, I also feel that my running posture is getting better. Since like running slower and paying attention to my running style is a better form of training compared to training just focusing on speed.

Round 8, trainer wants us to open up our legs.  Starting it was a bit difficult but as I lean my body forward it seem that the legs start to follow. I was felling good and breathing was good. Round 9, I opened my legs wider but I can start to feel stress on my knees, I pushed on. Round 10, breathing was getting heavier and mental starting to get weak. So I speed up and completed my last round.

In fact I want and need to use to the feeling of opening up my legs and maintain the body posture – I feel that the best set is round 8, if I can do 10 rounds based on round 8. I think I can do better.

Now I look forward for my next training, 30km. The very last training before TNF 100 on 09 Oct 2010.

Running with Terra Plana Dopie

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Cuts from Strap

Today I just completed a 20km run with Terra Plana Dopie. The experience was great but the strap is still creating problems for me. Along the run, the strap keep rubbing against my skin resulting in light cuts on my feet.

Blood stain on strap, the area that gives me the problem

The “blood stained” area on the strap. So half way down the journey I decided to loosen the strap. I feel more comfortable but the foot bed keeps on giving me the flapping feeling.

Marathon Singapore confirmation

Marathon Singapore confirmation slip

Despite all the cuts and abrasions, I have decided to use Dopie for my 2010 Marathon Singapore event.This is because after I started out minimalist shoes I could not go back to cushion shoes also my love for running increased. Each run gives me a new experience because I could feel the ground and when I starts to feel the ground I learn to embrace the environment, this makes my running more enjoyable.

Furthermore, This year the 42km for Marathon Singapore will be totally new experience for me.

1. it would be of a different route as compared to the same route for 2006,2007,2009

2. It is also for me test out Dopie and my love for minimalist shoes.

3. My target is to have a sub 4hrs for my marathon