The most anticipated month has come!

Yes, the most anticipated month of the year has finally arrived. It is another 8 more days left for us to do some last minute 'muscle acclimatization' and finally just DO IT! I'm talking about the big hike of course.

I've been doing preparations for this Mt. Kinabalu hike since a couple of months back although in the initial phase, it was a mere pathetic twice a month little hill hiking and later on proceeding into some long distance walking on the golf course with probably once a week of jogging. Yes, I've picked up golfing and ditch the game altogether during this whole duration. Not until exactly 29 days ago, I've begun to literally put up a chart, hang it up beside the mirror and chart out on daily basis on what workout I've done on a day. I was ambitious like any typical goal setter will be because I wrote a little remark by the side of the chart that was written " TO RUN 5 KM IN 45 MIN OR 30 MIN/DAY - NON STOP BY 17/4/2010. Yes there are all in caps so that it stands out and would eventually stuck into the brain that it is highly important to achieve this goal regardless.

Of course I could never keep up with the 2 weeks duration to run 5K non-stop I've ambitiously given myself and up until now, my best record was to jog/run non-stop for 15 minute for a distance of 1.2K. Despite not being able to run non-stop in 45 minute for a 5K, I've managed to finish up a 5K in a record of 40 minute by doing a combination of jog/run/fast walk/jog and a good 200m final sprint towards the end. Come to think of it, I've actually reached my goal of running 5K in 45 minute don't I? Next time around it is going to be a 10K in an hour. Oh yeah!

Besides the running and jogging, of course there is the hill hiking. My last proper hill hike was last week. I didn't clock my best time during the uphill battle and I was struggling to breathe until later on I went home and read up on proper breathing techniques for running because it sure helps a lot to keep you going farther uphill or running for a longer duration. Other practices are going uphill on a 100m stretch and repeating the process five times or more. It gets easier on each hike as you begin to master the deep breath and slow exhale technique. However the best workout so far was doing almost a 1K beach run and later on swimming in the sea. The run was fun although people were of course watching because I was the only one running on the beach. On the other hand, I was having shorts of breath during my short breaststrokes laps probably because it is very tiring indeed and I really think those triathletes are really very strong people.

It is about a week's left before we will fly to Kota Kinabalu and I still need to get some stuffs ready. I've been missing some jogging because it is more of a 'do more hill running or walking' week. I hope all will go well next week and I have to admit that we are all getting excited on this and we are having the 'summit fever' alright.