Hiking to Penang hill thru lily pond

This is my first full backpack training to Penang hill as a preparation to the coming tahan expedition in Feb 2012. This time we have chosen quite a challenging jungle trekking trail to go up to Penang hill through lily pond and the old Craig hotel. It was quite tough in the beginning and towards the end where it's slope is quite steep. Also we need to go through quite a lot of bushes that the leaves may cause a lot of cuts and scratches on your skin. It's better to wear long sleeves with tracksuit to minimize this as much as possible. We managed to reach the peak in 3hrs 30mins.

We tried the food at the newly opened food court at the peak and we were all surprised to see that the food an beverages were actually being separated into different floor. The top floor were flooded with all the food stalls and all the beverages were located on the floor below it. It makes us feel so inconvenient that we need to order food in on floor then take it all Te way down to the other floor to get the drink. Furthermore they are practicing self service where we need to get the food ourselves. A more funny thing is that the shopkeeper cannot even come out to the place where we sit to chat with the customers. So even we are just siting 1meter away from the stall, they still need us to go to the stall to pick up our food. That's ridiculous.

After taking the lunch, we went back down to botanical garden thru the normal tar road thru 84 and the staircase at 46.

It was a great work out to prepare ourselves for the coming tough tahan hiking expedition!

Lunar Eclipse 2011

As usual, I always scanned through the headlines everyday for any interesting news to read on. On this lovely Saturday, I saw an article about the eclipse of the moon and I quickly find out more information about this. I can find the information quite easily as the internet has been flooded with a lot of articles about what is lunar eclipse and also the greatest eclipse time. I also find out the direction to see the moon through TPE. And finally, I have chosen an open space to setup the camera to shoot this special moment of the year. It's not surprise to see quite a lot of people hanging around this place to wait for this moment too. =)

This is the TPE that shows the Moon rise and set directions.

A few group of people were sitting beside the sea to wait for the eclipse.

This is the place where I setup the camera to shoot the MOON!

This is the final selected photo of the Moon taken at the greatest timing of the lunar eclipse. Higher resolution can be found at http://500px.com/photo/3665580.

PBIM 2011 Official Results

This year I am the first 478 men half marathoner that finished the run. I know it may sound normal to other people but it's been a great achievement to me. Last year I was at 1000+ placing to finish the run. =) Anyway, I hope my improvement will not just stop here but will go on in the next year to come. 

PBIM 2011 - Training Log

PBIM 2011 is not in my plan initially because I was planning for a long trip to New Zealand near to that time frame. However, it happened that I came back from New Zealand about 2weeks before the run so I decided to just register for the half marathon since the registration deadline has been extended until that time frame for me. =) I don't want to struggle too much during the actual PBIM run so I decided to really train for it. I started to run at Jelutong (near to burger king) almost everyday. I always run with my iPhone so I recorded almost all my training log as shown below. It was not really a very intensive training because I just ran for about 7km a day in average. I will definitely train better next year before the run just to make sure I have a more leisure run next year. =)

My PBIM 2011 record

I just finished the Penang bridge international marathon (PBIM) at Queensbay mall just now. This year I met the target finishing time of 2 hours 15 minutes to complete the half marathon of 21km in distance. I used Nike plus apps on my iPhone to track my timing and distance, it shows that I finished the 21km in 2hrs11mins. This may not be perfectly correct because it was manually started and ended by hand. For final results, I still need to wait for PBIM record using the d-tag. Anyhow, it's a good indications that I can at least meet or pretty closed to my target completion time.

Obviously this year there is more water stations and 100plus stations compared to last year. This year they have added small groups of cheer leaders at a few stations along the run. And as usual, drummers were placed at the middle point of the run to cheer us up to run better. It's a good way to motivates the runner in that way especially those runners that feels really tired or wanted to give up.

I always believe that the spirits of runners is to have consistency and determination to finish the run once it is started. I am here to encourage runners of all categories to keep the spirits of runner while running. You can DO IT!! Cheers!!

Counting down to PBIM 2011

I have never thought that I have a chance to participate in PBIM this year because I was planning a long vacation in New Zealand at this period of time. However, due to some limitation of the leave application I have decided to leave NZ earlier by 3months so I got the chance to RUN this year!! I know PBIM has been a very grand event in Malaysia and everybody seems to be interested in the running. Personally, I think PBIM is a good motivation for me to keep myself training for it. I only have about 2 weeks time to train for this run so I actually run like average 7km everyday. It was a tough training for me but I know it will benefit me in both physically and mentally. I know it will be a great fun to run and take a fresh breath in the early morning on the Penang bridge that is free from busy traffics. Cheers!

Event: Penang Bridge International Marathon
Date: Nov 20, 2011
Time: 3.00am (Start time for half marathon of men's open)
Venue: Queensbay Mall (Penang Island, Start and End point)

Ping Jiang District (平江区) - Suzhou

There were a few attractions were located in the Ping Jiang Districts which includes humble administrators garden, Lion grove garden, North temple pagoda, mountain villa of secluded beauty, garden of couples, Joyous garden, Suzhou museum and of course the famous Guan Qian merchantile street. I took a bus there and it just cost me 1RMB. It takes me around 3hrs to complete walking around all the attractions listed above, but I did not enter any of them that needs entry fees, I just walked around there.