The Day I Ran More Than 21KM And It's Not A Race

I went to meet up with a senior from School (yes, we share common schools, both RMC and VI) as he was looking for engineers to fill up the vacancies at his office.

Meeting him was good and bad. Good because i know i might qualify for at least one job there. Bad because it brought me down to reality.

After working in the same place for the longest time since graduation (and by my standard, that is at age 24), despite having the experience in Construction, Structural, Mechanical and Electrical field of work when i am actually a EE graduate, i find myself not qualified for a lot of things.

"Power Engineering?", he asked.

"How about Process Engineering, it s abit boring, but it gets you by", he added.

"You do know Visio right, since you are more of a Project Management person", he asked further.

"OK, how about ISO standards?", he probed furhter.

It was also then i realised that for the past 6 years, i am nothing but a highly paid office boy.

I was really frank with him, i know of nothing that he asked about. if it was an official interview, i would had been asked to get out of the room.

He gave me a few advices and i told him i will get back to him soonest.

Feeling shitty? Yes, i was.

And nothing would do it better than doing a long run.

So, at 5.30pm, i started running. Home - Pencala Link - TTDI - Kiara - TTDI - Pencala Link - Hartamas - Pencala Link - Home.

I reckon the distance to be somewhere of 24km. It is not even any race day and i found myself doing a half marathon.

Therapheutic to say the least.

When you got nothing else to do...

Here is the timing split.

5km (TTDI park) - 28mins
7.56km (Kiara bottom after cross junction) - 44Mins
9.17km (Kiara at crossjunction after 1 loop) - 55Mins
17km (Gym) - 1hour 47mins
21km (at highway 5km mark) - 2Hours 16mins
24km (Home) - 2hours 43mins


Training log

The Heart Rate:
Average: 152bpm
Max: 171bpm
Kcal : 3460kcal
Recovery 1st minute : 154-134bpm
Recovery after 5 minutes: 126bpm

Knowing that i would be chaffed on the underarm and nipple, i took extra effort to wipe some vaseline under the side of the arms, where it would brush against the running vest and covered my nipples with vaseline. it seems to help as i suffer no chaffing at all.


Magic Goo...

I refilled water once, at KM17, i hid a botle of water in the bushes a couple of hours before started running. So, all in all, i took in 2x750ml of water for this run, carefully rationing the supply.

I reached home almost at about 8pm.

Then i had a shock when i went to pee. The urine was cloudy, which means there could be a lot of protien in it and there were a bit of blood as i urinate. Kidney failure? I did not tell wifey. Was i scared? Hell i was. Just wasn't my day.

The blood went off a couple of hours later when i went to take another leak. It came out clear, no sign of any blood or cloudiness. I just googled for the cause and i'm happy to say that it might be because of EXERTION and STRENENOUS EXERCISE. I just hope it's not any form of cancer, hematuria or even anything serious. But since i've monitored it from Friday and there isn't any more traces of it, i guessed it's a-ok and it's caused by the 24km run.

The next day, ie Saturday, i went for a short 60km bike from RMC to Bukit Unggul (midway between Bangi to Nilai) and back. Urine clear as it should be and i put to rest any worries. Yes, i was actually calculating if i had a kidney failure, the cost of dialysis and replacement of one kidney! With the current cash flow which seems to vegetate, that would be the last thing i hope i don't need to go through!

The 24km run did me some good. I was feeling rahter miserable in the afternoon about the job and my experience, i can't help it but felt that my experiences doesn't meant anything should i change job.

On Saturday, i went through the classified and did circle a few possible job that i could do and i could apply for. Unfortunately, most of them are out of Klang Valley (or KL/PJ to be exact). I'm not ready to be relocate somewhere should i get anohter job.

And just today, i went for yet anohter business opportunity talk. The person introduced herself through some friend and told me she was into some biometric scanners, so, i thought it might be worth checking them out, as i could do this part time.

Little did i know it was some MLM thingy, using some photovoltaic machine to measure the oxidation level in your body. Sad to say, i'm like the hardest person to convince, especially when health, supplement and diet/food intake is concerned, you need to be very knowledgeable to convince me when it comes to your vitamins, supplement and things like that, i could had say something, but i guess sometimes, it's better to just keep the mouth shut.

What made it worse is that i need to fork out some money to even start them. RM1.8k to be a franchise holder (or whatever that meant) or be a user at RM440 and subsequently, anyone that signed up under my name, i would get 10% or 5% respectively.

At this point of time, if i were to go to the ATM machine to withdraw money, i can't even do so as the minimum is RM50 at the bank i subscribe to. Granted i got RM300+RM100 from my blogging income thus far, but those are meant for groceries and household expenditure, which is slowly running out. It would not be long again when i have to pass the baton to wifey to ask her to settle the bills again.

Meanwhile, all i could do is to keep applying for jobs. and Swim. Bike. Run. Of course.