A day at Putrajaya 2

Yesterday at Putrajaya, desperate for more cycling mileage, went for a training ride at Putrajaya. Not a good day for me it seemed.

The moment I parked the car, realized I left the socks at home. OK fine, not really a big deal. After I struggled to remove the bike from the car's back seat, had a really disturbing stomach discomfort and really had to go. In went the bike again. Luckily lately I always park right in front of a public toilet for my rides.

Already getting late. Few minutes into the ride, noticed the cyclometer was acting up. My speed was over the place. From 30km/h to 19km/h to 31km/h to 22km/h to 33km/h over a few seconds. It just messed up my average speed and recorded distance. Damn it.

Less than 5 km into the ride, again, the dreaded puncture. It was the rear wheel (again). Stopped and removed the tyre using the tyre levers I just bought the day before. They worked like a charm and it was much easier than before. Every rider should have a pair!

Pedro's tyre levers

On goes a fresh inner tube, put on the tyres and try out my, also newly bought shiny & sleek Topeak pocket pump. Then I found out the valve stem was too short the pump can't lock on the valve! I was damned. A 5 km walk looked inevitable.

Luckily a group of young boys cycled past. They stopped to check me out. And to my luck, one of them had a long stemmed spare tube. Offered to buy it from him, but he refused. Just ask me to exchange with my short stemmed tube. About 5 minutes and a handshake later, thanked the group and made my move. BTW, the Topeak pump worked well and managed to pump higher pressure than my previous Zefal ASV. Very small in size, yet very efficient. The cyclometer then continued to act up and was so fed-up I removed it.

Topeak Micro Rocket ALT

But the string of incidences wrecked my motivation. After maybe 15-18 km or so decided to call it a day and retreated back to the parking lot.

A really bad day it was indeed.

10km @ 1:05

What a training run! That was on Saturday night, 4 laps around Titiwangsa. In streaming rain. It has been sometime I did that kind of time on a training run. Not just that, lap times were

17:27 - 16:44 - 16:01 and last lap, 14:56!!!

It was ages since I did a sub 15 minutes lap around Titiwangsa! Great run!

A day at Putrajaya

Last Sunday, went to Putrajaya again to cycle. Really desperate for cycling training nowadays. Was enjoying it. Weather was nice, my legs felt good, my cyclometer was working again. But right before reaching 20km, the dreaded puncture!

It was the rear tyre. And due to the cheap Panaracer tyre, it took me like 1/2 hour to change the tube. Wayyyy too long. If it was a race, the race would've been over already for me.

But I managed to change it anyway, not without very, very sore thumbs. Completed 47km averaging circa 31km/h, not bad considering the hilly terrain. Have to find solution for the problem. May need to buy new tyres or maybe re-tape the wheels.



Luckily the saving grace after that, discovered an Autocross event in Putrajaya. Spent another hour or so watching the event. Now I know where those small modified cars do their stuff. It's in Autocross event where big cars are not really suitable for. No wonder I seldom see them at Sepang track.

I took some video using my phone, but the quality was very bad, they're not worth to upload.

Training update - Powerman 09

Powerman Malaysia is less than a month away and my training is still in haywire.

Last week, only did a total of 18km of running. Shorter than the distance I have to do on race day! And then last Sunday, finally managed to drag myself out of bed and drive to Putrajaya to cycle. But the moment I reached Putrajaya, this awaits me:


Dark cloud all over. In the end, had to 1 1/2 hours before it started to slow down to a drizzle. But it was worth it. Have no idea of the distance since my cyclometer died. But covered quite a number of climbs.

Last week also bought this:




A new pair of running shoes since the last 2 years or so. It's a Nike Pegasus 25, to commemorate Pegasus' 25 years history.

BTW, a tip to buy running shoes, especially Nike. Never buy current year models. Last year, the shoe above was priced at RM349. But now, it's only RM210 after 40% discount. This is how I buy all my shoes. Always buy last years model, at steep discount. Not that there's a lot of improvement with the new model anyway.

Hopefully, the shoe will see the start line on 8 November!

Miscellaneous 1

From now on, there'll be more this type of posts since sometimes I have things to post, but just a bit too busy to do so. So I'll just compile things into short summaries

1. Raging earth
The rage continues. After Ketsana, Parma & Padang quake, Melor recently pounded Japan and a few more minor quakes rattled this part of the world. Pray to God that nothing really bad happens, like the 1999 tsunami. BTW, for those wondering why the name sounds Malay-ish, because it is. Search "typhoon name" to know it's given.

2. Astro = football channel?
Astro just been awarded rights to continue airing English Premier League for the next 3 years. And reportedly they're going to fork out 30% more than they originally expected. It's also reported that rights to EPL makes up 1/3 of all of Astro's content costs! Fine. But what I'm worried off is, they will then increase subscription price for their sports channel and that already happened this year.

Great for the footbal fans, but for me who normally watch anything OTHER than football, it's not going to be a good news. In the same sense, I love it during the football season break during which I can watch the more exotic sports event e.g. air race, downhill skiing, triathlon, log cutting (!), etc.. etc..

Astro, not every single male in Malaysia is an ardent footbal fan! I would rather watch Discovery than watch football.

The news: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/10/7/business/20091007131033&sec=business

3. Manager interview
Didn't get the post, but it didn't bother me much. I'm more or less happy with my job at the moment. Moving up will have it's pros, but it also have it's cons. I'll just KIV it to another year maybe.

Not your average Sunday - Sep 09

Again went to track on 27/9. A short entry just a record of what happened during the day.

Suspension geometry - camber front -2.0, rear -0.5 degrees. Zero toe all round

1st outing - car handled really badly on high tyre pressure

2nd outing - changed tyre pressure to front 250kPa, rear 220kPa hot. Almost zero grip. Was pressured by Edrin, driving Fahrein's car, like mad. In the end overshot T7 and went straight to the run off area. Car was oversteering. Edmund said it was like a rear wheel drive car. But at least I was containing the oversteers. DCCD at 2nd setting from below

3rd outing - reduced tyre pressure yet again. Still not good

4th outing - final pressure 240kPa front, 200kPa rear, hot. Best settings. DCCD at 3rd setting from bottom. Better control. Slight oversteer but bad understeer at T1. Best time was 2:48. But I went off at T13, straight into run-off area. Took it easy along the back straight, topping at 160-170km/h only instead of usual 200km/h. Took it easy again round T14 and the front straight, but still got 2:48!! I guess without the off, 2:45 or lower would be on the cards. But the session already ended.


Overall was happy. Car was better. Was also practising late corner entry which I picked up from an online forum. It worked really well around most corners in Sepang. Was really happy that I can manage to contain oversteer at many times. It gives me more confidence to go faster around corners.

Caca merba

1. Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir Batin
Hopefully it's still not too late to wish everybody Selamat Hari Raya & Maaf Zahir Batin

2. KL shook
On Wednesday, KL experienced the tremors from Sumatra earthquake. Not the first time for KL, but the first for me. I have read reports about building shaking, however never experienced myself. It was not that bad actually. Just slight vibrations in my chair, as if there's a lot of people running around. But it was still quite worrying, so immediately all of us left the building. Some people actually reported buildings swaying, how true is that, I'm not sure. It could be exaggerated.

3. Tsunami
My thoughts with Samoan tsunami victims. Just watched the movie tsunami the night before, then the next morning read in the news about the Samoan tsunami. So ironic. The movie itself? Not so worth watching. Too much love story and not enough real tsunami action. 60 minutes of love story and just 30 minutes of tsunami.

4. Typhoon in Philipines
The earth on this side of the world is on a rage at the moment it seems. Another destructive disaster in the vicinity. Again, my thoughts go with them