Culmination of Marathon Training

Today marks the apex of my marathon training. London Marathon is 3 weeks from today.

I decided to do a full marathon even though I was slated to run 35km only.

Coincidentally Bettina organised a lunch with a few of us in London. She was enroute to Dublin from Malaysia.

If I ran lesser than I was supposed to, I wouldn't fulfill the mileage for the week. I didn't want to do it again next week. Mileage should taper off 3 weeks prior to the race.

If I didn't turn up for the lunch, I wouldn't meet Bettina for a very long time from now. I was torn between two events.

I decided to do both. I started my run at 11am. I gave myself 4 hours to finish the run. I promised to meet them by 3pm. I have planned to end my run at the restaurant.

When I reached Gloucester Place where I thought the lunch was, I was at the wrong place! I meant to meet them in Gloucester Road and not Gloucester Place! Both places though sounded alike, were 5km apart!

Finally I met my friends at the Royal Albert Hall area. I was able to bid farewell to Bettina before she left 10mins later.

I was really cutting it thin this time. I would have died had I ran any further. I was too exhausted, dehydrated and anxious. The powergel I took earlier was not meant to last me the extra miles. I nearly hit the wall.

Now I am not surprised why I felt my stamina was thinning away. I was mapping my run awhile ago and found that I have "accidentally" overshot the distance I meant to run by 4.5km! I have completed 46.75km. Time was 4 hours 32mins.

Losing sleep

I have been sleeping at 2am for the past three days because I had some dealings that need settling in Malaysia.

Yesterday I promised myself to make a little improvement by sleeping at 1am latest.

When the clock struck 1am, I started winding down and completed the final sentence in my email. Then the clock turned to 2.01am.

Drat! I forgotten it was the beginning of British Summer Time. The clocks go forward an hour on the last Sunday of March. Always remember that "spring forward, fall back".

Life is unfair. I am just destined to sleep at 2am no matter how hard I try!

Engineers

"Engineers are taken for granted in the society because we are too good in what we're doing. Everything has worked too well and it is now expected of us to always deliver the same."

This was the honest response from the President of Engineers Ireland to a Q&A last month when somebody in the audience asked about the status of engineers in the society.

This was echoed by a member of our work assignment group in one of the fortnightly meet ups that I attend.

Initially I felt it was a bold statement. I have been thinking about the statement ever since it has been uttered twice. But after a while, I am more convinced that it couldn't be more real.

Living nearby the London Eye, I have the opportunity to admire the magnificent steel structure everyday as I leave and return home. I have seen the wheel in different weather conditions - dry, blustery, wet, snow, hail, etc. It has stood well in those conditions.


I am so used to it that I don't notice it anymore but whenever I see it, I tend to ask myself if the wheel will ever topple over to the Thames. As I let my imagination run wild thinking about the worst case scenario - passengers falling out of the capsules and into the river - I know the likelihood of that happening is next to nil.

Why? Because engineering does not allow that to happen from the beginning!

Unlike banking, engineering failures will cause lives. A slight flaw in precision engineering like aviation will obliterate lives in hundreds in an instant. An oversight in the chemical content of our food will kill within days. A miscalculation in structural design will bury occupants alive in a pile of rubble.

Engineering technology is so established that it is now expected that things will and should be like that. But no one appreciates that.

The President continued, "Post-WW2 engineering was seen as a great profession. People looked up to engineers because they were rebuilding the nation. If you go to Iraq or other developing countries today, engineers are still very much respected. And that was how we were then."

One may argue that we are all economic migrants. People move to where the money is. Clearly if this is happening to engineering, there isn't enough money in the profession.

I am a half believer and half doubter in this.

There are professions that do not pay as well as bankers but still regarded as "sexy" by the society, for example, a pilot. In this case, I don't think salary is an important yardstick but career package is.

Really, with airfares going dirt cheap nowadays, I don't know why are pilots still more respectable than a bus driver. It's £1 to take a bus and 99p to fly to Spain. Now you tell me.

But I believe we can do more with engineers' compensation for the work they are expected to do and risks they have to undertake. If we want to attract and retain the best people in the industry, we have to be able to pay for talents.

In engineering, there isn't a moment we can put safety as an option. Unlike banking, there isn't an opportunity for us to come out with a multi-billion project, collapse it and expect the government to put money and bail us out for our mistakes.

With the high ethics in the engineering profession, there isn't a moment we can say, "just because we can build it safely, doesn't mean we should".

There's only one way for us - we must!

Dark spot in marathon training

I threw in the towel after the 24th km mark today. I meant to go 30km. There is a lesson to learn for being an idiot.

The wise learn from their mistakes; fools repeat them. Am not sure which am I. After 7 marathons, I should know better. But this is a new mistake, so I hope to learn from it.

I took a new route after receiving the London Marathon registration pack. In it was the race route. So I decided to run part of it today.

The marathon route - 1st 6 miles

What I didn't foresee was the distance that would be exceeded by doing this route. This means doing the extra miles without water, powergel, and isotonic drink until I reached home. I have used my house as a water/fuel station since the previous runs. But the extra came out to be 5km!

This worked out to be 15km in total without water or fuel into the body. No wonder I was knackered and anxious when I reached the Tower Bridge. The weather was great and the sun was strong. This further exacerbated the dehydration of the body.

I pushed on for another km and thought "enough is enough". I stopped and reduced to just walking. The watch registered 2hr 12mins.

I was at London Bridge and took a bus back to "base".



Training for a marathon is not only about building the mileage in time for the race. Today I have learned that it is also about listening to the body and learning what crap it can or cannot take. There are limits in all of us and each of us is different.

For me, the lesson is, never underestimate the consumption of water and gel during run. Two, is that 24km is my limit before the tank runs empty.

When an A is not good enough, Cambridge Up-Grades

13 years ago one of my classmates, Ken, applied to read Physics at Cambridge University. As with all undergraduate admissions, there was an interview.

According to him, the interview was a little "violent". A panel of interviewers introduced themselves. One of the interviewers showed him two glasses.

He threw one on the floor. The impact smashed the glass to smithereens. The interviewer then asked him to use whatever Physics knowledge he had to calculate the number of shattered pieces on the floor.

The interviewers left the room and said they will return in 20 minutes.

There was a caliper, a ruler, few pieces of working papers, an eraser and a pencil on the table. The second glass was left for him to measure.

He scribbled a few equations on the paper. 5 minutes passed, he knew he was not going to solve the question no matter what equations he applied.

He waited for the time to pass. He was either too confident to come out with an answer or too nervous to come out with anything!

20 minutes passed. The interviewers returned to the room and asked for an answer. They offered more time. He declined politely.

"So, how many pieces?" one of the interviewers asked.

Ken took the second glass and smashed it on the floor. He said, "The same as this."

Ken won a place in Cambridge and read Physics. The last I checked, he is working around here.

This story has always reminded me of the quality Cambridge is seeking from prospective undergraduates. Apart from a string of As, candidates have to have the X-factor.

To be shortlisted, the minimum entry level was AAA in A-levels.

This week, the university announced a new entry level - A*AA.

In an economic situation like this, many universities would have desperately loosened entry levels to encourage more students especially those from overseas to take up places in their institutions. Many universities are fighting for a decreasing pool of overseas students this year.

Mindful of this, you certainly need the balls to do the opposite. Sorry, I mean stars.