Morning of the PCC Ride, I woke up with butterflies in my tummy. Nervous because it’s been awhile since my last epic ride, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive this ride.

Woke up groggy from the lack of sleep, but it helped that we had a pre-ride routine:
- Get changed, fill hydration pack with bottled water, pack our toolkit, spare tubes, happy food, power gels, hydration salts, grab bike, helmut, gloves and we’re good to go.

We loaded the cars, had a quick carbo-loading breakfast at a near by coffee shop, then proceeded towards the University of Nottingham KL campus assembly point. Once we reached the school grounds, we unloaded and cable tied our ride passports to our bikes.

All registered participants are given a ride passport to collect stickers at every checkpoint.My goal was to get all 4 stickers!

The route was split into 4 stages combined to give you 65km of riding. Here’s the trail explained on the PCC website.

Stage 1 is a fast and flowing pure cross-country route with very few technical sections. It could be considered an easy ‘warm up’ even though it’s 21km! 70% canopied and no big hills.

Riders are advised to pace themselves well for Stage 2 (19km) where you’ll put your ‘warmed up’ muscles to good use. Again, very few technical sections, 1 river crossing and 70% canopied trails. Get prepared for the big-ish hill climb. The rest of the stage has rolling hills.

The best part about check point 2 was the chilled watermelon the organisers had arranged for riders. That was very much welcomed and appreciated! When your body is that exhausted and dehydrated, whatever you eat just tastes so much better. At that moment, you’re going “OMG this is the BEST watermelon in the world, the bananas taste so good!”. But I bet at any other given time, it would just taste blah.

Oh and forget about hygiene, because by that point, you don’t really care. You’d grab the watermelon with your glove, proceed to chomp it down, dripping juices all over yourself and when you’re done, wipe the excess bits off your face with your dirty sweaty cycling shirt.

Stage 3 is short at only 10km but that’s because there are not that many flat sections so it includes some short hill climbs and fun technical descents.

Stage 4 is the best with 16km of estate tracks, plantations, single tracks, flats, climbs and more climbs and a grand finale descent back to the Finish.

This year’s ride was especially taxing for me, but I’m glad to have finished it. I was absolutely spent, and was just looking forward to a nice hot shower and a big lunch.

In summary: Fantastic cross country trails, although I would have preferred more flowy downhills. Race was well organised as usual, but a shame it started to rain before the lucky draw started, we all left to avoid getting totally drenched.

On a side note, it was lovely to meet some Malaysian riders who have been following this blog *waves*.
From left to right: Nik, Max, Eric, Yew Weng, Chee Han, Wayne, Chi, Ling, Angela, Leon

After a wanton mee and chee cheong fun, we were all set for what seemed to be, a very long drive home.

Thanks to the PCC guys for organising the ride.

Next epic ride: Penang Jamboree 2009… Who’s going?

First big ride for 2009 was the PCC Presidential Ride in Kajang Kuala Lumpur. Judging from the number of mountain biking posts this year, you can tell how LITTLE I’ve hit the trails. I guess it was the culmination of the break up, lack of motivation and no partner to cycle with. So the PCC ride this year was a little tough mentally and physically.

We all drove up on Saturday morning for the Sunday ride. Thanks to Nik for carpooling and giving me and my bike a ride up to KL. The convoy of 4 cars took about 4 hours from Singapore to KL.

We reached the hotel early afternoon, which meant we had the rest of the day to kill. Hmmm… what to do, what to do…. We went into KL Central, and decided to get a massage! OMG, that massage was the worse massage I’ve had in my entire life! It was rubbish. The masseuse clearly had no idea what she was doing, i felt completely physically abused. Let’s just say there was a lot of hair tugging and back slapping!

We ended the night with a seafood/zhi char dinner before heading home for an early night. I know it’s not terribly exciting, but I just needed to pen this down, so I’d remember what we did.

Read more about the ride in the next post.

I just blogged about this song a few days ago here, and I’m so happy to find out this evening that Airto did a cover of this fantastic track. My favourite YouTube star singing my favourite song.

You heard it here first.

From my favourite American Idol Season 7.

I must watch this movie………..

*update
I feel like watching it tonight… I want to know how it ends!?!

*update 2
Damn, opening 8th October.

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. This post modern love story is never what we expect it to be its thorny yet exhilarating, funny and sad, a twisted journey of highs and lows that doesn’t quite go where we think it will. When Tom, a hapless greeting card copywriter and hopeless romantic, is blindsided after his girlfriend Summer dumps him, he shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days “together” to try to figure out where things went wrong. His reflections ultimately lead him to finally rediscover his true passions in life.

So daddy is back on F1 duties this year as Chief Secretariat. This time, the whole family was given free tickets to the Grandprix. Initially, we were told they were walkabout tickets. Then it got changed to Grandstand Marina Bay seats. WOOT! Can I just say, I’m just so darn proud of my daddy, at 64 he is still keeping active and pursuing his interests and passions.

With 4 tickets for all three days, we were thinking of splitting it up so we can bring friends and visiting relatives as well. Finals would be a family affair.

I had 2 tickets for myself for qualifying night, and none of my friends can make it! That’s too bad…… because…. they got changed again to Pit Grandstand!

Shame I have no one to share it with

Read about my behind-the-scenes tour here at last year’s inaugural Singapore F1 Grandprix.

A good friend took this picture awhile back. Was browsing through my photo album yesterday and it made me smile. Simple execution, positive results.

So…. what’s everyone doing this F1 weekend?

This is another favourite for more than year now.

I live my life by this song.

Discovered this place back in July, which means this post has been sitting in my drafts for 2 months!

It was lunch time and me and my colleagues were keen to try this new burger joint we’ve been hearing about.

When we got there, we had three dining options:
1. Sit inside Bergs where you’ll SMELL like a burger because of bad ventilation

2. Stand at the table by the cashier, still SMELL like a burger, but at least you’re burning a few more calories standing.

3. Wait around and swoop in on the next available table outside Bergs where the air is a lot more pleasant!

I think straight away, this puts me off! No where to sit and poor poor ventilation? I understand they want an open concept kitchen, but I think execution failed in this case.

*Recommendation: Perhaps they should glass up the kitchen area. That way, yes, we can see you cooking our amazing burgers, but we won’t have to smell like one. Also, they probably need a more powerful exhaust,work-safety hazard breathing in all that yummy smokey goodness

Based on their website, they prepare their burgers from scratch, in-house. Everything from the patties to the sauces and marinades. They have also tried to asian-ize their menu with ingredients like mango chutney, chilli ginger and coriander.

We all ordered the:
THE BERG WITH CHEESE
Prime Beef Pattie, Lettuce, Tomato, Red Onion, Aioli & Bergs Sauce and your choice of Swiss, Brie or Edam cheese (I had the Brie)
Price: $9.00

Verdict: Absolutely delicious. But I strongly advise against it if you’ve got a meeting afterwards, there is a generous amount of garlic in the aioli Also, Bergs Burger burps tastes really strong! Bleh..

Bergs Gourmet Burgers
137 Amoy Street
#01-01 Far East Square
Tel: 6438 6505
http://www.bergsburgers.com/

Tune of the Week: Kings of Leon – Use Somebody
Just sharing a song I’ve had on repeat lately.

Here’s a great acoustic version done by Pixie Lott

Bali 2009

I discovered this gem of a singer a few months back when I heard her on YouTube. Her music style was very much like Jack Johnson; mellow, acoustic, slightly melancholic together with a unique jazz-like vocals. Only after doing a bit more research did I find out she was signed on with monotone/Brushfire Records, the latter owned by Jack.

Was lucky to score an invite to last night’s gig at Timbre@Art House for her showcase organised by 98.7fm (Thanks Vanessa!) Was still feeling ill but this was too good to miss! Definitely not disappointing at all, she sounded great live. I had the pleasure of meeting her as well after the gig, and I have to say, she is the sweetest thing! I wish her all the success.

Here are my two of my favourite songs below. Others I like are: “First of the Gang and Bitterheart”

Oh btw, sorry for the hiatus. Be prepared to be to be inundated with random blog posts, food reviews and pictures in the next week!

One afternoon, I made my way down to The Cathay at Orchard to get myself some shirts from the Taylormade golf shop. (On a side note, did you know that Taylormade is under the adidas brand? That’s why you’d see adidas attire in their shops.)

Anyway, I was tempted and decided to just browse through the new collections at the adidas store next door. Then… this baby caught my eye, and I was in love.

It encompassed everything I love: adidas, cycling and a fantastic price tag. Carrying the message “Watch out for bikes” just made it extra special.

Sold!

Not sure if there’s any stock left, but you can try finding it from the shop I bought it from

adidas
The Cathay
2 Handy Road
#02-06/07
Singapore 229233