I didn't care what the person said, I worked my ass up from the bottom. I switched from 100m to hurdles event instead with the guidance of my coach. We had a huge pool of athletes in my school, so we had the privilege to specialize in certain events. Afternoon trainings were from 4-6pm. We had afternoon trainings every Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at Westland School field. Tuesday and Thursday trainings are held back at school. Occasionally when there is competition round the corner, we even had trainings on Saturday and Sundays. I skip Friday trainings for another reason. Tell you why later. J Can you imagine staying under the hot sun from 3:30pm onwards? Looking back, I can't imagine how I went through all the 6 years under the hot sun and yet I couldn't stand the heat now!
Be it rain or shine, trainings will carry on. On rainy days, we were placed through strength training either in the gym or some other activities. So there is no running away. :) The intensity will be toned down during off-peak season and for those who are in Form 3 and Form 5, we were not required to come to training after State level competitions in order for us to concentrate on our studies. Everyone…and I meant everyone from my coach, to my seniors and even juniors were rooting for me in my first zone level competition to beat that person, I came SO close to beating her. Just a minor mistake in the last hurdle cost me victory. Although I won 2nd place, but the joy of winning wasn’t there. Sigh…my coach came looking for me, sat down with me, asked me what had happened out there. I felt that I had let him down and also let myself down for not giving my 110%. I let that be a reminder to me and carried on training hard everyday…till the point that there was once I had a massive huge patch of blue black on whole of my left calve, from the top till the bottom. It was a very awful sight to see. It took close to 1 month to fully recover. Besides that, having blue black marks on my right knee was a norm to me. As you can see, from the constant training and gym work, my bone structure changed and muscle build up, especially on my calves and arms. Well…that was the sacrifice that I had made in choosing my Athletic ‘career’. But I had no regrets on that. J Oh btw, did I mention to you before that my high school was very famous in sports? That was why we specially had this sports class where we studied in the morning and attended trainings in the afternoon. We were once known for being the power house in athletics, volleyball, netball, just to name a few. However, that is not the case anymore. From what I heard, after we left school and after the change of headmistress, the school sports standard dropped drastically coz the new headmistress only likes the students to excel in studies. Sob sob…
In my last 2 years of Athletics career, I changed my event from hurdles to pentathlon (五项全能). Heard of it before? It’s a 5 event event that takes place within 2 days – 100m hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, and 800m. Imagine the training I went through to correct my techniques….repeating them over and over again. All hard work paid off during my last year of high school and as the school captain that year, we managed to win back the champion school title which we marginally lost the previous year. That was so sweet! So, besides classes, most of my time during high school days was spent at Westland field and also over at Penang City Stadium or some times at USM stadium. My daily routine is pretty much mundane. Morning attend school, mum will come pick me up after school and I’ll have packed lunch in the car. Reach home, bath, try to finish up as much homework as possible, change, and then head off for training, come back home dinner, and then finish up homework, then sleep…and the cycle repeats again the next morning. Pretty mundane eh? To date, I still have the pair of spikes that I wear during high school days. I wanted to throw it away but my dad asked me to keep it.
As for badminton, I started playing I believe was in Standard 3/4 like that. When I was in Remove that year, dad sent me for trainings. So every Friday and Sundays were spent playing/training badminton at Bkt Dumber. There were a handful of female players only, so I mainly mix with the guys and train/play with them. J So I started training from remove right up till form 5. I carried on playing badminton when I was in college. Representing the faculty and also the college. Now working…also carry on playing badminton for the fun of it. Ai but then I’ve stopped for half a year d…rusty liao, no more stamina d. Surely whole body will ache with I start playing again next month. Need to get back in shape…..
