Well, having a wife with a bad cold and training through, it had to happen that I would come down with something.
I woke up on Thursday morning feeling not at all well, so I decided this should be my rest day with an option of a few more in the next few days.
Friday was not a lot better, but I had taken my clothes to work anticipating that I would run to work in the morning. Instead of a run I had a very easy ride. As easy as is possible while still negotiating the traffic between my home and work. Actually by lunch time I started to feel a bit better so I should be able to get some kms in over the weekend.
Given that my training hit a bit of a hole for a couple of days I have taken the opportunity of the down time to check through the details of the triathlon that is scheduled for 29th of September.
The excitement is building. I received an email from the Triathlon Association of Singapore (TAS) during the week to let me know that they have a new logo for this years event. I noted on the website that there is a notice that the Standard Distance Triathlon will be limited to 1000 places and this should be filled fairly quickly.
I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that a number of readers of this Blog are from UK and Europe. Perhaps some of you are even thinking of making the trip to Singapore for the triathlon in September. I strongly recommend, if you are planning on travelling to Singapore to participate in the Triathlon, or in any sporting event here, you give yourself plenty of time before the event to get used to difference in Time Zone. I recently returned from Europe and it took me fully 1 week to get my internal body clock synchronised so I felt I was getting good sleep during the night and was fully awake during the day. This was also the experience of the whole family.
What tends to happen when you travel from West to East (ie EU to Asia) and you shift your time zone about 8 to 12 hours in this direction is that you feel shattered. On the second night in the new time zone, you wake up, wide awake in the middle of the night, and there is almost no chance at all of going back to sleep. The effect is not so bad when you travel East to West.
Now there is a lot of advice on how to over come "Jet Lag" and I have tried many of them such as taking melatonin, ingesting sleeping pills doing meditation or simply staying awake for as long as possible during the day, even though you feel completely miserable, and then going to sleep only when it is dark, and they do not work nearly as well as giving your body sufficient time to adapt to the new time zone. I will set down my experience with each of these in turn.
Melatonin: Hmmm, not so sure about this one. I really don't think that this works for me any better than doing nothing.
Sleeping pills: The good thing about taking sleeping pills is that you do get some sleep, so you my not be completely exhausted for the first couple of days in the new time zone. But on the few occasions that I have used sleeping pills to get some sleep at night, I felt that they become less and less effective with each night that I used them and they did not seem to assist me with resynchronising my body clock. Eventually I stopped taking the tablet, and then... Bam, wide awake at night. So the net effect was really only to delay the timing of the sleepless night as opposed to easing my body into the new time zone.
Meditation: Well you can visualise yourself feeling all full of vip and vim, even if you don't truly feel it.
Staying awake all day to speed up the synchronisation of your body clock: Well, I do really feel miserable in the afternoon taking this approach, and certainly on the first night, when I am completely exhausted, I do sleep through. The effect of wakefulness really only then kicks in on the second night. You still feel rough for the first week in the new time zone. I do this, but I am not sure that there is any benefit to me resetting my body clock faster than it would otherwise adjust given no conscious change of sleeping pattern.
Now these are my experiences, so they may not, and probably don't apply universally. The point I am making is that there are ways of getting into a new time zone a little quicker, but they are not conducive to best performance. I note that the Australian swimming team have gone into camp in Manchester already, some 9 days before the commencement of the Olympics and I am sure that it is in part to overcome the effect that I am talking of here.
Granted, Singapore can be a slightly expensive place to stay and hang out in for a week, but if you are planning on travelling to Singapore in September and if you want to get in the tome zone a week early, there are inexpensive options for you to stay such as in Bintan, Indonesia or even somewhere such as Malacca in Malaysia.
I recently wrote about our recent family excursion to Bintan. You can read about this in one of my earlier Blogs "Away by Sea to Bintan". I will put together some information about Malacca in the near future so look out for this soon.
So today I rode very slowly from home to work and back. Total distance on the bike: 17.6 km.
Dinner of roast chicken with steamed vegetables and then to bed for rest and recovery.
I woke up on Thursday morning feeling not at all well, so I decided this should be my rest day with an option of a few more in the next few days.
Friday was not a lot better, but I had taken my clothes to work anticipating that I would run to work in the morning. Instead of a run I had a very easy ride. As easy as is possible while still negotiating the traffic between my home and work. Actually by lunch time I started to feel a bit better so I should be able to get some kms in over the weekend.
Given that my training hit a bit of a hole for a couple of days I have taken the opportunity of the down time to check through the details of the triathlon that is scheduled for 29th of September.
The excitement is building. I received an email from the Triathlon Association of Singapore (TAS) during the week to let me know that they have a new logo for this years event. I noted on the website that there is a notice that the Standard Distance Triathlon will be limited to 1000 places and this should be filled fairly quickly.
I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that a number of readers of this Blog are from UK and Europe. Perhaps some of you are even thinking of making the trip to Singapore for the triathlon in September. I strongly recommend, if you are planning on travelling to Singapore to participate in the Triathlon, or in any sporting event here, you give yourself plenty of time before the event to get used to difference in Time Zone. I recently returned from Europe and it took me fully 1 week to get my internal body clock synchronised so I felt I was getting good sleep during the night and was fully awake during the day. This was also the experience of the whole family.
What tends to happen when you travel from West to East (ie EU to Asia) and you shift your time zone about 8 to 12 hours in this direction is that you feel shattered. On the second night in the new time zone, you wake up, wide awake in the middle of the night, and there is almost no chance at all of going back to sleep. The effect is not so bad when you travel East to West.
Now there is a lot of advice on how to over come "Jet Lag" and I have tried many of them such as taking melatonin, ingesting sleeping pills doing meditation or simply staying awake for as long as possible during the day, even though you feel completely miserable, and then going to sleep only when it is dark, and they do not work nearly as well as giving your body sufficient time to adapt to the new time zone. I will set down my experience with each of these in turn.
Melatonin: Hmmm, not so sure about this one. I really don't think that this works for me any better than doing nothing.
Sleeping pills: The good thing about taking sleeping pills is that you do get some sleep, so you my not be completely exhausted for the first couple of days in the new time zone. But on the few occasions that I have used sleeping pills to get some sleep at night, I felt that they become less and less effective with each night that I used them and they did not seem to assist me with resynchronising my body clock. Eventually I stopped taking the tablet, and then... Bam, wide awake at night. So the net effect was really only to delay the timing of the sleepless night as opposed to easing my body into the new time zone.
Meditation: Well you can visualise yourself feeling all full of vip and vim, even if you don't truly feel it.
Staying awake all day to speed up the synchronisation of your body clock: Well, I do really feel miserable in the afternoon taking this approach, and certainly on the first night, when I am completely exhausted, I do sleep through. The effect of wakefulness really only then kicks in on the second night. You still feel rough for the first week in the new time zone. I do this, but I am not sure that there is any benefit to me resetting my body clock faster than it would otherwise adjust given no conscious change of sleeping pattern.
Now these are my experiences, so they may not, and probably don't apply universally. The point I am making is that there are ways of getting into a new time zone a little quicker, but they are not conducive to best performance. I note that the Australian swimming team have gone into camp in Manchester already, some 9 days before the commencement of the Olympics and I am sure that it is in part to overcome the effect that I am talking of here.
Granted, Singapore can be a slightly expensive place to stay and hang out in for a week, but if you are planning on travelling to Singapore in September and if you want to get in the tome zone a week early, there are inexpensive options for you to stay such as in Bintan, Indonesia or even somewhere such as Malacca in Malaysia.
I recently wrote about our recent family excursion to Bintan. You can read about this in one of my earlier Blogs "Away by Sea to Bintan". I will put together some information about Malacca in the near future so look out for this soon.
So today I rode very slowly from home to work and back. Total distance on the bike: 17.6 km.
Dinner of roast chicken with steamed vegetables and then to bed for rest and recovery.
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