The 2011 Pesta Sukan Perbendaharaan was concluded recently, with my personal medal tally at 0-0-3.. 3 bronze medals from 4 events. That means I failed to medal only in 1 of the event that I signed for. How does that compare to my performance last year, with 1 gold medal ?
Javelin
I kicked off my PSP2011 campaign with the javelin. I was the defending champion of course. I felt that I've made significant progress since then. Unfortunately, I wasn't happy with my performance in the javelin, I got 3rd with 33.15m, which was shorter than my gold-medal winning throw last year of 35m. But the winner threw a 36m & the 2nd-placed thrower had a 33.80m. But the difference between us could've been a mere 1mm & still that would've separated between gold, silver & bronze. What went wrong ?
For starters, out of 6 regulations throws, I only managed to register 1 good throw, that was my 33.15m. The rest was either fouled or purposely fouled by me, due to lousy distance. But I wasn't happy with that. Last year all my regulation throws was over 30m. I think that had to do with my technique. If I wanna maintain this event as my pet event, I gotta train more, get a coach to correct my technique or something.
U see, in javelin I was considered the favorite, even before the PSP started. I'd bought a javelin spike before PSKK last year, & my warm-up routine would send shivers down my opponents necks... half the battle was won before the event started.. it was me who failed to live up to their expectations. Shame on me. I also felt my body, even though it was stronger than last year, wasn't strong enuff. There was no power. Maybe the reason was that my weight program didn't really included power exercises. I did do some power-specific workouts about 2 weeks before, but it wasn't enuff. It was even more evident during the discus event. I'll come to that later.
This is what I wanna do next year. I'ma use my contacts at MSN & SSBJ to find a javelin coach. I just need the coach to tell me whts wrong with my technique & form so tht I could fix it. I wanna do javelin-specific training at least 2 months before & I wanna throw farther than 45m. That's a big ask. But I wanna do it. I must do it.
Medley
This is one event that I didn't even expect to run. Even Pengurusan wasn't supposed to run it becoz we couldn't find anybody to run it. We managed to put together a team out of nothing & we had to ask permission from managers of the rest of the team becoz we didn't register. I think they thought our team was just making up the numbers. I also thought the same. In fact, I was thinking to run in my jeans even..
Then Diana made a great start & managed to pass the baton to En Wahid in 3rd position.. En Wahid surprisingly managed to hold 3rd, but the gap was growing. Then Hazizi was further left behind & the 4th placed runner was making up ground. I received the baton & ran the last leg of 400m. I've never run 400m before. I just ran as fast as I could on the bend when the other 2 runners was already entering the back straight. Surprisingly I felt really fine & I was able to hold my speed & saw that I was gaining ground on them & was increasing the gap on the 4th placed runner. I managed to enter the home stretch & increased my speed even further, but failed to catch the front runners. If there was another lap I would've been able to catch & even passed them.. I was very sure of that, judging on my speed & my ability to hold that speed.
That event was an eye opener of sorts for me. I had the speed & the endurance to run 400m at a competitive time. I might do that event next year, I was confident enuff to think that I can even run the 400m relay.
10,000m
I had to skip this event last year due to a calf injury. During my absence last year, a guy from Keselamatan got 2nd with a pretty good time of 54++. Before the event I wasn't sure how I'd do.. at the previous week's Larian Bomba I managed to do 58 mins over almost 11km. So I was confident I repeat that in the track. There was one issue : the discus event will be held about 2hrs right after the 10k. So that would put me in a difficulty. Discus was a new event for me.
There was only 7 ppl in the starting lineup. Only 4 looked like runners. There was a new threat, Kimi from Housing. I knew he played football & he has good built of a distance runner. Afri from Keselamatan was also there & of course the defending champion Amri was ever-present. I've always said that in this event we're only fighting for 2nd place.
We started off late, at 8am. My goal for this event was just to improve on my previous best, I ran a 59mins in 2009, the 1st time I did this event. I followed Amri as long as I could & lasted 3 laps behind him before I decided to peel off. Kimi was able to stay almost halfway before Amri decided to up the pace. I couldn't find Afri until he went past me at maybe lap 10. I kept him within striking distance.
At one point I felt like quitting so that I could conserve my enery for the discus. But with 7-8 laps Afri was slowing down considerably & I was right behind him. I was thinking whether I shud just stay behind him until about 2-3 laps to go before going past him. But I could see that he was really losing speed so I surged past him with 5 laps to go. I wasn't sure if I could maintain the pace all the way to the finish, so I just kept on pressing. After a while I could no longer here anybody close to me from behind, I crossed the line at 3rd with a new personal best of 54:50.03. That gave me my 3rd & last medal of PSP2011.
Discus
I've never did the discus in my life. But I've always imagined throwing the discus & I felt that I was able to do the event quite well. During training I never did get a grasp on the discus technique, it was far more complicated than it seemed. Nevertheless, becoz I've committed myself to the event, I went on with it.
The event was just after I completed my 10K, less than a couple of hours. I had prepared for this as soon as I saw the schedule, so I made 2 bottles of Endurox instead of the usual 1. But my strength never did came back & I did only 1 throw of over 20m. The rest was rubbish. & the winner got something like 25m. I knew I was already out of it, so I skipped the last throw. I guess that was gonna be my very last throw indeed.
Choices....
I really need to make some serious choices. I'm doing 4 events of a completely different nature. I need to lighten up for the 10K, but if I was too light then I couldn't generate enuff power for the throwing events. But I really have some bulking up to do. This PSP also served as an eye opener that I could actually do middle distance events quite well, the 400, 800 & maybe the mile. I guess I'ma need to do more gym & field work at least 6 weeks before the actual event. & I'm gonna drop the discus event, there's no point competing just to make up the numbers. I'ma try more events next year, insya Allah.
Until then, Livestrong.
