Entering 2014

 I have changed my blog layout. It is cleaner & simpler than before. I kinda hated its previous cluttered look. I had looked into some e-books & other running blogs to get the feeling of the better design. I'm not gonna say it is the best since blogger does have some limitation compared to wordpress - but I can live with the design for the year. Right now I even have some tabs on the top categorizes some of my posts.

Entering the new year does excite me a bit. My annual leave have been reset back & it will only be another 6 months before my company enter a new financial year (that's mean new raise & bonus. Yay!). Johor is working as usual on the first day of the year, so we're not really into any celebrations like the other states, with some of the celebration in Dataran Merdeka involves 'berGuling-guling' on the road (pun intended).

As it is, retrospectively from the 2013 experience I have laid out some plan for myself for this year:

The Runs for 2014.

After running for 10km events for 2 years, I decided to upgrade myself to the distance more than 10km but less than 17km. This will make my running schedule less hectic since the number of runs in this category is less.

The number of runs that I'll plan to run this year will be around 5-6 events. After running 10 events for 2 years in a row, I have accumulated enough medals to hand on to my wall. Right now, I'm looking into the quality instead of quantity of the medals that I'll earn.

For right now, I didn't enroll in any runs in 2014 yet. Up until March, I'll practice to condition my legs & stamina to be able to run father than 10km. I had changed my usual running distance from 3km to 5km for a change. I also need to look after my legs in this year after taking some beatings in 2013. Some of the running circuit will not be in my plan such as the Pekeliling Tunku Abdul Rahman because of its hilly area.

I have laid out some events that I plan to join this year. Since most of the event is based on 2013 events, some of it I put in KIV in place. If it is go as planned, I might running in Singapore for the KOTR circuit. Exciting times ahead!

Books & Travels

I didn't read very much in 2013. Out of my target of reading 12 books, I only managed 4. This year I should try harder. Maybe adding the book list to this blog will help my determination to read. I'm not giving any excuses, but it is just so hard with all the work stress.

Traveling will be a point of my focus in 2014. Maybe we will go to some of the places in nearby for starters. Maybe I'll also bring Lia & Haziq together when I go to the running events. But instead of planning & a lot of controlling in my part, I'll just let it loose this year. I found that traveling was taxing me out because I want to control a lot. I'll give the planning part to Lia this year while I'll just worry about the money.

Writing

After writing for a year in my own blog, here is what I found out. Writing is a hard thing to do. I don't know how some of the blog writers such as Outsyed the Box do it all the time (and he writes long posts too).

I always have some ideas that I want to write. Sometimes during my runs, watching the tv or sitting alone, ideas keeps popping up. The problem is to put down those ideas into words. I found that I write best late in the night when everything around you is quite & my mind goes sharp. But I need to work the next day, so the only time that managed to do that was at the weekends.

Another issue that I had was mobility. Since all of the post I had done on my PC, it was hard to jot down the ideas during moving around. I had bought a cheapo tablet for that purpose so that I'll not miss on the opportunity to write when the idea strike.

Inch by Inch 

When I first started the blog, I didn't expect that the my readers will be a lot. No I lied! I do hope everyone in my FB list will read it when I posted in my FB! But that didn't happens. The reality most of my early readers were the people that are really close to me such as Ibal my brother.

After that most of my posts targeted to my small circle of readers. So that's why when I met someone that read my blog, I went:

"What? Really? You read my blog? Wow"

Erm, maybe that is why I noticed that the some of the posts have reached triple digits on the counts of readers clicked into them. I can't really gage how large my circle of readers but I got into a nice surprise when I met my cousin Ika during the last weekend.

We all gathered in Ibal's house in KL Saturday's evening. During the dinner suddenly Ika told me that she forgot to be furious to me because one of my blog post (imagine that - marah pun boleh lupa?)

Caught by surprise, of course I asked her to explain. According to her, I had tagged her in FB regarding one of my post - Oren Sport Run back in September. In the post, I had chided her because she bailed out from the run. It was mostly what we cousins always do - some rough banters among ourselves.

What happen next was totally out of my expectation. Ika's office mate caught the link to the post & read the whole thing. After that for some time, Ika had been teased a lot among her colleague. Everyone read that post. They even printed the blog post & hang it on the noticeboard. The last thing really cracks me up that night. Even when I retold the story to Lia & Rosman, they couldn't contained the laughter.

Well, I never meant it to be that way actually. First of all, I think Ika got the message loud & clear. Keep to your promise. But I also owe her an apology. I didn't really meant for her to be teased even though in my opinion she must be really popular in her office to be teased like that. If that were to happen to me, this is what I'll probably get:

Semua Selamat

I guess everyone wishes that this year will be better than the rough year of 2013.

I wish everyone the best for 2014 while the brave, perfectionist Metal Rooster in me crows.

Cockokokoooooo!!!!!!