Powerman

My finishers medal says "Run Bike Run" but it was "Run Bike Walk" for me! Anyway it was good fun and I got to enjoy riding my Planet X for 64km and the totally dry conditions means I hardly even have to wash it!

This was my most sociable race this year. I did a slow but very comfortable first 11km run, towards the middle of which Arif and Ishsal caught and joined me.

With Arif on the first run.

As Arif and I exited the stadium for the 2nd lap, the Pro's were finishing their run! On Lap 2 the imcyclist gang joined us. I then dropped behind them by 1-200m going into T1, giving me a bit of catching-up to do on the bike.

On the bike I was able to enjoy continuously overtaking the faster runners from the first leg, and eventually made it to some of my targets.......Mr Shazly Orbea and........Arif Cervelo. Was looking quite good on the bike... almost exactly 30:00 for each of the first 2 x 16km sections.

Arif (& Laif) and I exchanged places a few times before Edwin caught us early into the second loop. I managed to catch and pass Powergirl Karen, but expected her to return the favour on the final run. Riding the noisiest bike in the World (rear disc wheel), Edwin offered me some encouragement and riding tips, but I rode a bit beyond my preferred pace and by the final u-turn at 48km my legs had gone, my neck and shoulders didn't want to go aero anymore.

Then...room-mate and up-and-coming riding superstar Adeline, astride her Prince, overtook me. A few minutes later, man-machine and baby-faced race-leader Joerie Vansteelant whizzed passed me. Some 20 minutes later, 2nd place hadn't passed me, so JoVan must have had a healthy lead by that point. I'm glad he only caught me after I passed the ride halfway point as I get depressed if they go more than double my speed! By the I made it to the end of the ride, losing 4-5mins on the final 20km, with Shazly and Arif behind, but not very far I thought.

T2 - my most relaxed transition ever! ...and Arif sneaks in front of me on the way out! The race is on!!!

Into T2

I didn't drink enough on the bike.

Costume change #2.

All set...but wait a minute...who's that sneaking up behind me!?

This is where the walking bit starts........I ran for a few minutes then needed to walk. I enjoyed the walking so much I did it on and off for the next 1:30! Arif and I were swapping places again, and sure enough Karen cruised by as expected. Edwin was close by too. I spotted Raymond_HKK suffering with cramps by the roadside...he didn't look very happy! Into the second lap Shazly caught up and ended up too far away to be caught, but we eventually caught sight of Bernard and Edwin.

The usual 1km-to-go feeling arrived and I managed a final burst of running to finish in 4:40, 10 minutes outside my target. Also 15 minutes too late to avoid owing Simon a beer. But considering my >300km of riding and 14hrs of training that week and that I'm not supposed to be "racing" at the moment, I wasn't bothered.

Another finish.

Happy it's over!

I enjoyed the race a lot, especially chatting with friends on the runs, mini "battles" on the road etc...

Run (10.4k) - 1:04:19 (6:11/km)
T1 - 2:26
Bike (63.1k) - 2:04:07 (30.52kph)
T2 - 2:48
Run (10.1k) - 1:26:26 (8:34/km)
TOTAL - 4:40:06

A MASSIVE thanks again to Tey and Ivie for the photos!

RIP Benny

Benny Vansteelant (r) after winning Powerman Malaysia 2006

13-time World Champion Benny Vansteelant died Friday morning in a Belgian hospital after suffering a reported seizure. The 30-year-old Belgian's heart stopped between 5:30AM and 6:00AM after doctors attempted for 30 minutes to revive him.

Vansteelant was hospitalised last Saturday after he collided with a car on a training bike ride in the Flemish town of Hooglede-Gits.

He was rushed to a hospital in Roeselare, West Flanders, where he remained in intensive care until Thursday afternoon. Doctors were unsure he would return to his world-class form but were confident he would survive his injuries and make a full recovery.

Thursday afternoon he was moved out of the hospital's intensive care unit and the hospital said in a statement "the patient had a quiet night".

Vansteelant was the most dominant duathlete of all-time, winning in both short and long course formats. He is survived by his family, including rising star duathlete Joerie, Benny's younger brother.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

...to rest and think of a nice relaxing Ramadan...the Powerman website is updated with details of this years race on Nov 11th.

It's on the Sunday, it's 11-64-10km, and it's in the morning!

See you in Lumut!

Oakley City Duathlon Race Report

Pre-race:

After a fairly poor nights sleep (as usual before a race) i woke at 5.45am. My two main tasks were to...eat and drink a bit of brekkie and plaster myself with suncream. I did also put on some clothes, and headed out complete with bike and rucksack at 6.05am. 50 minutes and 20km later I arrived at the start with an hour to spare.

It was a clear and warm morning. This is the transition area, with the Singapore Flyer (to the left) and an amazing field of cranes and piling rigs at the site of the soon-to-be Sands Casino (on the right). I have never seen a site like that before!

I spent some time setting up my transition spot...

.. and studying the rather complicated in/out routes...

I made sure I knew where my bike was and taped a couple of Hammer Gels to my top tube. All sorted. I bumped into Shahrom and Ah Wei, and saw Cort Prois (2nd in recent PCC Time Trial) and his wife Sandy. The queue for the toilets was long...

...so I decided not to bother and went for a 5-10min easy jog warm up. Was feeling quite relaxed and raring to go!

10km Run:

The first thing to report is that my HRM went crazy after only a few minutes and kept automatically stopping - this was extremely annoying so I began to lose track of my time for the run. Eventually I gave up re-starting it. The first 15mins of the run were great - quite fast - and I was feeling pretty good. We had to do 2 x 5km loops across Esplanade bridge, along the river, then back across along Boat Quay. When I finished the first loop the timer at the finish line was on 31mins+ so I was already 1min behing schedule. After another 10 minutes I began to feel a pain in my upper abdomen, under my ribs. Not a stitch, but possibly my diaphragm. Anyway it became quite bad and I had to stop and walk for a while. This might have been due to my fast start. I started running again but quite slowly to keep the pain at bay. I was sure that it would go away for the bike ride. As I finished the ride I was pleasantly surprised that the finish timer was only on 1h02m+, so I was only 2 mins down.

T1:

1 x gulp of water, 1 x gulp of H2O energy drink. I jogged out with my bike but lots of others were walking. Abdomen pain gone - I always stop for a few secs in transition to concentrate on breathing and tell myself to relax.

41km Ride:

I soon got into my stride on the bike and managed to keep pushing on the big ring in 11th gear, a pace that I felt I could maintain for 4 x 10km laps. My legs were spinning nicely and I thought my speed was good, perhaps a shade over 30kph. Early on in the ride I wolfed down a Banana Hammer Gel - a truly disgusting experience I must say! The taste was awful!

The course was as flat as a pancake with a couple of tiny bumps. This was great as it meant that I only needed to change gear once a lap and for the first time ever I managed to stay in the aero position for almost the entire leg. My bar position was fine and my legs were good.

This was a great ride. Apart from a few leading men lapping me, hardly anyone passed me and I was cruising past people continuously - a great feeling! That feeling is even better when passing people with expensive carbon aero frames and aero wheels!

There were some tight corners towards the end of each lap and it was a good buzz whizzing around them with other riders around me - like being in a proper bike race! On one corner the guy in front of me took the inside line but swept very wide on the exit and I had to slow down. I instinctively tutted in annoyance and he said "Sorry!" - I also said sorry as losing 0.2sec of time shouldn't really bother me.

In the 2nd or 3rd lap Shahrom overtook me and shouted some words of support - at that time I thought he was in the top few places, possibly behind Dan Plews.

I managed to keep up my pace into the 4th lap but took it a bit easy in the last 1km to prepare for the final 5km run. I was beginning to feel my quads tire a bit by then. Time for another horrible-tasting Gel.


Having lovingly studied the HRM readings for the ride I've worked out my lap times as...

Lap 1 - 10.7km in 20:15
Lap 2 - 10.0km in 18:30
Lap 3 - 10.0km in 18:40
Lap 4 - 10.7km in 20:50
TOTAL - 41.4km in 1:18:15 @ 31.44kph - WOW!

T2:

Shoes off, helmet off, other shoes on, turn race number to front, hat on. Legs feeling OK jogging out of transition. Thats it!

5km Run:

As I left transition the finish timer showed 2h28m so I knew I'd gained a fair bit of time on the bike and had 32minutes to do 5km - no problem on its own but a bit more difficult on top of 2.5hrs of racing!

By the time I'd done 500m I'd passed about 3 guys who'd stopped due to leg cramps. My legs felt odd as they always do at this stage, with my quads threatening to cramp-up. However I'm beginning to know my legs better now in these conditions and as I hoped, they'd settled down into run-mode after 5-10mins.

But now I was tired, and it was hot. After only 1.5km I really struggled to keep going and ended up walking a few times. I was sure I'd miss my target, but still managed to run the last 1km. As I crossed the line the timer showed 3:04:20.

I was a bit disappointed to miss my 3h target but as it was partly due to my 10k run pains I'm not too sad! Also, the day after the race I realised that the finish timer only shows one time - and we started in waves. I was in the 2nd wave, 5 minutes after the first, in which case my time could be 5 minutes less (2:59:20). I'll have to wait for the official results to see if I'm correct.

STOP PRESS! - Results are out!

• 59:16 - 1:24:51 - 36:24 = 3:00:29.
• 87th out of 277 in Mens 30-39 category
  
  

So I was right about my time being less than what the timer showed - I still missed by target but only by 29 secs! The bike time includes the transitions I think.

Aftermath:

As soon as I crossed the line I headed for the barrier for some support for my almost-cramping legs. The medal could wait a few seconds! Then I got my medal and slowly wandered off to get some water. Once I'd recovered a bit I sat down on the podium and talked to a few of the guys I knew from KL.

By now it was very hot - here's Ah Wei sheltering from the sun...

This is the Mens Under-6 category winner...

Malaysians Shahrom Abdullah and Kimbeley Yap won the mens and womens races respectively. Marianna Mohammed was 2nd in the womens race. Here's Shahrom & Marianna...

Me and Shahrom...

Mens Awards Ceremony #1 - no 3rd place, 2nd place to Mr Singh, 1st place to Dan Plews. Hold on! Shahrom walked over to the MC and said "but I was 1st!". They swiftly moved on the the following categories while they checked the results.

Mens Awards #2 - they got it right this time! 3rd - Singh, 2nd - Plews, 1st - Shahrom

Kimbeley and Marianna...

The finish line: Look! - people finishing 45mins after me!

My medal and number...

Nutrition:

1 x Triple Threat + 1 x banana at 6am
1 x Triple Threat + 200ml energy drink 7.45am
T1 & T2 - gulp of water and energy drink
PowerGel at start of bike ride and after 30km of bike.
Drank bib bottle of ORS and small bottle water on the bike.
Gulps of water at most water stations.

Weight next day - 76kg.

Duathlon Target

My target for the Duathlon this Sunday is to finish in under 3 hours.

Run 10km - 1:00:00
Transition 1 - 02:00
Bike 40km - 1:26:00
Transition 2 - 02:00
Run 5km - 0:30:00
TOTAL - 3:00:00

Singapore City Duathlon

What a way to cheer me up on a Saturday lunchtime (stuck in the office!) - registration for the long-delayed Singapore Duathlon is open! The website is HERE.

I'll be there!

Gutted!

I got an email from triathlonsingapore.com saying that the Singapore Duathlon 2007 will probably not now take place until 20 May - I was really looking forward to going there on 11 March for that one!

Never mind lah!

2007 Duathlons

Hooray! The MMDS website has dates for the 2007 series, which I thought might not happen!

Powerman Results

The official results are out for my race (Men's Sprint). I came 29th out of 46 finishers but would have been 21st without the puncture. I was 18th fastest on the bike ride.

If I was a woman I'd have been 8th!! - Top Ten finish!! Ha Ha!

More Powerman Photos #2

Here's a good photo of me at the start....click for a bigger image. THANKS A LOT to Azman for this one!


Thanks to bola2api.blogspot.com for this one of me in the transition.......

...and finally a pic of me on my bike! courtesy of edwinngbike on flickr.com...

More Powerman Photos

Many thanks to azman from the www.swimbikerunmalaysia.com forum for these photos.

This is the start of the Sprint race. I am on the right below the 'S' with a white cap on. Considering I was at the front at the start line I got swallowed up pretty quickly!!


...and here I am in the last few hundred metres of the first run...little did I know of the disasterous transition ahead!

Sprint Powerman 2006 - Race Report

Yesterday was the Sprint Powerman in Lumut - and oh what fun I had!

I planned to arrive in Lumut at 11.30 but stopping for some food, and having to stop at about 15 sets of red lights between Ipoh and Lumut delayed my arrival until 12.30pm. I was not happy! I wanted to cycle a bit to try to adjust my slipping rear gear, warm up, take some photos etc...

I got everything ready but had to run back to the car to put my contact lenses in and wolf down a melted powerbar. I got back just in time for the start of the main race.

...this is the Elite's waiting for the start of that main (10k-60k-10k) race...

Off they go!!!...


Once they were off I went back to transition to plaster sun cream all over me and do a final check...everything seemed ok. I then ran around slowly for 5 mins as a warm up.

At the start line I cheekily went right to the front (as if a true pro!) but only to make sure of a better chance of having someone take a good photo of me! I was quite irritated that my HR was about 147bpm. Before the start I'd expect it to be about 100bpm - must have been nerves. Don't know why I get nervous but I do!

We set off and I was engulfed by a flood of runners who must have thought that you get a special prize for doing the first 100m in 10 seconds. The run was fairly uneventful. I made the u-turn in about 11-12 minutes - suspiciously fast. In my last (illness-affected) duathlon there were only 3-4 people behind me on the 1st run but many more this time! Got to the transition - change shoes, helmet on, gloves on, jog out with bike...

Wait a minute - the rear of my bike is running a bit roughly - surely not a flat tyre! Indeed... it is a FLAT TYRE! ARRGGH!!!!!! ***expletives***!!! Yep - totally flat.

So I kneel down at the side of the transition area, rear wheel off, tube out, new tube in, tyre back on ok, my right shoe feels like the velcro has come undone but i ignore that for now...time to try super new compressed air cannister that avoids me having to carry a pump. By the way this is the first time ever I've changed a tyre with an audience! I think "I've never used this air canister before - hope I get it right!" - ok valve on, screw in air cannister - nothing - screw harder - nothing - unscrew?! - ok unscrew - air is coming out!! - if i lose the air i'm totally bug#$red! - can't borrow anyone's pump! - eventually I twist the valve correctly and my tyre inflates instantly - PRAISE THE LORD!!

I turn to check my show velcro - THE RIGHT SOLE HAS ALMOST COMPLETELY DETACHED FROM THE UPPER!!!!!! Nightmare!! Luckily it is still attached at the toe so I jog out of transition with my shoe flopping around and climb on my bike and off I go (8 minutes lost). I must NOT pull up with my right leg during the ride (shoe will come off).

Was chuffed to start riding as it is my strong point. I was sure I was last at this point and was pleased further still to start overtaking some fellow sprinters quite soon. My legs felt ok and I was cruising at about 30km/h. After 2.8km I dropped my water bottle and had to turn to collect it, losing another 15s at least. That disrupted my rhythm but I got back into it again and managed the first 15km in about 30mins. It was breezy with a slight tailwind off the sea. I slowly but surely overtook quite a few sprinters. It started raining after about 10km. This was nice as it cooled me down, but made visibility rather poor.

My rear derailleur was slipping a bit (due to being bashed around a bit as I squeezed my bike into the back of a pick-up recently) which meant that I had to keep changing gear, negating the effect of my 'aero' bars. My bum was becoming increasingly more painful as I went on. This was because my aero bars made me sit further forward on my seat, where there's less support.

As I approached Lumut I eventually passed a full-distance rider who had been a few secs ahead of me for a few km. As he had a Team PowerBar skinsuit on I was quite chuffed to overtake him! The final couple of km of the ride was good, with a tailwind and slightly downhill, I could rest a bit before the final run whilst maintaining a good speed.

After an uneventful transition I went out for the final run. My legs were fine but by stomach and chest felt a bit full. I definitely ate too much too close to the start in a effort to fill up with carbs. In the last 500m I sped up a bit to gain another place and finished in 2:02:11.

Here's my times...(OFFICAL)

Run 1 - 23:06
T1 - 10:19 (1:59 transition + 8:20 fixing a rear tyre puncture!)
Bike - 1:01:25 (out - 30:23, in - 31:02. dropped bottle = lost 0:15!)
T2 - 2:15
Run 2 - 25:01
TOTAL - 2:02:06 (actual)
TOTAL - 1:53:46 (excluding 8:20 lost due to puncture)

I beat my target time by almost 8 minutes. This was mainly thanks to a respectable 29km/h+ bike ride. My runs were each 3 minutes faster than targetted, but I think that the route wasn't a full 4k. Even if I ran to target pace, I still would have beaten my total target by 10 minutes thanks to the bike ride.

Here's my bike. Notice the sole of my right shoe still clipped onto the pedal. When I got off my bike it decided to stay behind!

I finished just in time to see the Elite's finish. This is the World Champion and pre-race favourite Benny Vansteelant winning. He didn't look remotely tired!

These are the two winners, Erika Csomor from Hungary, and Belgian Benny on the right.


Here's some local Malay girls in traditional gear to spice up the awards ceremony.


...and here's yours truly on my way home. I hope to find more photos of me on the internet in the days/weeks to come and will post them in this blog.


As usual there were some fantastic bikes on display...this is a Cervelo frame with Dura-Ace components and HED Alps wheels.

This is Benny Vansteelant's Gianni Motta bike. His brother's bike is 002 with the Zipp disc wheel.

Sprint Powerman 2006

The long-awaited Powerman is in 8 days. My target time is.....

Run 1 (4km) 0:26:00
T1 0:01:00
Bike (30km) 1:14:00
T2 0:01:00
Run 2 (4km) 0:28:00
TOTAL 2:10:00

MMDS1 Photos

I managed to find another couple of photos of me on some photo-sharing sites.

These are from the Malakoff Sprint Duathlon held in KL in April.

I'm the tall guy towards the top left - blue jersey/white chest/red lettering.



In the second photo I'm near the right - you can see the green "M" on my jersey.

MMDS2 - New Photo!

Here's another photo of me checking my HRM on the 25km bike leg of the last Duathlon. Once I've bought it I can get rid of the watermark!

MMDS2 2006 - Putrajaya

By the time I arrived in Putrajaya at about 6.30am, after getting a bit lost, I realised that my nose was still not quite right, but anyway I didn't have a headache and I didn't feel physically tired, so on we go!

I registered, had "502" drawn on my upper arms in permanent ink markers, and parked my bike. I realised that I had no tyre levers so I decided to ditch all bike/tyre repair kit and hope for the best. I did some stretching and a bit of very light jogging to warm up. Was pleased to observe an almost completely flat run-course. One thing that really struck me was the vast number of incredibly-expensive looking bikes on view. I really thought that if the quality of the bikes was reflected in the class of the competition then I'd be last for sure, apart from the two under-10's on BMX's! As it turned out later on, rider speed and bike cost are totally unrelated, as I managed to pass and overtake about 19 fellow Sprint Duathletes, many of whom were on bikes that wouldn't look out of place in the Tour De France peloton.

You can see me in the second photo, just above 578's head. Already at the back before we even start!

We set off at 7.50am sharp and I wasted no time in being 2nd last. I remained 2nd last for about 1k until I was overtaken by a cheerful Farah Merican, pushing me into last place. I vowed to catch her on the bike section. However my slow start experience tells me that I will always start to catch those who start too quickly, and indeed I did. After 3k I had overtaken 3 people. Still about 4th last though!! I was running noticeably slower thatn I'd normally do 5k and finished in a little under 40 mins, some 5-7mins more than usual for that distance.

Happy that my least favoutire section was over, I got on my bike and settled down at a reasonable pace. I felt pretty good on the bike and was going up the hills about the same speed as most others. I caught Farah after about 15minutes. I was pretty pleased to progressively overtake more and more Sprinters, but needed until most of the way round to catch up some young lad on a BMX! I really enjoyed the downhill bits, crouching into an aero position and freewheeling, yet managing to overtake those who were sitting up and pedalling - really shows you how important aerodynamics is.

I ran out of water just as I got to the water station - good timing! I had driven up the final climb whilst lost earlier in the morning - and it looked pretty tough - but wasn't too bad in the end. I swept back down towards the main Boulevard and thought that was it, although I should've known better as I'd only been cycling for 50mins or so. I kept plugging away for the final 3-4k and finished the 25k in a respectable (considering illness and lack of training) 1h 8mins.

Here I am (crouching next to my bike - no. 502, the one that's 6" higher than everyone elses) putting my runners on for the final 3k, closely followed by a kid half may age!!

The final 3k run was a bit slow and I really just wanted to get it over with. About 1k in I noticed Farah on the other side of the course, about 5 mins behind me. I got caught by one guy in the final 0.5k but as I had just watched another Sprinter run off into the distance after missing the u-turn, my overall placing was unaffected.

I finished in 2:14:26, outside my target of 2:00:00, but never mind, I did well to get out of bed! On the way home, after drooling over some nice Cinelli frames that were on-show, I cheered on Patsy Yap as she embarked on her final 5k run in the full-distance race.

Now looking forward to the Lumut Duathlon in November, that has an even longer 30k bike ride - hooray!

The Lazy Period - June to July 2006

Having proven to myself that I am a supremely fit super-athlete, by finishing the MMDS1 Duathlon in April, and the New Balance Pacesetters 15k run in May (in 1:51:27, well inside my target of 2:00:00 - not bad considering I have never run that far before), I took a bit of a break from running/cycling/hashing 2-3 times a week. My body didn't like this sudden inactivity and repaid me with a dose of the flu in mid-June. A few fags at Paul's wedding in England on 30th June followed by a Hamlet cigar whilst watching Italy beat Germany in the World Cup semi didn't help much either.

As finishing a Sprint Duathlon was not such a big deal anymore, my desire to re-commence training didn't surface until mid/late July. I planned to start training by going to the KL Harriettes Hash in TTDI Park in KL on the evening of the 19th. I then planned to cycle 20k or so to work on the Saturday morning and do the Klang 10k run on the Sunday morning. My plans were crippled by a viral infection and a 40 degree fever that appeared suddenly on the 19th. This basically wiped me out and I couldn't face any kind of activity until the 25th when I managed to do about 18k on my bike in the evening. Later in the week my flu re-appeared in the form of an infected left sinus, which brought along a thumping headache with it. I was seriously doubting that I could do the Duathlon, which I had really be looking forward to for months, particularly as this one had a longer (25k) bike ride - which suits me better.

I thought that a comination of early-nights and prayers would do the trick. By Saturday night (Duathlon-eve) I needed a small overnight miracle. Miraculously, I felt good when I woke at 0515hrs on the Sunday morning despite Lucas lying next to me and sniffing all night (he had caught my cold), so off I went to Putrajaya, with the sole aim of finishing, in whatever time it takes.

My First Duathlon!

As part of my quest to get fit and stay fit from 2006 I have started taking part in several sporting events in and around KL. It all started with the Siemens 10k run, Merentas Desa 8k cross-country and the Power 10k run early in the year. I then signed up for my first Duathlon (run-bike-run). As I much prefer cycling to running, this kind of event suits me much better. I was a bit unsure of how I would cope with a combined 5k run-15km ride-3k run as my usual training involved a slow 5-6k evening jog and the occassional 15km cycle to work on a Saturday morning. As you can see from this first photo, I got off to a fairly slow start (I'm the tall one nearly in last place, with a blue cycling jersey, above the furthest right cone), but I always do that as I like to keep at the same pace for the whole event.

If I remember rightly I felt ok on the first 5k run and finished in about 33mins. I was way behind my fellow 10k run aquaintances Lee and Bhupinder but planned to catch them up on the bike ride - my strongest discipline. The 15k bike ride was great fun - it is so nice to cycle without traffic. I managed to cruise up Jalan Kuching at a fair pace, overtaking a few Sprinters and Long-distance competitors, and even got up the hill at Jalan Duta without much difficulty. The rest of the ride was uneventful, which was unfortunate as I had planned to catch-up and overtake Lee & Bhupi. The final run started off ok (as I started I caught a glimpse of Jackie, Lucas, Daryl and Sri who had come to cheer me on) but as soon as I hit the slight incline up past the JKR building I started to struggle quite badly. I ended up walking on 2 or 3 occassions for a few minutes at a time, so I reckon I lost 5-10mins on this run.

I finished in 1:32:15. I caught Lee and Bhupi by around 5 minutes on the bike ride but not enough to make up what I lost in the first 5k run. Never mind - I had a great time and signed up for the next round (MMDS2 - Putrajaya - 30 July 2006) within a few days.

As I left the course to cycle up to Lake Gardens to the car, some officials and a policeman got a bit concerned as they thought I was lost. They asked me to remove my race numbers. The policeman must have seen this as early-morning inspiration for a flutter on the 4D lottery, so he asked me to add a favourite digit to my race number - to help him choose his. So hopefully 5037 came up that day and earned him some extra cash.