I was supposed to be running with quite a bunch of guys today; when I discovered the PAssion Run and the details on it, I already started to ask people to register with me. People like Jing Ying, Zhong Hao and Darrell expressed interest for it. At that time I finished Suburban Run not long ago and was really interested in another challenge. Yi Da, who ran with me for the 10-km Suburban Run was unsure, saying that he might be busy with Operations stuff in the army. Zhong Hao decided against it pretty early, since he was going for the Sundown Relay which is going to be the week after PAssion Run. Since I still had friends joining me, I went to sign up because my idea was that I’d be running no matter what. In the end, Darrell suddenly decided to go for his Hernia surgery during that period and Jing Ying just didn’t want to run.
I didn’t exactly have 7 hours of sleep since I got a little too engross with chatting online and reading stuff in the night yesterday; I got up 5.30am, and I was lucky to get a lift from my uncle over to East Coast Park (after the run, I took 1 hour to walk from the starting point and the race carnival area to the bus stop where I could take my bus home). I stretched a bit and walk around, deposit my backpack and then visited the loo before the emcee started asking people to gather for warm-up. I thought it was good that they provided the fitness people to guide people for warm-up. Though I didn’t follow through everything, it reminded me to stretch certain muscles and really get myself warmed up – the SAF warm-up is seriously inadequate in this respect.
The starting of the run is a little confusing. I was informed through the website that my category (Men & Women 15-km Open) flags off the first wave at 7.30am but in the end they told people with the Orange Bib, which is what I’ve got to start off around 7.10am. I thought that it’ll be good to start off early then I can leave early as well so I just started running. I have never tried running in East Coast Park because it is too far away from my place and if I ever go there, it’ll be to cycle. It was great running beside the sea except that there’s too many people and the lane is too narrow at the starting point area. As the crowd start to distribute themselves along the path, it became much easier to run. The water points are quite well distributed for this run although I personally think that the trashing areas are too close to the water point – I usually grab a cup, drink a bit as a run and then toss the cup into the trash area. This means that if the trash area is too close to the water point, I only take 1 or 2 gulps and will throw away the rest of the water.
I maintained my pace pretty well until about 12km, when the turning point started feeling pretty far away, I slowed terribly and my mind seem to start focusing on the aches that my ankle, feet and shin is experiencing – before hitting that distance, these pains were virtually hidden from my mind, I was only focusing on overtaking and breathing properly. In any case, I have never ran more than 12km at one shot in my life so far so perhaps my body was trying to condition itself. I started slowing almost to walking pace to drink sufficient water at the water point; I didn’t feel thirsty but I was just plain worried that I would dehydrate since I was perspiring quite madly even during the warm-up and I daren’t take risks. After 13km, the distance of 1km, which used to be absolutely no kick for me start to seem like a super long distance. In the remaining 2km, I couldn’t maintain my pace at all, slowing and taking very small steps at times and then speeding up to pull ahead whenever I think there’s someone I could overtake. I looked at my watch and I knew I had to keep up with the pace I was running just a while ago because I wanted to finish the entire thing in 90 minutes, which technically speaking, should not be that tough a challenge.
Running alone, albeit in such an event with so many people, is a very different experience from having friends around you whom you’re trying to catch up or pacing. This time I did try to pick someone who seem to be running about the same pace as me to follow until I manage to overtake him/her. I overtook people very frequently in the beginning. In fact I was almost overtaking all the ordinary pace people in the first 9km or so – the only time when people overtake me was those who were speeding up to catch up with friends ahead or the crazy ones who are already running way faster than me but started a little later.
This run’s baggage deposit is way better than the Suburban Run I had 2 months ago. I really appreciate the fact they have shelves in place for the bags and the officials were not frantically fumbling through heaps of bags when you bring your tags to them. The start point is probably the only problem – it is not friendly to people taking public transport. That explains the above fact involving my walking.
After the experience I know I definitely have to condition my body for the longer distances before running them. I think those who go join 42km Sundown without any conditioning is really quite insane.
Update – My timing came out; it’s 1 hour and 27 minutes, within my target of 90 minutes!
