Trip to Singapore 1-2 December 2007

Signed up for the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon early this year and after on and off training, D-Day arrived. Since this is a personal trip, I decided to take the Aeroline bus to Singapore. I chose it because it allows me to start the journey from PJ, next to Menara Axis and return from Singapore back to Corus Hotel in Jalan Ampang. The buses also starts from Cititel in MidValley and Sunway Pyramid and in Singapore, it stops at HarbourFront (next to Vivo City), which is very close to my sister's place.

It cost RM80 one way and I must say it's very nice. If they would only turn off the video and put piped music, since there aren't individual screens, passengers sitting further from the screen could hardly see what's happening and the audio is nothing to write home about.




That's how the interior looks. I'll say it's ok and the seats recline way back allowing a comfortable rest or even just to read a book. They serve hot drinks and on the way there, we were served Spaghetti Chicken Bolognese......cold and tasteless. I think they would have done better if they served sandwiches and muffins. On the return trip (11:30pm), we got a packet of McDs containing hot McChicken and an Apple Pie. Yummy. That's more like it.

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D-Day. Got up at 4:30am to get ready since I have to follow my sister and her bf who is running the earlier event. This is my first participation in any run event, but I can see that it was well organized. There were sufficient toilets and plenty of water available for runners.

While waiting for my 10km 7:15am flag off, I was excited. There were thousands of other runners and all strangers to me. Started to start sweating and feeling warm even before the start.

Finally we were off and down Robinson Rd we went and headed towards the Marina. There were lots of human traffic but since I wasn't particularly fast, it was relatively easy.

The farthest I had run before this was 5km on a training run, and after that all I did was between 3 and 4 km. So I was quite confident of going that far without stopping. Reached the first water station and gulped my cup of plain water down. Easy. Next water station, another cup. Then darn, I felt like going to the toilet but I figured that since I was sweating like a dog, the water should find it's way out the right way.

Reached the half way point before 8 and I felt confident that I had managed to keep to the pace that I had set without stopping. Then after another 15 minutes I saw a sign that said "9km" and I was exhilarated. I thought I had gone into a "zone" and had completed a few clicks without noticing it. I stepped up the pace for the last kilometer. After a while, I saw a sign that said "10km run - 7km". Darn! I saw the wrong sign.

It was tedious after that. I could feel the strain in my body but I kept going. The crowd was thining and it was easier to run.

During the final stretch, there were lots of cheering. I gave it all and sprinted with my heavy legs towards the finish line.

Finished in 1:21:54. Not the fastest time. But it's a first for me and something I can improve on.




Immediately after crossing, my left ankle seized up and I had to walk slowly to the field. Sat down to remove the ChampionChip, and got up with my ankle feeling much better but next in line was my upper body muscles getting cramped. It was awfully painful walking all the way to collect my medal and then going to the tent to get some free drinks and bananas. After 2 cans of 100plus and 2 bananas I managed to shrug off that cramp, only to be hit with cramps to my calf muscles after that.

I'm glad I joined the run. It was a great experience.

Took the bus back the same night and after 2 days my body has completely healed and ache free. Hope to be there again next year ;-)