Great Eastern Women's 10-km Race

Today, I went to take photos at the Great Eastern Women's 10-km race. Enuff said.

In the afternoon, I headed over to Lynn's house for a birthday celebration. It was great!

New Balance Real Run

I got up at the unearthly hour of 0350 hrs this morning and hopped into a cab to go down to Jurong East MRT interchange to catch the $5 shuttle bus to Changi Exhibition Centre for the New Balance Real Run.

The 10 km run commenced at 0730 hrs, while the 15 km run, in which I participated, commenced slightly later at 0745 hrs. The first 4 km was on trail, followed by 10.4 km of road (mainly along Changi Coast Road and Aviation Park Road) and about 0.6 km of sandy beach. The sun was mercilessly hot, and I was baked nice and dark by the time I finished my race (about 1 hr 27 min).

I surprised myself by my time of completion. I thought I would have taken around 1 hr 45 min or even 2 hrs. But somehow, I managed to keep up the willpower to push through with the run, particularly the last 2 km which was dreadful under the heat.

My lap times are as follows:

4 km - 0:20:40
8 km - 0:42:48
10 km - 0:54:55
15 km - 1:26:32

Thankfully, I managed to avoid dehydration by replenishing my fluid levels at 3 of the water points during the race, and also by consuming post-race: 4 x cans of 100 Plus, 1 x bowl of Mee Hoon Kuay soup, 1 x bottle of winter melon juice, 1 x bottle of mineral water, 2 x cups of soya bean milk and 2 x bowls of lotus and chicken soup. :D No more throbbing headaches! :D




Update as of 23 October: The results are out! My official net timing is 1:26:11. As a rough order of estimate, I was ranked #335 out of 2100 runners in the Men's Open category who completed the race (according to gun time). Hooray!.

Prefontaine

I watched two DVDs this afternoon at thelonelyrunner and Fd's house on the life of Steve Prefontaine (1951-1975). It was fascinating to see the story of this strong American runner with a cocky "bad boy" attitude that you either liked or hated. It is a pity that he died in a car crash just before the 1976 Olympics. He probably would have won a medal, after having learnt from his lesson in the 1972 Munich Games.

Earlier in the day, I led Thomas on an introductory run of MacRitchie Reservoir. We went clockwise from the carpark, covered about 2.5 km to the fitness corner, and then walked the remaining 8 km of the loop back to the start point. The walk was leisurely, but I think it was still rather dehydrating. I suffered from a bad and throbbing headache later in the day. Ouch. Tomorrow's the New Balance Real Run. I hope it won't be too painful. Nor too muddy.

BG Run, October 2008

I went for a casual run with ripley this morning. We set off from the old SMU, went photo-running for about 6 km within the Botanic Gardens, then went out along Orchard Road until we reached Dhoby Ghaut station where we stopped briefly because of a minor accident. We had covered about 9.3 km so far, taking 1 hr 30 min. We then walked the rest of the way to Bugis, covering 11 km in total, taking 2 hr. Along the journey, we stopped by LaSalle for some more picture-taking.

After the run, the two of us did some weight training before having lunch at a temporary market at Bugis. It was a good morning. :)