SAFRA Marina Bay Run 16-Aug-09

Was a busy Saturday yesterday. Went to bed around 12 midnight but was not able to sleep most of the time. Plan to leave my house at 4:10am and to reach Kuan's home by 4:30am to car-pool to event site. My alarm did not work and when I woke up it's already 4:45am !! My handphone has 4 missed calls from Kuan. Called him on the cellphone. He was already on the way to the site but gracious enough (a great friend) to turn back to pick me from home!

Brushed my teeth quickly. Drank a glass of coffee. Changed and get ready for Kuan's car. While in his car took 3 bananas and 1 biscuit bar. Upon arrival at the carpark drank a can of 100-plus. Before heading to the starting line, we went to the portable toilet to pee. OK, now we are all set to go.


The race started at 5:30am. Since we arrived late, we started only at about 5:45am. I ended the race at around 8:00am. So my run time for the 21km half marathon should be around 2:15hr or less.

My monitoring watch was not able to detect my foot pod. So ended up I can only monitor my heart rate but not my running speed.

Drink along the water points at about 3km interval, although the water stations are available more frequent than that. Took an energy gel at 10km and another one at 17km. Not sure whether it helps or not but just take lah.

Most of the time the heart rate was in Zone 4. My preference was to keep in more balance between Zone 3 and Zone 4. At the last 15 mintues, the heart rate was mostly in Zone 5 which is not too good. This may pose a problem if I do the full marathon of 42km. Did not know what speed I was running so was not able to moderate the speed to control the balance between heart rate and running speed.

Found that time are 'wasted' at water points to slow down to drink and then having to speed up again. This also consumes more energy. For my Dec full marathon I will likely carry water-bottles belt to minimize stoppages at water points.

About 32 from our hot-runners group signed up the run. The race was extremely crowded. The number of participants is at a record of 70,000 !!

All of us completed the race that we set out to do. Most of us are happy with the run time achieved. But there are a few who wish they could have done better... which is ok as there is always another race in future for them to break their own record time.

Actual results should be out next week.

Estimate Run Time
21km
Tim 1:35hr ?
HC 2:15hr
Kuan 3:00hr
HT 2:42hr
Bok Hui 1:57hr
Frank 1:50hr
Edwin 2:16hr
Margaret ??
Kenneth 2:07hr
Cecilia 2:45hr
ZiJin 2:16hr
YS Yun 2:17hr
Will ?
Safiq 3:17hr
Pak Loon ?
MJ 1:50hr
CS Chan ?

10km
Hong 1:08hr
Alena 1:07hr
Catherine 1:12hr (1st timer, wow!!)
Betty ??
William 1:25hr
Edmund 1:15hr (1st timer, wow!!)
Jimmy ??
Janto 1:02hr
KW Phang ?
PS Tan??

After the run some of us went to Lau Pa Sat to have breakfast today. The group share their running experiences.






Bok Hui shared his 'fore foot" running method which uses less energy, is fast, etc, etc.
Edwin followed HC's advice that to complete the full distance 21km, one must clear at least 75% of the distance during training. He manage to complete the whole race. However, the timing fall short of his expectation of less than 2:00hr. To do less than 2 hours he definitely need to train more and clear the 21km or during his training.

A lot more experiences were shared and the the group have a fun time together at breakfast.