Singapore (half) marathon 08
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Heh. The blogging world that I know of appears dead.
No matter. I woke up at 4a.m. today, spending the previous night with tivitated feelings that left me asleep only at around 10. (I turned in at 8:30) I woke up to bathe and eat a Banana, a granola bar that had been given to runners (My god it was bland and unappetising), Milo and a piece of buttered bread. All I had with me was my ipod shuffle. It was a cool and deserted early morning, and I went up to the roof terrace to enjoy the serene breeze and tranquil atmosphere to do my warm ups.
My mom came to pick me up, after coming back from sending my father (full marathon flag off is at 5:30, half is at 6:30) and sent me to the war memorial. I went to the toilet in Raffles City, which was quite interesting, given that it was 'dead', with few lights on. It gave a sort of zombie-apocalypse feel to the mall.
I picked a spot to do my second round of warming up, given that I was a bit early. Being early in the pen too also gave me a closer spot to the start line. Damn. The DJ played Viva La Vida once. Currently my best song. (changes about once every two months.)
The starting gun went off and so did we. I started drinking water only at the third water stop, and the singlet that I was wearing for the first time (Doesn't help at all to show how skinny I am -_-) really helped to ventilate my body.
Along the way the cheerleaders and songs played over speaker systems seemed to electrify my body, giving me a temporary looseness of my body that helped boost me. Reminds me of some racing game power-up. Heh. By far the most scenic place of the run was running on the F1 track next to the Singapore Flyer, it looming spectacularly over us while the run was close to over.
Running past the Singapore Cricket Club was definitely the best feeling of the entire race. I was like, Holy shit, here I come finishing the race! I didn't sprint; my calf felt like it would sieze up on me if I tried to go all out. I did run much faster though, with a huge grin on my face. I did it at a personal timing of 2:08:41. Damn good timing for a first time.
I saw Mr Tan Cher Chong at the War memorial. Some figure was coming towards me, and so I turned and looked, taking like 2 seconds to remember his face. We chatted quite a bit, and he told me he's leaving Damai for Northlight. He did the half too, btw. It was nice catching up with him, and on such an event, to boot. Much better than meeting at some convention or something. Opens up a whole new conversation topic about the race.
It will take about two weeks for the comprehensive timing charts and pictures to come up on the website, but i'll wait patiently for it. Damn, I'm proud of myself.
I'm aiming for 3 10k's (done) and 3 Half's before I get to the army. My dad has one-upped me there, having 3 Half's and 3 Fulls. He has told Isaac to find some way to frame it and put it in the living room. His timing for the full was 5:15:xx thereabouts.
posted by joseph at 4:06 PM