Standard Chartered Marathon

Ok no prom picts because i am lazy. LAZY :D

Completed the standard chartered marathon last sunday with a timing of 5:55 thats 5 hours and 55 minutes. No point memtioning the seconds. Suffice to say it was one of the most mentally taxing and difficult things i have ever done. DId not train at all for it. Last time i ran was during the new balance real run. Maybe only the bike rally in june is tougher than this but in terms of a sheer mental test. This one wins hands down.

Ok firstly i seriously underestimated the ardousness of the whole thing. The 1st 20 km was smooth sailing enough. The next 10 also ok, could still run. Then when i hit the last 12 km. all of a sudden my legs start to cramp up. It was the final straw and boy oh boy i just HAD to slow down to a walk. Its agonizing really when you are walking and you can roughly see the outlines of suntec city in the distance ( the finishing line is somewhere slightly beyond that ) and then you slowly see the sights move past you. Its a real psychological challenge. You start to have thoughts of 'will i ever make it back to the finish line at this rate' and of alot of other weird stuff. Example, like how good will a cornetto taste now or what i want to eat for lunch. ( Yea they mostly revolve around food but well when you are running you do end up hungry. ) It was also painfully boring ( and painful ), so much so that i was actually yawning throughout the walking part. Your legs arent exactly hurting, just a feeling that they will cramp if pushed over the limit just abit and your soles feel as if it is slapping the concrete below you. The cushion on my adizero LTs are DEFINITELY not enough for a full marathon despite being great for 10 km sprints. Feet felt squishy after that.

Oh now since my legs arent paintful so what is the root of the pain you might ask. Well i dont know if its the distance or the energy gels i took but during the concluding 10 km of the race. My bladder just felt VERY VERY wrong. You got the urge to pee as if your bladder is bursting at the seams but when you go to the toilet. Only a feel drops of urine comes out ( I know i am grossing some of you out now but too bad its my blog :P ). Seriously its the worse feeling in the world. Imagine running your lets say 2.4 km with a full bladder and not being able to pee it out and multiply the distance by about 5 times.

Sprinted the last 1 km because, hmm its the last km and with all the spectators at the finish line cant bear to lose face by walking. Did i mention that towards the end as we were passing by the F1 pit building, ferrari was having some sort of an exhibition there, and there were like 50 ( estimate ) different models of ferrari for us to drool over. Amazing vehicles. Crossing the finish line was more of a relief than anything. You feel 'hey i actually did it, wow'. Its a sense of a justification of the belief in yourself. The finisher shirt is nice. Slightly different from last year ( and i dont mean the 2008 replacing the 2007 on the logo ), which is good because i feel that the shirt from the previous years are getting abit too common.

Thanks to gab, wh, wl, jc and gh for coming down to support. Very much appreciated. And also congrats to dong lin, kwek, chek keng, and chek keng's friend ( didnt catch his name ) for finishing this hell. Scrapping plans to do the 84 km sundown ultramarathon next year. My standard isnt there yet. Obviously i could complete it and walk the last 50 km but i would take like 24 hours? lol.

Be back next year. Target: under 5 hours

Looking forward to sundown marathon, please let there be a finisher shirt.

p.s. abit lazy to blog lately so.. erratic posting.

Prom 2008

Ahh seems as if my blog died. Ok maybe it did for close to a month. Nothing much to post really. Some of the events that took place are..
- End Of A levels ( seems VERY long ago now )
- Soccer at cage
- Soccer at NYJC, i captained :D and wont 5-1 against dan's team
- Class chalet, yea i got my toenails painted pink

and lastly...

PROM 2008

Managed to assemble my prom outfit on a steal. Shoes courtesy of zean, socks mine, shirt already had them, pants got it from some random shop for 50 bucks and a white blazer for 90 from fourskin.

Caught a bus to orchad together with yang, alson and joseph from bishan. The cheapo option. Alighted at far east plaze and made our way to Hilton Singapore on foot. Arrived at 6.15 and the doors werent open yet although the ticket stated a 6pm starting time and the circular on litespeed encouraged us to come early for games and photo taking. No complains though lingered around outside the ballroom looking for familiar faces all dressed up. When I arrived, it was like 'whoa'. Seriously the girls stole the spotlight. All of them in their simmering gowns all made up and hair nicely done. Guys were mostly in blazers and shirts with tie as the dressing for a guy is a little more restricted i guess. Sat at table 18 with kwek, jc, jr, wm, wl, wh, jy, amos, hh and ck. 11 guys in 1 table. As expected the food was cleared with speed after every round. The dinner was OK. The usual chinese dinner fare, minus the shark's fin haha. $90 wont get you shark's fin i think. The host was great. Professionally done, he managed to get the school going and really liven up the atmosphere ( not that it was dead in the 1st place ). After dinner, as usual our class trademark took hold. Stoned around at the venue taking pictures and well just plain stoning.

Decided to cab to butter factory to join in the post prom festivities and our class ended up getting dispersed all over clark quay due to taxi drivers who had their own individual interpretations of clark quay. Then everyone started callling ME to find out our positions. Yang, garrett and mings joined in the calling 'fun' too. Turns out butter factory was filled to the brim and our class decided to go a bar to drink abit ( that was after alot of stoning and aimless wandering ). Shared a jug of heineken with garrett. Thats stuff is a million times better than anchor beer, that i took with garrett and zean last week. Although i would prefer something other than beer because as gab says drinking beer is tantamount to drinking oil. The calories are off the charts. Was priced out of buying other alcoholic beverages there. Me and garrett wanted to try kamikaze ( a shooter ) but by the time he was game enough to try the bar was closing and they werent accepting orders. After that we walked to the boat quay macs to get some food and chill/ stone. Caught the 1st train home and the sky was lightening up considerably by the time i reached my door.

By the way my marathon is on this sunday.. MARATHON 42.195km. The full distance and i havent been training at all for it. Pray for me people. Doing it for that nice adidas finisher shirt lol.

I promise prom pictures sometime soon, haha after i get them. Everyone is too nicely drssed up NOT to post any picts.

p.s. check class blog

New balance real run

I thought army half marathon was the most challenging 'road race' that i could possibly take part in this year. Scratch that. Got blown away by today's new balance run totally. Participated in the 15km distance. Clocked the worst pacing for any race ever. Even if you take my army half timing and extrapolate backwards to the time i took for 15km, it would be much better off than my timing today. Did not really notice the time when i finished but it should be around 1hr 30/40 mins ++. This is the one time where i am not looking forward to seeing the official results.

Started of strongly, tried going at my nike human race pace, but i did not consume any energy gels this time ( it makes ALOT of difference trust me ). However quickly and steadily the heat crept up on me. As some of you know, especially my classmates haha, i perspire more than usual compared to others, so the extreme heat totally flushed out my stored of liquid. By the 2nd water point onwards i felt nauseous whenever i took water, heat exhaustion? One thing i learnt, never underestimate the morning sun. For more than half the course, there was totally no cover from the sun. Not even a single cloud in the sky. Dreadful feeling. Then there was the beach segment where u run on the soft sand parallel to the shoreline and the sun was directly above the waters. If the distance were any longer you would develope some asymetrical tan. Towards the ending point, in the last 2km, youhad to run on a very straight road, without any shelter for like 1km+. You can see the heat wave shimmering above the ground. That was how hot it was.

Bad race, plus points, i finished it, and the shirt they gave was decent. Feels very smooth haha.

Ok gone now, still feeling VERY tired even now

Nike plus human race 10k

An event where 1,000,000 people around the world run at the same time for a charitable course (and also for the atmosphere and the fun of running of course haha ). 1st time i did a race in the late afternoons instead of morning. Nice experience a pity it was marred by some glaring problems. More on that later.

Somehow managed to persuade most of my class's guys to sign up and they gamely went for the 10 kilometers, cant say the same for the girls though, haiz. Well all of them did completed the race in a very decent time despite this being some of their virgin long distance event haha. Sure they found it a refreshing experience. So congrats and well done to wh, kwek, gh, jc, ykm, mos, hh, yc, gab and jr. ( missed anyone out? ). Also many thanks to cheryl and huijie for coming down and helping with the bags, made it a smoother experience for us. Appreciated.

Plus points 1st, the weather was good, sun stayed behind the clouds most of the time. The rain cleared up just in time. Running through clark quay was also a good experience, the narrow streets ( lucky my plan of overtaking and clearing the crowds fast at the start before slowing down later on to avoid congestion worked, if not would not have enjoyed this section as much, heard from kwek that there was a bottleneck there when he came through ) together with the alfresco dining on both sides of the path and the people there really gave it a 'street race' feel. The route marshalls too did their part to keep us on track.

Completed it in 46 minutes and 47 seconds, personal best but grrr still cannot hit 45. humidity was a killer, haha shirt was soaked even before i started running. The 2 packets of energy gel i spammed before clearly worked, legs wasnt tired all through the race, although i was panting towards the end, i usually dont pant. Starting to like 10km races, gives u the thrill and the speed without the monotony of a 21km where its just endurance towawrds the end, no speed.

My standings in Singapore, 149 not bad. Didnt know i had such a nice race number lol, different from the one printed on my shirt, pity this time there isnt any certificate. For the record i was ranked 12267 out of all the runners in the world. ( 1,000,000? )

Ok and now the grouses. The race was poorly organised in a sense. Race pack collection was the worse ever. i took 4-5 darn hours waiting in a queue ( ok well that was the collective time the class waited ) to get my race pack. Baggage deposit was limited to the 1st 5000 runners only, didnt chance it thanks to cheryl and huijie. Those people at the race pack collection was clueless, told me red tag was for those from 40 to 30 mins when the website stated that it was for those with a targetted finishing time of below 50 mins. Not that it mattered on the race day itself, everyone was a mess, lucky i managed to squeeze pretty close to the start line, but there were like red tag people and even green tag people around me. I took blue ( those form 50 min to 1hr and 10 ). Whatever happened to organisation. The route was was well congested especially towards the start. Having only 1 lane to run at one stage? overtaking was close to impossible. Class people mentioned that they got elbowed there. The musical acts and zones around the route was sporadic, was not the full blown carnival thingy that i expected.

Worse of all, the website mentioned that top 200 finishers will get a human race gym bag. BUT as can be seen i am way below the 200 mark and i still see no sign of my gym bag, what the hell is going on. Emailing them.

The luck worked btw, thanks haha

Work, studies beckons, till next time

Fiasco

Putting this down here before i forget. Read in today's straits times that the saucony passion run 10km distance was actually more like 11.5km. STUPIDITY. After the race i told hh that my timing should be 40 something + minutes based on my tiredness level, but when the results came out i was 53. So i guess i am right after all. i DID complete 10km within 50 minutes. 53 minus lets say 2 minutes per round = 47 minutes. The organisers suck, should have planned a better route

Faith, Hope, Charity, Determination

Havent touched my books at all over the past 2 days. ( Today and yesterday ). I am so going to die haha. Ahh running is getting into my blood now, ironically i have only took part in 2 races so far. standard chartered singapore marathon (21km) last year and passionrun 2008 (10km) last week. I like the freedom, the feel of having the wind in your hair and in your face. The continous rythm that your leg go through during the process is painful yet soothing really. Its liberating running on the streets, totally different than running on the track. I think my aerobic capacity ( must thank band and soccer training ) is good enough but i need to get those muscles up to shape. I almost never pant while running long distance ( 2.4 does not count, i HATE 2.4 its hell, pain beyond measure ), but my legs get all sorts of cramp or aches after the run. Did some calculations after the passionrun results were out. You know what? If i had been in the open category instead of the junior, i would have been in the top 3.8% INSTEAD of the 13% which i am currently in now, WHY didnt i go for open. A whole lineup of events coming up. Should be taking part in these 3, must get dad to sponser.

- Nike Human Race (10km)
- Army Half Marathon (21km)
- Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (42km) [No idea how i am going to complete it currently haha ]
The nike and standard chartered marathon have great shirts :D

Considering this 3..
- Mizuno Wave Run
- New Balance Real Run 2008
- Lion City Marathon
Mizuno, hmm if yc insists on going, haha i'll go, but no medals no cert and no t shirt abit not worth the money. New balance still no news this on this year's event yet. Lion city marathon, if its EVER gets started haha then maybe i'll join.

Ok nuff bout running, can someone ask me out to play soccer?, street of field or anything, i dont even mind the beach lol. Havent touched the ball since 4 days ago, if garrett and co doesnt play this sunday, then i think i'll go for 2 weeks in a row without any soccer. I WANNA KICK A BALL.

yc edited the post haha ps.
for ykm's benefit, i DID do my studies beforehand, and i did not regret my purchase haha it aint that bad.

Sometimes life's unfair, but then no one said it was fair in the 1st place. To hell with equality and fairness, i WILL do things MY way

Ok let u all in on another secret. I hate warm salads

Remember Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies - The Shawshank Redemption

Nebulous Boredom

Weekends, why does it seem no different from the weekdays of the holidays? Ok that was random. Been stoning at home alot recently, still no willpower to go and digest the stuff tested for the mid years. Where should i start... lets backtrack to last wednesday.

Class fishing cum bbq at huijie's house!. Well i didnt go for the fishing. By a stroke of luck, the class boarded the bus i was on while it was doing a 3 point turn to get out of punggol end. Why do i get the feeling that i am going to be ps-ed ( been getting alot of these recently ) if i did not so coincidently happen to be on that bus. Went over to huijie's house and i had a packet of fries for lunch ( poor chap ) haha no joking because i ate at home. Went to NTUC Fairprice at rivervale mall to get the bbq stuff, hh was his usual confusing contradicting 'anyhow wack' self and as a result we had to return to Fairprice to exchange some stuff we bought because they were not needed. Went to huijie's condo, was bored so started playing with the flower crab that they caught during fishing, sadly it died before the bbq was over. R.I.P. So did all the other fishes except 2. Played badminton with some kids at the court, and got owned >.< by a primary school kid. He was GOOD man, definately must be coached. Me and gab doubles no match against he and his friend. Played until it was too dark ( there was no lights ) then went to eat the food ( ok i'll be honest, i didnt help much :D, except for fanning the charcoal every now and then ). Consumed 8 susauges that night. Had fun messing around with the fire. Kwek dumped close to half the box of firestarters in lol. The super strong lazer pointer brought by ykm was fun too. Had lots of crappy, without a care in the world fun at the playground while some of the other class guys went to play bball. Rediscovered my childhood lol. Was worming on the rides, swinging and much more. Went home around 1130 caught 88 home with huixin, yy, ykm, yc and wh. ykm was so worried he was going to miss his stop lol. Oh before that hh dumped the surviving fishes.. into the drain -_-. Had fun, hope to have somemore gathering next time. Photos do visit kwek's ( junhong ) or ykm ( kheng meng )'s blogs, lazy to get and post here.

Saturday nothing much, bored to tears at home. Went out in the evening with nic gab ( not the 0713 gab ) and yang. Long time never go out together liao, no including yang's performance, to watch some breakdance competition. Haha local standards paled in comparison to those judges (who showed off their moves as an intro ) from overseas.

Woke up at 5.30am to go for passion run 2008 10km at east coast. Dad fetched, picked up janelle and hh along the way. Our flag off time was at 8am. Sun's up, hot, not nice. I took 53 mins flat, and came in 26th for the junior U-19 category. I think i am at the top 12% ( dropped from 9% at standard chartered) . Should have gone for open category. Irony, the 10th place timing for open category was 50+ mins while junior's was 49+ mins. Won a timex watch as the 4th prize in the lucky draw, and lo and behold, hh got 3rd prize lol. Damn lucky, but if i had a choice, i'll want the lucky draw from the bike rally instead, the prizes are much better ( crumpler... ), the odds for winning this draw is way lower than bike rally's due to the number of people taking part. i think passion run have up to 10 times more, but we and hh still somehow managed to win. Eh janelle dont be sad, next year come run and try again. For the record, my number was 7572 and hh's was 7570.

Christopher wasnt there so i found someone else as my pacer. Haha she is a small little sec 2 girl from cedar. Million thanks to debbi ( knew her from my kayaking ). All of you who want to find someone to worship in running. Go worship her. She is hardcore. I caught up with her at the 5km mark. Didnt realise it was her, then she was like 'are you albert' then recognise liao. So we took turns pacing each other till the last 100 meters or so when i sprinted. She came in 2nd for the under 19 category and u know what is amazing? 1) she is only 14 2) she stands only up to my shoulders ( i am not exactly tall ). 3) she only lost to me by a few seconds 4) SHE WENT FOR THE SAAB CITY DUATHLON BEFORE SHE CAME FOR THE PASSION RUN ON THE SAME DAY and still can get 2nd. Doubt she'll ever read this but thanks debbi, for if i did not find someone to pace, i would have lagged alot. [ this paragraph is for the viewing pleasure of chris, naomi, garrett and eunice ]

Played soccer with benedict's friend's today at st wilfreds. Got license to dribble and do all my stuff ^_^. Played from 11am to 1pm like right smack at noon. Legs super aching now.

Its was never truer
Tell you all a secret, skunks are nice smelling creatures =)

Some good we all can do; and if we do all that is in our power, however little that power may be, we have performed our part, and may be as near perfection as those whose influence extends over kingdoms, and whose good actions are felt and applauded by thousands - Jane Bowdler On Christian Perfection

Tired

Ran my 1st 10km in almost 1/2 a year today. Legs and mind quite numb now. Kwek called me at around 4 asking me to head down to school because they were running. There was a bit of a rain but thankfully we waited awhile and it let up. Completed it in 52+ mins. Thanks to weihan and gab and kwek for timing and waiting. Looks like i need to shave 7 minutes off my timing in 5 days to hit my target? haha. Maybe the 2 400 meter sprints i did before that affected it a bit ( 65 and 75 seconds respectively, again dropped ). Wth did i sign up for the men's junior category. Grrr, should have gone of men's open. My category's starting time is 8.30!!! Its blazing hot. U know the monday assembly dripping with sweat feeling. Going to increase my timing definitely. The studs on my adizer are also worn out :(. Just go run lor.

Now, comments on the Singapore - Uzbekistan match yesterday. Its shocking, and utterly disgraceful. Singapore's defence was missing for almost the whole game. Precious was slow to track back, and responsible for 1 of the goal when he did not check the run of the Uzbek player. Baihakki and Mustafic's communication was pathetic, went for the same player countless times and they behaved if they were non existant, allowing the Uzbeks to dribble past them at will. Lionel Lewis, major disappointment. You would expect a norminated Asian Player of the Year to play better and at least pull of some saves to deny the opposition, even if the defence was leaking badly. That is what top class keepers like Cech and Casillas do, but no, he conceded a goal from a corner ( granted the ball had a nice swerve on it ). I had not seen any keeper let in one from a corner yet until today. The midfield ceded control of the centre of teh park to the Uzbeks, allowing them a springboard to launch countless attacks. If any part of the Singapore team were to come up with any credit, i think it would be the strike force, managing 3 goals, despite not having their 1st choice pairing of Indra with Alam Shah available. Good grief, most goals conceded by the national team ever at the national stadium, in front of 25,000 fans who turned up. It baffles me as to how we can draw China and lose by 1 goal margins to Japan and yet implode against Uzbekistan. The dreams of 2010 are hanging by a thread now.

missing...

The language of reason, unaccompanied by kindness, will often fail of making an impression; it has no effect on the understanding, because it touches not the heart. The language of kindness, unassociated with reason, will frequently be unable to persuade; because, though it may gain upon the affections, it wants that which is necessary to convince the judgment. But let reason and kindness be united in a discourse, and seldom will even pride or prejudice find it easy to resist. - Gisborne

Army Half Marathon

Readers from 0713, or whoever who is interested, visit nanyang0713.blogspot.com. I posted there Regarding the Army Half Marathon.