I have been putting off writing a report about this race because I had been waiting to get the t-shirt to complete my collection of photos. But alas, I’m not sure when (if ever) that might happen so I decided just to take the photo and write about the race without it!
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| From Races |
If you take a close look at the photo, you just might be able to see that the medal there isn’t just one of those that everybody gets for finishing the race! I actually managed to finish 8th in the Mens 10K category. This was all the more surprising since I had intended to take things easy on the run since it was just supposed to be part of the 20K i wanted to do as part of my training for the Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore.
I started off early in the morning because I wanted to get in about 10K before the race itself and then just take it nice and slow throughout. This would normally seem like strange behavior for me but since Accenture had kindly sponsored the run, I was able to take part for free. So I ran from home, down East Coast Park, past where the race was supposed to start and actually along the race route. I doubled back and then came to the start line. I wasn’t too tired because it was a long run and I usually take it pretty easy when doing those. It was after I collected my race number and was standing around stretching and trying to keep loose that I realized how few people were taking part. According to the report on Red Sports there were 340 people but that is spread out amongst the different categories. With less people taking part, there was a chance, I thought that I could place quite high!
As I was waiting for the start time to draw nearer, I suddenly heard the loud horn meaning that the race was already starting What?! That’s like 5 minutes early! I quickly started running and at the same time struggled to start my own stopwatch. I started chugging along, going around the people that had managed to actually start when they were supposed to. I was definitely not going at a relaxing pace but I did manage to control myself somewhat, at least until just before the U-turn point. At that stage i counted about 11 people ahead of me. I was pretty excited since I knew I had never been so far up in a race and could actually try and get a good placing! I sped up and managed to track down a few more people before eventually finishing in 8th place! My time was also amazing 42:43 which would have been a personal best by about 4 minutes had the distance been accurate, but I later found out the distance was actually only about 9K.
After the race, I was asked to go up to collect my prize (two movie tickets) and a medal! The proudest moment in my running career 😛 Well, actually I think I am still more proud of the marathon but this one sure was fun too.
Here’s a close-up of the medal!
Ian 'n Chunnie 