Every year I swear that I will not do this race yet I am back for the fourth time. So why am I doing it?
1. It is free. Company pays 100% of the forever increasing registration fee.
2. I get to have a new running tee, design choose by me. This year I opted for Saucony.
3. I am in charge of sports in the Company and as long as there are colleagues who want to run, I guess I should set the example and lead the way. This year there are 12 of them but 1 backed out last minute.
As usual, there was already a big crowd gathered when we reached. I managed to squeeze myself to within 20 metres of the start line. Looking around me, it is the same. Aunties standing here, big group of runners from the same company. Sigh, can't these people read and follow the directional signs. True enough, when the race was flag off, again had to fought my way through the big crowd of giggling yakking idiots.
The objective was to run a good race if it was at all possible so it was important for me to move to the front early and find some space. My apologies if I had been too rough and pushed a lot of people away in the process. Didn't see any people I know so ran at a reasonably fast pace once I cleared the crowd. A glance at the watch at the 4km showed I had covered it in 18:54min which mean with 1.6km left, I was on target to finish within 25 mins if I continued at the same pace. However, since the rest of colleagues were far behind, decided to take it easy. Stopped for a drink and slowed down the pace. In the end, crossed the finish line in 26:58mins which was good by my standard - a sub 5min pace. Not a PB but still pretty satisfied with the outcome.
The goodie bag was again miserable - this time round the shopping bag was an improvement over the previous drawstring bag but there was only 1 cotton t-shirt and 1 sample sun-block! And they charge $45/- for the race! The angmoh certainly knows how to suck us dry.
Incidentally, Sebas who was carrying a PF injury and claimed he had not done any real runs for a long time romped away in 25:25mins. Guess I will never be able to catch up with this guy.
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