Reached there at 3pm and was dismayed to see a long queue stretching all the way to the atrium. Later was told by friends that at one stage, it even stretched until the MRT station so maybe we were not too bad after all. There was only 1 common queue although occasionally the volunteers will ask those doing the 10k and half to follow them. Presumably, the queue inside for these 2 were shorter. We queue outside for almost an hour before being allowed in.
Once in, I went to the Kids Dash queue to collect for a friend's kids while M joined the full marathon queue. The queue for the Kids Dash was short, only about 10 person in front of me so I thought it will be a quick. Boy, was I wrong. Somehow the queue moved so slowly. Each person in front of me on average collected about 3 each. The 3 Japanese in front of me collected 6 each and so I was stucked there for another hour. I shudder when I looked at the queue for the full marathon which was like 100 times as long! Were we going to be stucked until 7 pm?
Observing the counter staff doing their work was an eye opener. The young kids were very polite but I don't understand why they need to go to all the trouble. First, they have to key in to the computer to get the bib number. Then somebody or they themselves will go to the back and collect the bib and the goodie bag. After that, they will show the person collecting the race pack the bib number and the singlet to confirm the name and size before putting everything into the gym bag. And they will repeat this with every bag. No wonder it take so long to process each collection.
I tried to persuade them to let me collect the full marathon pack from the kids dash counter but no go. I was resigned to queuing from the back but luckily the other staff there allowed me to join M who was somewhere in the middle of the queue. Surprisingly, the queue here moved very much faster probably because there were more counters and we managed to collect our race packs within 20 minutes which was not too bad.
So total we took nearly 2 and a half hours to collect everything leaving us with not much time to explore the Sports Expo. So did I do right to collect on the first day? Last 3 times, I have always never collect on the first day but because of my friend warning, decided to do otherwise. I reckoned since it was at the Expo and not Suntec, there will be no lunch time crowd and the crowd will only come in the evening. So I was proven wrong there. But reading the post in the forum, I am glad we went early - at least M got her size because they ran out of ladies S & M yesterday evening. I can't imagine how much she will freak out if she can't get the size she want just like what happened in Kota Kinabalu!
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