Sundown Marathon 2009

While runners ran the whole night, kaypoh me and a few others also decided to join the night owls and stayed up for the 2nd Sundown Marathon. Like last year, I did not do this event prefering to kaypoh around. This time round, we parked ourselves at the 33km mark along Tampines Ave 9 Park Connector going to Pasir Ris.

The first ultra-runner appeared around 9.30pm and after a short gap, the main body of the ultra runners followed. Spotted a few familiar faces - friends for whom we had gathered there actually to cheer for them. The ultra runners tapered off after 12midnight and we went off for a drink at a nearby coffeeshop. When we came back, 4 members of Team Fatbird including the famous Brokie had joined us. While the whole gang was standing there cheering, clapping, giving drinks and heatrub to the by now coming non-stop marathon runners, I was busy trying to take photographs of the runners.

Talking of photographs, taking action photos in the day was difficult enough. But in the dark! It is even worse. The camera couldn't find enough light on the subject to focus, the flash was too weak, too strong, the reaction was too slow... in the end even though I switched to full auto mode, I missed many friends'.

Here are some photos for what's its worth. More will be uploaded as and when I can manage to snatch the com from the little girl.




Anyway, back to the running, as I watched the Ultra runners doing their 2nd loop, looking at their face and body posture, by now most of them were walking, I really admire their determination in completing this crazy event. Many were limping, some look like they can drop anytime and there was one guy who can't even talk, lift up his arm and poor Brokie had to feed him his water! What drives these people to do this type of event?

On the other hand, looking at the marathon runners, there were many who were taking like 6 to 7 hours to just reach our location. I am not slamming everybody who finish in time longer than 7 hours. In fact I have friends who despite training hard for some reasons or another still cannot complete in within average time of say 5-6 hours. What I don't like are people who don't give due respect to the FM but just treat it like a fun thing - like going for a stroll. I personally had met a guy about a month ago who couldn't even ran 1.5km and when he told me he was doing the FM at SD, I was completely flabbergasted. What crazy mind do this people have? Do they really think it is so wonderful to walk the full 42Km? For this people, I have no respect and I feel that they do not deserve to wear the finisher tee.

Speaking of finisher tee, I heard this year's one came in my .......... Heck I should have just do it!

More photos here