This is the last race of the year for me. Originally, wanted to do 1 more race - hopefully overseas in December but the plan frizzled out so this is it.
I've always enjoyed doing this race - from the time it was held on Sentosa to now at the Changi Exhibition Centre. A lot of people complained about the long run back along Aviation Road facing the hot rising sun. Yes it is tough especially after doing 13km of trail, road and sand but it is part of the experience and which makes the Real Run so different from the many other road races that is available nowadays.
Ever mindful of getting my ankle sprained again, I approached this race with no high expectation. No need any PB, no choning - all I wanted was to run a good race and enjoy myself. Of course, I set a small target of finishing just under 1:30 so that I won't take it too easy.
M and me, we started at the back and crossed the start line 2mins 22 secs after the flag off. With that in mind, I ran off at a slow and steady pace so I wasn't surprised when M overtook me barely 10 mins later. No problem. The same thing happened at the practice run 2 weeks ago and I managed to catch up eventually. The plan was to take it slow on the 4km trail, pick up speed a little on the road, slow down again on the beach and then chiong back to the finish. Throughout the run, I keep checking my watch to ensure that my 2 mins buffer was still there and I wasn't too far off the mark.
These are the splits:
1 km: 5:21 Trail
2 km: 5:37 Trail
3 km: 5:45 Trail
4 km: 6:04 Trail
5 km: 5:32 Aviation Rd
6 km: 6:18 Coastal Road
7 km: 4:39 Coastal Road
8 km: 5:17 Coastal Road
9 km: 5:36 Coastal Road
10km: 5:28 Coastal Road
11km: 5:24 Coastal Road
12km: 5:46 Beach Park
13km: 7:25 Sand
14km: 7:15 Aviation Road
15km: 6:11 To finish
Okay so things didn't turned out exactly as planned. Maybe the distance marker is a little off but I certainly didn't do below 5mins/km. The trail was fairly easy to run. In fact, I found the park connector very difficult to run as it was too crowded and I thought I did fairly faster the last 2 km but oh well. At the end, I still finished as expected below 1:30 although based on gun time was just passed the 1:30 mark.
Somewhere along the run, I thought I was hallucinating when I thought I saw a lady in bikini top. Shouldn't she be on the beach? In fact, I wasn't hallucinating and I caught up with her at the beach! ha ha and she turned out to be Fia from the Punggol Runners.
Back at the finishing line, I waited for M to turn up only for her to tap me from behind. She had finished in front of me! Bravo! That was something I didn't expect considering that she has always been a lazy runner and tend to take things easy. To cap off her performance, she managed to clinch 8th position. The prize presentation was only for the top 3 position so I think she will be expecting some cash in the mail soon.
The starting route to the trail - running into the sun rise
The goodie bag, which came in the form of a messenger bag, a t-shirt, 1 Nature Valley bar, 1 100Plus, 1 Eagle Brand rub, 1 NB 30% discount voucher and some other brochures. 
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