Revisited 2 old run routes recently.
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| Tampines Mountain Bike Park |
Last week, ran through the Tampines Eco Green and the Tampines Mountain Bike Park. There was about 1.5km of paved road, 8km of nice flat trail and another 500 metres of winding undulating forested trails. The whole run took me about 1 hour 10 minutes to finish the total 10km.
A week earlier, ran the Bukit Timah Reserve starting from the side of the carpark to Beluakar Trail then pipeline trail and durian trail before coming back to the Bukit Timah Visitor Centre and up to the Hindhede Quarry. Also 10km but it took me 1 hour 36 minutes.
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| Pipeline Link |
What a vast difference! Both 10km and yet it might as well been 10km and 15km. I have been pondering over this.
1. The former is mainly flat and on top of that, there is 1.5km of road
2. The latter is a highly technical trail for the first 3km but thereafter the rest is mainly flat with only about 200 metres of road
3. Elevation for the former is only 22 metres (the overhead bridge don't count) whereas it goes up to 70 metres in the latter.
4. I started the Tampines run at 8.15 am and the Bukit Timah run at 9 am. Both time weather was equally hot but there was more shade at Bukit Timah than Tampines.
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| Elevation Profile for Bukt Timah Reserve |
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| Elevation Profile for Tampines Eco Green/Mountain Bike Park. The 2 peaks are overhead bridge |
So by all account, both should more or less even out yes? Of course, not. I realised that running all the up and down of Bukit Timah is really not that easy. Thee run/stop actions took a lot out of me. It was akin to doing an interval or a circuit training. I drank almost every drop of my 1.5ltr of water compared to zero for the Tampines Run.
Maybe I should just stick to running on the road?
Stick to the trails! I ran Bt Timah the very first time on trails and after 1km, I had to stop. But it was certainly a much more fun experience. :)
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