Singapore National Games Cross Country

Perhaps caught up in the fervour of the just concluded Olympic Games, the SSC and PA decided to revamp the annual Inter Constituency Games into the Singapore National Games. Unfortunately, other than a change of name, I don't really see much changes.In fact, if anything judging from the poor organisation of the Cross Country race at Bedok Reservoir, I would say they should have stick to Inter Constituency. At least then the blame for any boo boo can be apportioned to the regional organisations instead of Big Brother.

Since moving out of Simei, I can no longer be involved in the Cross Country. Pasir Ris West, the area that I am in now, certainly don't need me judging by their sterling results and I no longer qualifies to run for Simei. But since I was free, I decided to go down to Bedok Reservoir to kaypoh a bit.

The website for the event stated the timing as 4pm - 5pm which was rather strange as usually race are stated to start at XX time and not a range of time. Since it was rather hot and since I figured like the past, they need to do all sort of kaisu registration including tagging the runners, they will probably only start the race at 5pm. I was dead wrong. When I turned up at 4.30pm and was walking towards the start line, I saw a group of runners racing down below on the trail and I went shit! "They started" To catch the actions and hopefully the top runners finishing, I had to make a mad dash to the finish line. Luckily, I was about 1km away and was able to reach the finish line, running in the reverse direction from the runners, faster than the runners.

It was still blazing hot and I really salute these runners for enduring the heat. As usual,the young fast and furious finished the 5km in slightly over 17 minutes!. The Men Veteran and Ladies started later in separate wave and I was lucky to be on time to capture the anguish and pains on most of the runners' face. Running a hard 5km is seriously no joke! And to make it worse, I understand there was no water point along the route. (somebody correct me if I am wrong on this)

2 young runners chasing each other

The start of the Mens Veteran

Like I said earlier, caught up in the spirit of the Olympics, the organiser decided to give the top 15 runners in each category a medal and a soft toy Mascot. The top 3 teams also got trophy.

To the annoyance of the many supporters and photographers, the prize presentation was delayed by nearly 45 minutes. Understand that the flag off for the Mens Open was also delayed by 30 minutes. To make it worse, after waiting for so long, they lined up the winners in a row and the VIP stood with his back towards the audience to give away the medal and mascot. And us poor photographers ended up with a very poor angle to shoot the awards presentation on top of being harassed by the security personnel. I really don't understand why they couldn't have done it the usual way with the VIP standing sideway and each winners walking up to receive their prizes!

Victory Ceremony.

For those who are interested, the pictures I took are here and on FB. The full listing of the winners are here.