Running Sucks

2013 has been a most interesting year. In fact I would said it has been the best year ever. Started the year with a very enjoyable race in Thailand This was followed by another race in Muar . In between, did 2 fun runs and 1 local race; the inagural TNF City Rac e as part of a team. Also went over to do a fun trail run in Malaysia where we had our first encounter with leeches! August decide to do the Army half marathon which turned out to be a big mistake. Went to Kota Kinabalu to challenge the mountain there but expectedly failed miserably. Then instead of running the local TNF 100, we did something different and it was another wonderful experience. And that about it for the year. Of course, in between the races, shot thousand and thousand of photos as part of Running Shots and made lots of friends. Certainly a most fulfilling year. Come 2014, have already committed to one hike, 1 local and 1 oversea race and looking for more. Perhaps a climb...

The first time I saw this shoe, I know I had to get it. But I knew nuts about it. Only that it is Puma. And Puma is the brand that is sponsoring Usain Bolt. Maybe the hope is that a little bit of his speed will rub off. Haha. But the true is that I was attracted by the price and more importantly the color! I have not had an orange shoe for some time. In fact, the color for the past 2 years have been green. Orange shoe has been kinda hard to find. But now I got 2. The other pair? That will be revealed later in another post. But first back to the Puma Mobium Elite. It was on offer at $90.00 at the Puma Outlet. Any shoe below a $100.00 is a bargain. And this is 2013 edition not some past season shoe. And it comes with a lot of credential. Or rather the hardsell from the manufacturer. "Puma Mobium is a new innovative running shoe......adaptive running. Puma Mobium Elite naturally adapts to the foot as it moves, expanding and contracting as the foot naturally does in strid...

Following my last post , the Australian director for SuperSportsImage has given an apology to Running Shots. His apology can be found on one of the Running Shots comment posting. Check it out. So since apology given, and no offence taken, I shall let this matter rest and move on. But one thing strike me while mulling over the whole episode. The way I see it, his major grouse is the competition we guys gave him. We were a big threat to his profit margin . After all, he had to incur costs in getting photographers to shoot for him, then do backend processing etc. A lot of works involved and with us around, there was no way he was going to make money not less recoup his cost. I guess he was afraid that we were going to kill his business. But on hindsight, this area of sports photography. Is it a sunset industry? I wonder how many people nowadays actually will buy race photographs. Over at Running Shots, we don't sell photographs. But we do charge a very nominal sum for high re...

Got this message from an Australian company Super Sport Images on the Running Shots facebook page after the Commando Challenge on Sunday: "Hi Guys, As the contracted photographic partner of the Commando Challenge, your advertisement of images conpletely flies against supporting your field. We invest heavily into supporting events such as this, are the contracted provider with exclusivity and having a photographic entity that seems to want to take care of things in their own manner, does not support the photographic industry at all, it merely cheapens it. I would ask you kindly, to please respect our business, that has invested money and resources into this event and others iin the hope of being sustainable. Director of Supersport Images" The more I read the post, the more pissed off I get. Here is another freaking ang moh who thinks that he is the all and be all and only his professional set up is qualified to take photographs and we, the locals are cheapening the professio...

Coming almost 4 weeks after probably the most infamous marathon finish in Singapore, this is now very old news but I think this blog is not going to be very complete without a comment on it. I am of course referring to one Tam Chua Puh who spectacularly finished ahead of Mok Yin Ren to come in as the first Singaporean in this year's edition of the full marathon of the SCMS 2013. By now everybody in the running circle would have known that he only ran 6 km and ran back from the esplanade to clock in at 2 hours 46 mins 57 secs and that he all he "wanted was the finisher tee and medal." Which leads me to wonder. Why do people choose to run a marathon. For most runners, I would guess they are like me. I started off about 9 years ago not barely able to run 400 metres. Then I managed to do 2 km, then 5, then 10 and 21  and one day I wondered - why not give the full a try? It never occur to me that there was a finisher tee and a medal up for grab. What I just wanted to do w...

I like to think that I am not a racist but sometime I love to stick it up to those frigging ang moh who still think that white is supreme and only they can dictate to the world what the rest of the world should do.  I have blogged more than once about bad encounter with ang moh whilst running here. There are also videos floating around of arrogant ang moh cyclists riding on our road. I know there are many nice ang moh and I have met many while running at the Running Lab weekly run but reading these comments on the runningahead.com site where I upload my run details, it makes me wonder ... are those loudmouth the minority or do the majority of ang moh feels the same way: There this thread on the SCMS cheating guy on the Runningahead forum but somehow some frigging yayapapaya fellas got round to "suaning" Singapore: And this guy. Is he for real? It was the same when DC Rainmaker came last year and made some disparaging remarks about our running scene when he...

There is article written by a lady in Malaysia that is getting all the wrong attention.  Coming from somebody who is in the sports industry, I am rather surprise at the issues that she has raised concerning marathon running. Read the full article  here . Here are the 4 main issues she raised: 1. It wreck your knees 2. You could drop dead 3. It could ruin your sex drive 4. Its not the most effective weight loss method I going to attempt to tackle these 4 points. 1. It wreck your knees. So does doing any other sports and having a sedentary life style. Like in my small workplace of about 100 staff, there are a number of people with bad knee problems. One of them is of course me. Another colleague had it so bad she had to for for knee anthroscopy. She has never run or do any sports in her life. Another colleague did the same on both knees. He only cycles. Another colleague takes the lift up and down even though we are on the 2nd floor because of her bad knees. She is...

Sometime ago, a fella fell while running at MacRitchie Reservoir. Subsequently, he wrote a letter of complaint to the press asking for the rocks and roots to be removed to make it safer for runners. Read about his complaint here . Of course, he got a whole lot of ridicule from the public and a lot of indignant trail runners. Then Nparks came out with a reply which got everybody cheering. So everybody thought that was the end of the silly complaint. Or is it? This is one part of the trail in MacRitchie Reservoir now. Gone is the dirt track and in its place a nice silvery grey layer of granite chips. Picture by Kelly Lim Apparently, Nparks has decided to do something and this section of the trail has been paved over with crushers. I don't know whether it is in response to the complaint or what but trail runners are pretty upset. But I suppose for other regular park users who just want a nice place to walk, this is definitely an improvement over the previous wild tangle ...

See how they look after their flight up 73 stories. Coming soon to Running Shots

This year at the Great Eastern Women's Race, I saw a fair number of guys running alongside their wife or girl friends or partners. Later on on Facebook, some ladies was visibly angry at these guys for gatecrashing their party. But I think the guys who ran the GE run obviously don't see it that way.  These guys who were running are what is known in races as bandit runners. That is, runners who do not register for a race but still run in it. In the West, this is a big no no. But what is the big fuss? Those who bandited will argue? After all, they do not take the drinks, the gels, the banana and there are so few of them they are not likely to cause any obstructions. And beside, most will know enough to run to the side and not cross the finish line. So their argument will be that nobody has suffered an disadvantage because of them. And of course the line that everybody use. It is a public place and everybody can run in these place. Not true. The other camp will argue. M...

Some time ago, the HDB had plans to close down the Tampines Mountain Bike Park and redevelop a new township there. There was some hue and cry and apparently they agreed to shelf the plan for the time being. But that seems to be only for the Bike Park and not the Bike Trail, the other part of the mountain biking trails there. I first ran there back in 2008. It was a beautiful place, quiet and with some nice knolls to climb. Then they split it into the Bike Park and the Bike Trail with the Bike Park only for bikers. Quite sad but still it was a good rugged trail especially the forest trail with its twists and turns and mud! But now it seems like the bike trail is going the way of the Dodo bird. The last time I ran there was barely 2 months ago so it was a great shock when I ran in today to be confronted by this: A freaking cemented road where the dirt track used to be. And there are clearing work of the plants on the right. Here are more photos of the place and the devastat...

After I retired my last North Face trail shoe, I promptly went and bought another pair of North Face. This time attracted by the bright colors of the North Face Hyper Track Guide, I scooped it up at a good price as it was last season's shoe and on the way out. Design: In the past, North Face has not been known for its colorful shoes. Both my 2 previous pair of NF were rather dull looking but this time round, NF has out done itself proud by coming up with nice beautiful colors and the Hyper Track Guide is just one of them. The bright color extends to the sole with its striking yellow and blue color. I especially like that they put the NR logo on the heel of the shoe instead of the usual side like everybody else does. Weight: Coming in at about 280 gm, this has to be one of the lightest trail shoes ever produced by NF. As a comparison, my NF Sentinel weights in at 650 gm and my NF Arnuva Boa is a hefty 710 gm. Even my beloved Altra Lone Peak 1.5 is heavier at 345 gm!...

I haven't run home from work for quite a while. I was in Toa Payoh attending a course so I decided to run home from there rather than take the train home. I checked the distance on Google Map and and it was about 16km via the car route. I reckoned that the route by foot should be almost the same except that I will not go up the Kaki Bukit Viaduct. I started from Toa Payoh Lorong 4 at about 5.45 pm. It was a short run out of Toa Payoh to Braddell Road. At junction of Lorong 1 and Lorong 6, I passed the magnificent Toa Payoh Seu Teck Siang Tong, a Taoist temple. Took this picture with my phone from across the road against the light so the picture doesn't show how impressive the entrance to the temple is. For a closer look, try this link Braddell Road is not a very nice place to run, with heavy traffic. I don't like to breath in fumes but no choice, this was the only practical way to go back. But I did get a view of the cleaned up Kallang River. I supposed I could...

I was taking photos this morning at the annual Shape Run. While I was sorting through the photos, I realised why they named it the Shape Run. Cause the ladies do really come in all sort of shapes. Hahaha, but that is not the topic of my post. The other thing that I noticed was that most ladies look very unglam in their running photos. But before you ladies out there jump in and said "abutthen, what do you guys expect?", let me state that I also captured shots of ladies who still look glam and cool and some even glow! Here are just a few examples: For obvious reasons and since I value my life and my camera and do not want some enraged lady to kill me or kick my camera the next time they see me shooting at an event, I am not going to post any unglam photos here. Those who are curious can go check out the photos in Running Shots:) But for those ladies who are honest enough and admit that they do look unglam in their running pose, here are some tips on how to look glam:...

It is just before the start of the race. You are in the race pen all excited to be flag off and start the race. You warm up a bit, look at your watch, 10 minutes to go and darned it, you need to pee again! Funny, didn't you just went to the porta loo like half an hour ago? So how? Leave the race pen? But that would mean possibly getting stuck in a queue for the toilet and worse missing the flag off. So you hold on, tahan and 5 minutes after flag off, you join a horde of runners lined up against the wall of a shophouse and let go. Ahh! Relief at last. Now you can do your run properly.  Sound familiar? How many of us have this urge to pee just before a race? I think there is a running term for it but I am too lazy to google for it but it is so common. In the past, every year at the SCMS and AHM, I used to see runners lined up against the partition of the Fullertion Hotel when it was undergoing renovation. And that is like barely 100 metres from the start line. I think its all in t...

I swear many times that I will not run a full marathon again. Not because I think I cannot do it but because I am too lazy to train for it. Then in a stupid moment of bravado, I went and signed up for a 50km trail race. And after countless hours and hours of training, I failed to finish the trail race. Which should tell me to be smart and stay off long distance running. But hell no... I have a full marathon coming up next year. I don't know whether to celebrate or cry. Celebrate because this is the Tokyo Marathon, one of the major marathon in the year and which everybody tell me is a must do. Unlike the Boston or New York marathon, there is no qualifying time but a lucky draw. And just for a lark, the sidekick and I went to apply and I got in! But not the poor sidekick who was more interested in it than me. So I should be celebrating right? But I think of the long runs that I going to have to do and I am so depressed that I want to cry. I remembered how it was when the sid...

I gonna into this strange habit of buying old shoes. Old as in not used but past season shoes. I used to buy in to all those marketing crap about not wearing shoes that have been in storage for a long time caused the foam will have harden and will not be able to absorb the impact. But nowadays, it is the less cushioning read: foam layer the better so who cares whether there are any cushioning. And besides, I go for those shoes with very little foam in fact the thinner the better so that logic doesn't apply to me anymore. Anyway, recently to replace my dwindling stock of shoes (I am down to only 2 pairs now), I went and bought 2 new old or is it old new shoes. First was this nice Saucony Kinvara 3 which I got from Running Lab during the trade in promotion. That was in July and after the trade in, cost only slightly over a $100. It is still sitting inside the box though and Kinvara 4 is already out! Will it stay in the dark for a year like its older siblings? Anyway, t...

It all started with an idea by a friend who got his inspiration from a  race in Hongkong. One thing led to another and yesterday we found ourselves, a group of 6 runners at the start line of this year edition of the TNF Singapore 100. Another 2 started at the Mandai Road checkpoint. Not to race but to do something very different and I hope inspiring enough for the real participants to do their part. With Marc Pereira from North Face Singapore Our mission - to literally sweep - not the last runner but to sweep up all the trash  left behind by the runners. When we embarked on this, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. We have ran the trails in the MacRitchie area and Central Catchment area many times and we have seen many of the rubbish left behind by runners and other park users. But I didn't thought it was that bad. We started off at about 7 a.m. about half an hour after the 25km runners were flagged off. Our objectives was to stay behind the runne...

How apt!

So we found ourselves on the way to the biggest and longest race of our life. This was it. All the past few months of pounding up and down Mt Faber every Tuesday evening, the endless weekends training at Bukit Timah was climaxing here in the foothills of the highest mountain in South East Asia, Mount Kinabalu. I have a very simple plan to do this. Cover the first 20 km in 5 hours and the balance 30 km in the remaining 10 hours. That should be doable. By my calculation, by the time it get dark, we will be out of the jungle and on the final stretch which was supposed to be a long long climb up on Jalan Kinasaraban to the finish line at Perkasa. But like all good story, the plot changes and the unexpected set in. We set off on our allocated bus to the start line at 5 am. The journey took a fair bit of time even in the light early morning traffic and we arrived at our destination just slightly before 7 am. One funny thing happened along the way though. For some unknown reason, just...