Carnival Run 2013

I know I swear I will not do another 5km race. Or for that matter, another marathon. But then again, never say never. The last time I did a short race was way back in 2008 when I did the Inter Con and then the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge. Such short races are no good for old fogey like me and best left to the young but what possess me to sign up for not one but 2 so far this year?

The first one in February was a fun run so I guess that don't really count but on Saturday I did the Aljunied pro-PAP organised Carnival Run at Bedok Reservoir. Distance was 5km. So why did I sign up for it? One word: cheapskeate. From last year experience at the other grassroot organised event, we knew that such events are usually small scale, fairly well organised, cheap as in low registration fee and best of all, comes with a solid goodie bag.

And so for the goodie, I sacrifice my integrity and signed up for the 5km Carnival Run. For $18.00, this was what I got:

So I found myself at Bedok Reservoir on a cool breezy Saturday evening with the kid and the sidekick and thousand of others like minded people. I wasn't intending to run fast but when I saw the crowd at the teeny weeny start line, I figured I better get to the front so that I don't get block by all the walkers and plodders. So we managed to creep all the way to the first quarter of the starting block before the race was flagged off by Mayor Teo Ser Luck.

I managed to run at a fairly comfortable pace. At one point, I was running next to this lady whom in my other guise as a photographer, I was forever taking her photo. This time instead of taking her photo, I ran beside her. Not too sure whether she knows me because we didn't say hi to each other. Somewhere after the canoe centre, I gave up and decide to jog along at my own pace. That was the last I saw of her.

Photo by Tan Kim Lai

Further down the reservoir came across 2 'paparazzi'. So finally I got myself on the other side of the lens! Beside the paparazzi, there was another lady just in front of me, Mrs IMD. She too seems to be taking it easy because I am sure she runs much faster than the current pace that we were doing.

Photo by Taz

So I ran alongside her for a while until somewhere towards the finish line before she zoomed past me to cross the finish line first. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the timer clock showing 25mins +. I was sure I was doing much slower than that and true enough my watch shows 26+ which I must admit wasn't really too bad after all!

So maybe I look out for more of such race. Where else can I get so much goodie for so little cash?