End of the Road - Tampines Mountain Bike Trail

On 1 December, the Tampines Mountain Bike trail officially ceased to exist. To make way for another housing estate to house the 6.9m population.

I first discovered this place right in the backyard of Tampines town way back in 2008. Back then, it was one big place with some challenging knolls, some small streams to cross and many many small trails criss crossing the places. Although not technically very challenging, it was a worthwhile alternative to the crowded MacRitchie. The only problem then was that it was a very rugged place without any toilet facilities and shelters. 

You can see more photos of the original trail here when we did a Eastside Trail Run.

Then in 2010, it was split into the Tampines Mountain Bike Park and Mountain Bike Trail for the Youth Olympic and 3/4 of the place was taken away from non-mountain bikers. Still there was a good enough 5 trail with a challenging 1 km narrow jungle trail complete with mud pool and stream, a small climb and breathtaking scenery.

When I moved to Pasir Ris, I ran there more often as it was just a 10 minutes run from my home. It was literally a run in my own backyard. But last year, the government announced plans to redevelop the area for Tampines North estate and that sounds the death knell for the place. After a short reprieve, the Bike Park closed last month and this month, the Bike Trail closes too. I managed to do a literally final run there on the morning of the closure. As I came out of the trail, the workers were putting up the fencing at the trail head. 

Here are the final photos of the place. 

The 1km stretch of jungle trail that is permanently muddy and wet. I have a video of a run I did there sometime ago in the mud and water. Rather long and boring but if you don't mind taking a nauseating ride through the choppy video, the link can be found here

There are lot of wide open field like this with narrow trail

The view from the top of one of the small hill

This is my favourite part of the trail. Running under this canopy of trees

The death knell. Closed and gone but cherished with fond memories.

 

Trail Splashing

A video of the water logged trails at the Tampines Mountain Bike trail. Video a bit long at 7 minutes though :) but the last bit is more fun.

Great place to run in

Here come the Garbage Men @ TNF 100 Singapore

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 runners and pick up whatever they left behind. Originally we thought of all of us covering the full 50 km route but as we went along, we realised that it would be faster and easier to split ourselves up and cover different sectors. So 2 of the faster runners in the group, Terence and Voon ran ahead towards the Ghim Moh area where they will start the trash picking from there while the rest of us started picking up the trash from the Durian Trail head. Another 2, AC and Osbert had earlier parked themselves at the Mandai end and will start at around 12 noon after the runners had u-turned.

To help us in our task, the organiser had at our request, kindly provided us with litter pickers. Thank goodness for them  otherwise I don't know how we were going to do our jobs. With these mean litter pickers, we need not bend down to pick up the trash, need not dirty our hands too much and most of all, they enabled us to reach the trash that were strewed among the bushes and in the drains. 

Jancy with one of her "catch"using the litter picker. Photo by Nicholas

Kancheong Time

K. So I am a wee bit kancheong now. It is just slightly under 3 months to the longest race I going to do so far. And I have barely  started training for it. The haze  of course didn't help. 

It all started last year when I decided to run a 50km race to celebrate my 50th birthday. But I left things a bit late and somehow the year slipped by and I didn't sign up for anything. So I did the next best thing. Sign up for one this year. Nevermind that I have not run a full marathon for the longest time. To make it worse,  this is a trail race not merely a road run and the cut off time for it is a whooping 15 hours which means it is probably going to be tough as hell.

To kick off the training, I went and did a 25km trail race in Thailand in January. That turns out to be relatively easy but after that, the momentum was not maintained and the weekly mileage continued to stay at 30 km, definitely not something that is adequate for the purpose. But last week decided to use the Muar Cross Country Run, which was a half marathon semi-trail race to relaunch the training. But the haze kicked in and I lost 1 more week. And with lots of races and photoshoot assignment coming up in the next few weeks, plus the haze, I really don't think I can prepare sufficiently for it.

And how do one train for a trail race of 50km when Singapore is all so built up and the only trail we have is MacRitchie and Bukit Timah which while we called the latter a hill is just a small little mound in comparison.. There  going to be a climb of at least 1.5km with total ascent of 3.5km. Where to find such altitude to train in here?

Anyway, the next few weekends, haze permitting, will see me traversing Bukit Timah and MacRitchie and at least once every week I will be at Mt Faber trying to make the best of whatever we  have, for what it is worth. Anybody care to join me?

Never Stop Exploring - More than the usual MacRitchie Reservoir

I have been running at MacRitchie Reservoir for a number of years now and I like to think that I know the place pretty well. But last Vesak Day, we followed the runners of Trail Running Singapore for an exploratory run unto "unknown" territory.

We started off up to the usual Northern Trail. Somewhere inside the trail, we turned right onto a small trail and volia:

There was this long slanting grassy slope. It was slanting at about 30degree and kinda difficult to run on.

 There was even a small stream to add to the excitement.

Actually we were running behind the private estate along Thomson Road. The houses along the slopes are mainly bungalows and we were disturbing the dogs and causing them to bark non-stop. Luckily, they were inside the compound and we were outside.

 Eventually we came to this open patch with a gorgeous view of I presume, the Sin Ming housing estate.

It was also here that we have to turn back into the trails

And this trail leads to the Venus Drive carpark and SICC road which brought us back to the Ranger Station.

Quite interesting considering that we have never discovered this place after so many years of running in MacRitchie. Truly good to never stop exploring!

All photos courtesy of Trail Running Singapore

The North Face 100 Thailand 2013

For my first race of the year, I decided to kick it off with a slightly bigger bang than the usual road race and flew to Bangkok for the North Face 100 Thailand edition. Having heard from friends that the TNF Thailand was a fairly easy race, I decided to go for this. Of course, I wasn't up to the task of doing the 100km or even 50km and went for a safe 25km. But then the race site was moved to the more hilly PakChong district and my heart dropped a bit. 

This being my first oversea trail race and with a dismal record in the Singapore edition, I wasn't very optimistic on how I was going to fare. Will I withered in the heat of the Thailand sun? Will I get another sprain? Excuses excuses. Haha. But I was really not going for any PB or any glorious finish. What I wanted to do is to enjoy and savour the run.

So armed with my trusty hydration bag filled to to the brim with water, gel, first aid, phone and a camera, the sidekick and I found ourselves at the start line at 6 am on a cool dark morning. We then discovered that we were to put it mildly, very "overdressed". The Thai runners came without any extra - no hydration bag, no fuel belt and not even any hand carried bottles. It seems like only the foreigners were prepared to the nice while the locals apparently don't need any of these. What did they know that we didn't?

The 25km was flagged off 5 minutes later than the schedule 6 am to as the MC announced "for safety so that it will be brighter". Still we found ourselves running in the dark for at least the first half hour before it was bright enough for us to see clearly. And what a sight! We ran into the rising sun! It is moment like this that makes running so memorable!

But not too soon after that, the sun rise was forgotten as we set out legs to tackle the hills and there were many going up and up at least for the first 5km.

The trails were wide ranging from 1.5m to more than 2m wide and with not that many participants, it was fairly easy to run without any "human jam". The ground for the most part were soft trail with small loose rocks and laterites. While it may be difficult for grip, it didn't really pose any problems for those with a good pair of trail shoes. However, what we had to be mindful of was "minefields", not the type that can main or kill but something worse; cow dungs. And they were everywhere since there were plenty of farms around the areas.

For the most part, we were running right in the open and we were thankful that the sun did not come out at all. During the 3 hours we were out there, it was cloudy throughout and the temperature was around 20 to 23 degrees. With our slow pace and the great weather, it was photo shooting time as I snapped photo after photo of the every changing landscape.

The route wind through the base of the hills and the highest we climbed was all the way up to 550metres according to my GPS. Then it was a series of up and down but nothing that was really tough or not "runnable". In fact, I think at least for the 25km distance, it is easier than the Singapore edition.

This is the course elevation

This being the outskirts, there were relatively few villagers unlike in say Cambodia but nevertheless, what little support from the villagers and the kids were a sight for sore eyes.

We finally finished our sight seeing race in slightly over 3 hours. I dare say if not for the many stops to enjoy the view and take photos, we probably will have finished in under 3 hours. In any case, this was a PB since my last race of the same distance in Singapore was a miserable 3.30+ hours. 

While some may not agree, I think after completing this, that the Singapore edition is tougher. Firstly, the weather here is fantastic and I understand it is like this most time. Secondly, the trails are easier to run as opposed to the narrow and rocky trails in MacRitchie or Bukit Timah. While there are more uphill here, the gradient are not so steep and long to force one to have to walk up the slopes. Unfortunately, I heard they will be moving the race site again for next year otherwise I will highly recommend this race for beginners to trail races.

More photos can be found on my FB and Runningshots.

Trail Running at Pulau Ubin

Good friend, ultra marathoner and trail lover, Kelly Lim has started a facebook group dedicated to trail running. The objective of the group according to the burb on the page is "An online trail running community to bring together trail runners based in Singapore, provide a platform to exchange info on training and local/overseas races and running routes, and to inspire more to step out to embrace nature".

To kick off the group, she organised a trail run at the last running frontier of Singapore, Pulau Ubin. The last time I went there to run was in 2011 for the North Face Series and I thought why not? So I too went along for the fun.

Apparently great minds think alike and about 50 persons turned up for this inaugural run. Weather was great and everybody was in a good mood except for maybe a rather "wet" photographer, Marcus Lim from Running Shots who went into the sea at the island to retrieve a dropped handphone of one of the participant.

Photo from trailrunning.sg

The distance to be covered was only 10km. But there was a long long break to walk the broadwalk at Chek Jawa and photo taking and that took up nearly an hour. Some of us decided 10km wasn't really enough for a good workout after coming all the way and went an extended distance of another 5km. For once, most of the runners managed to stay together during the run so it was rather enjoyable running at a leisurely sight seeing pace. I think everybody had a great time.

For those who are interested in joining future trail runs, do check out their facebook page for the latest update.