U Run Vertical Climb 2012

I did this event last year. It was fun but tiring. This year the old legs got no more strength to climb stairs so have to sit out the race. Instead, I went to kaypoh a little bit.

This year race format was similar to previous year. There was just a run segment and there was the Run 10km/Climb 30 flights of stairs segment. Both event starts at the Float at Marina. The end point was interesting. For the run only category, the race finish at the same place. For the climb, the race officially ends at One Marina Boulevard some 1km away. I didn't know that and parked myself outside the OMB only to find an empty place at least until the runners started streaming in.

The official start and finishing point

Another New GPS Watch

Surprise surprise, another company is launching a new GPS watch and its not Casio!

Epson Japan has announced that it has developed the World's lightest GPS watch.

From Epson's website: Seiko Epson Corporation ("Epson," TSE: 6724) has developed the world's lightest*1 GPS-enabled running monitor, which also boasts an extremely thin design. Designed to be worn on the wrist and equipped with long battery life*2, the monitor uses GPS to provide runners with accurate distance, pace and other data.

Epson claims it has the most accurate GPS and up to 12 hours of battery life. Whether that is true we will only know when the watch reach the market. And of course, the other questions remain. What type of pricing and will it ever reach our shore?

Read the full press release from Epson here

Expensive Race Fee?

Was going to sign up for the Energizer Night Race until I saw the race fee. Whoa, $65 for a 16km race! If I remember correctly, that was more expensive than the full marathon. So I chicken out. Too kiamseap. But that set me thinking, there has been many complaints in the Sgrunners forum about ever increasing race fee. Is our race fee really that expensive?

So I did some googling and came out with some findings.

Firstly, a comparison of the Energizer Night Race which is held in several countries. Unfortunately, I only managed to find the race fee for 2 other countries, one in far away South Africa and the other, the badly organised Malaysia Night Race. All races came with event tee or finisher tee, medal and other novelties items including headlamp. The Johannesburg race only has a 5km trail whereas the Malaysia had a version with full marathon and the full works so for equal comparison, I selected only the shortest category for each country and no surprise there, Singapore came out as the most expensive.

Next I compared another series race - the Mizuno Wave Run. This time I had Hongkong and Malaysia for comparison. And again Singapore  emerge as the most expensive race.

So it would seem that all the complains were spot on and Singapore is indeed the most expensive place to race. For a final comparison, I looked at the major marathon races among the region and surprise surprise, Singapore was not the most expensive. Tokyo had the most expensive race fee followed by Gold Coast, Australia. 

Conclusion from this mini unscientific survey. Singapore is indeed the most expensive place to race for smaller races but for international races, the race fee is average. So if you feel that the wallet is tight and want to save some money, take part in the longer distance/major races. It is better value for money.

4 Hills Run

It has been a long time since I ran this particular route. This is one of my favourite place to run but also one of the toughest being as the route name suggest, comprising of 4 hills namely Mount Faber, Telok Blangah Hill, Kent Ridge and Labrador Reserve. Used to be that a main part of this route was on the pavement along  Telok Blangah Road but with the completion of the Berlayer Creek and Bukit Chermin Boardwalk, this has since been very much reduced.

The view of the Henderson Wave Bridge. Sometime we run up Mt Faber and use this bridge to cross Henderson Road or sometime we just cross the road at the traffic light to reach Telok Blangah Hill.

This is part of the Forest and Earth Walk trail at the Telok Blangah Hill which forms part of the Southern Ridges. Looks like there was a landslide and they are pouring concrete to stablish the ground.