Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2007

The big day came and I went to pick at KC at the agreed time. Took the PIE-CTE route and was bit surprised to see the slow moving traffic along Orchard Road to Bras Basah road. It was like 8 pm on a Saturday night. But then again, there was a record 12 thousand full marathon runners and another 10 thousand half marathon runners this year, so come to think of it, its not surprising at all.

Picked up Dave at the car park entrance of Raffles City S.C., by then the free car park lot was at 50+! I found one empty lot at the new car park extension and within the next five minutes, the surrounding lots were fully occupied. By 5 am, I believe there should be less than 10 lots left.

We arrived at the Cenotaph where KC was supposed to meet up with Clement and Teck Lim. But in the end KC left without meeting them as it was near the starting time of the full marathon.

The Half-marathon start time was at 6.15am, so me and Dave had more than half hour to warm up, so we also took the chance to camwhore abit.

Me at Cenotaph

Dave

We got to Esplanade Bridge at 6 am and slowly move towards the starting point near One Fullerton. At 6.15 am, we were off to our 21.5 km quest.

Dave sprint off as usual, while I ran at my own pace. Compared to the AHM (Bay run) back in August, this was a much better start as most of the runners were really running/jogging. Along the way I found a lady runner with a similar pace and use her as my pacer until I got out of Marina South.

For the first 12 km I was consciously taking note of my timing:

• 1 km - 6 min
  
• 4 km - 25 min
• 6 km - 37 min
• 7 km - 45 min
• 9 km - 57 min
  
• 10 km - 1 hr 7 min
• 11 km - 1 hr 11 min

When I checked my 11 km timing, I thought something was wrong with the distance marker. They must have screwed up with the 10 km marker as I could never have used 4 minutes to cover 1 km.

Anyway, I kept myself hydrated along the way by taking sips of water at almost every drink station and drank more when 100 plus was available. Although it was a cooling morning compared to previous years, but the sun was up before 7 am.

The challenge came at the Nicoll Highway/Merdeka Bridge. It was slightly sloppy which requires extra effort. Some distance after the U-turn, I finally stopped running. I conserve some energy and ran up the bridge and walked again after turning into Republic Boulevard.

I was still aiming for 2hr 15 min, but time checked at the 40 km mark (approx. 19 km mark) shows that I had took 2hr 6 min. No way was I able to hit that timing. So I slow down again...

Finally after turning into St Andrew's Road road, I tried to sprint at the last 50 meter, but I felt a slight muscle pull at my left calf. So no choice but to slow jog to the finishing line.

Final timing on my watch - 2 hr 25 min.

That is a record for me personally :-).

Still pondering about doing a full marathon next year....