I will never ever forget today, among the many other memories.
Started the day by waking up late, so i made my way down to the race site of Raw Duathlon (10km run, 40km bike, 10km run). I had got the slot free cause of someone's kindness, so i decided to do this race ust for fun. I definitely got more than what i bargained for.
I reached the race site very late, and luckily was able to get the race tags to enter the transition area from Ling Er. there was one whole rack empty at one corner (lucky me!) so i took it and laid out my things over the whole area, and rushed to the starting line.
The first 10k was good, the run course was generally flat. 1 loop was 5km so i had to do 2 loops. this ang moh kept chasing me the whole way till the last 2k where i decided to break him. Easily found my bike in the transition area (my bike had one whole area to itself) and went off on the bike.
The bike was fun, i had a good time checking out the many different bikes there were, overtaking most. Less than 10 people overtook me. I even managed to catch up with Josh on the 3rd loop (he cramped) and then from there we took turns drafting each other and finished the bike together. I took my own sweet time for T2, eating banana and drinking water before i started on the last 10k. By now the sun was up in its full balzing glory. GG
omygdness. the run course totally reminded me of Kona, Hawaii, where the Ironman World Championship is held. All u see is a long road, with heat radiating off the concrete road, the sun beating down on u with absolutely no shade at all. The heat was brutal, oppressive and plain horrible. It was no longer doing a good time for me, my aim was now to just survive and complete the run. I was just basically running from aid station to aid station, pouring water down my head, face and back when i reached them. It got soooo bad that i took off the top half of my trisuit to cool off while running. Screw the rule on not allowing us to run bare-torsoed.
At the 6k mark i broke. I started walking. For the first time ever in a race i asked myself, why am i doing this? and i had no answer. then eddie from key power int'l overtook me , and i thought "i will never let myself down if i stop here. if i stop now, i will let myself to stop again in future races" so i started running again, just aiming for the next aid station ahead.
I finally finished (dunno my time, results havent come out yet) and i downed like 1 litre of milo from the milo truck available. Truly, this was the most toughest race i've done so far, beating lake kenyir and singapore 70.3 . At the end my speedo's temperature read 44 degrees celsius. what the hell.
thanks lala, QR, sunny, sumiko, ling er, alvin, bear bay, eddie and sham for the encouragements along the way, it helped me to keep going on. thanks josh for the gd race and the lift home! very thankful and appreciate it! and thanks to the people who cheered for me by name, sorry i couldnt identify who u guys were! and bernette, who were part of the performers who were cheering everyone on at the race!
after all this, i went home washed up and went to school to mug, before my next event, trifactor swim trial at queenstown swimming complex. thanks lala for the lift down, very nice of u!!!!! met josh there and we just trashed everyone in the 1km swim trial. hahaha.
ok i summarized the last part cause i got to get back to mugging for tomorow's paper. dun want a repeat of my gender studies disaster. ciao!
2 comments:
Hi, don't know you but stumbled upon your blog recently. I took part on Sunday as well and my experience was very similar to yours. I did the team relay and only ran the 3rd leg, so i can only imagine how much tougher the last 10km was for all you individual participants. I'm a decent 10km/half-marathon runner and since I was doing this for fun with a couple of friends, didn't really anticipate the 50mins of suffering that took place during my run. I told myself to take it easy at the start of my run since it was already close to 10:30am (my team mates aren't the fastest I know) but barely 2km into the course, I knew that I was in trouble. You are right about it turning into a battle for survival more than doing a good time. There were points when the heat got so bad, I thought my body was going to suffer heatstroke and shutdown. It was really crazy and dangerous being out there. I suffered way more than I normally do during half and full marathons. Congrats though, very admirable that you finished that 10km run after doing the first 2 legs of the duathlon.
hi anon, thanks for sharing your experience too! ya they should seriously change the run route. just because it's raw doesnt mean that people have to die doing it.
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