My Itchy Fingers

Running for Real…

Itchyfingers just finished the toughest run we have ever joined so far. This year’s edition of the Real Run has been moved back to Sentosa after six years at Changi. From our past experiences for our Half Marathons with the Standard Chartered, I knew that the route at Sentosa will involve many slopes. But it turned out to be much tougher for me. The organiser has kindly arranged for three familiarisation runs before actual race day. But each time we couldn’t make it…and I was unfortunately sick for quite a long period of time to join them too. Unlike the previous three years where the organiser listed down the actual distance on each different terrain, this time the new organiser did not do the same. The interactive race map on the official site looked intimidatingly long and this year, we had to run along the sandy beach not just once, but twice! That’s double the challenge I guess!

A screen shot of the map

To my dismay at the starting point, I discovered that my newly charged battery has mysteriously drained away with just one bar left! Time to get new battery! That made me lose the mood to take photos along the way.

We came early so were not too far from the starting point…But eventually
more people came and went ahead to fill up the space in front…

The first two kilometres were uneventful for me as it was the usual route we had run before. But I noticed my GPS watch recording a longer distance then the official distance marker.

Slightly after four kilometers, we ran onto the first sandy terrain…

The beach is generally flat, unlike the one we ran at Changi Beach where
it was nearer to the sea and inclined at an angle. Nonetheless, it is always
a challenge to run on the beach as your feet tend to sink in the soft sand,
hence taking more effort to complete the roughly 400 metres beach…

Did not take any more photos for the day…Getting lazy. Overall, it was a challenging route with varying slopes – there were a couple of upslopes where many of us struggled, especially the part after the Siloso Beach. Some part of the routes were undulated while there were times we were all speeding down long gentle slopes…I kinda ignored my watch timing cos it is tough to keep up with my usual pace with such terrains and bottlenecks were common when the road got narrower. The last time I checked my watch was before I turned into Tanjong Beach, another second stretch of 500 metres or so flat sand beach, and I was surprised to see it recorded 8.8km already.

I finally made my way out of the beach some super long four minutes later, was a bit confused how much more to go before the finishing line since I did not study the route map properly. As my watch was recording a longer distance, I was not sure how much longer it would go. Thank goodness the last 250 metres distance marker finally appeared and that was when you could see the finishing point…Used up all my last bit of energy and dashed across! Nearly died…hahah…Finally made it across some 1hr 20min later for my 4th Real Run…my worse timing since my first 10km run! Wahahah…But a check on my watch showed 10.80km…Even if I were to take into account the difference between gun time (the actual flag-off time) and my net time (the actual starting time since not everyone can squeeze to the front of the line), it would still not be very much better…hahah…But I am so glad that I did not give up and start walking on the beach part…I may be slow, but still running for real! Wahaha… 😀

One of the most hard-earned medals…hahha

Back

Also see related posts:
> Keeping it Real for Real Runners
> The Ultimate X-Terrain Challenge – New Balance Real Run 2010