My Itchy Fingers

Yellow Ribbon Prison Run 2015

Itchyfingers has always wanted to join the Yellow Ribbon Prison Run to try out its many challenging inclined slopes along the route but somehow it always clashed with some other runs or dates that we couldn’t make it. This year, we finally signed up for it after deciding to try a new run.

Unfortunately, thanks to our neighboring country’s annual oil palm plantation burning, our usually clean air has been badly polluted. The sky had been covered by haze for at least a week now and getting worse. The organiser had to pre-empt participants of a possible scaled down event if the haze reached a PSI reading of over 100.

Alas, at 5am on Sunday morning, a final announcement was made that the 10km competitive run was to be cancelled, and the 6km run will be changed to a fun walk, so the participants would not be over-exerting ourselves under the bad weather condition. It was very disappointing when I woke up at 6am to read the message, but Itchyfingers decided to go ahead and join in the walk anyway.

The shuttle bus pick-up point at Expo took about 20 minutes to reach Changi Village, and by the time we walked to the starting point a few traffic lights away, it was already past 7.45am. So if the 10km run wasn’t cancelled, a lot of us would have been late for the run…

My first time walking this route…hahah

We were more than three minutes late….

Many people were seen taking photos with the huge yellow ribbon tied on lamp posts and trees. Itchyfingers also want! Hahah….

We were not supposed to take photos of prison facilities but I guess an unused old prison site is ok?

Walking on the Road to Acceptance, to give ex-offenders a second chance in life…This was one of the upslopes…

Took about half an hour to reach 2km! Didn’t even see the 1km marker!

Soon we reached the “Happily Ever After Running (in this case, ‘Walking’) Trail”

The first fairy tale characters were the Ugly Ducklings…Will you be kind to it and accept it? If yes, say “Quack”!

When we saw this, we thought it was a replica since it was inside a restaurant….

But apparently, it is the real thing!

Itchyfingers fooling around again….

Was looking for real birds…

Then realised Ugly Ducklings had turned into Beautiful Swans…hahaha…. 

We passed by Changi Chapel and Museum, which Itchyfingers visited few years back

These Princesses appeared without warning and they were popular! I thought it was cleared and ran in to take photo, but apparently the other guy still hasn’t had enough yet! Hahah….

The sign came too late! Hahaha….I think I missed the Frog Prince…

Didn’t turn on my GPS so lost count of how long we walked….Before we knew it, we were at the end of the 6km walk….Did I miss the distance markers again? This is the old Changi Prison Gate

Wow! We took so long for our leisurely walk and photo taking!

After this finishing point, we had to walk quite a distance to the tentage to collect our finishing medals….Was wondering why made us walk so long…Then we realised only 6km runners were supposed to walk so far…For 10km runners, we had a separate finishing point which was just next to the carnival tentage….

The unused 10km finishing point…Next year, ok? Next year we will pass through you!

First time collected a medal and felt no sense of achievement…hahaha….Maybe the achievement is having survived walking in the hazy condition….

The medal featured the old Changi Prison Gate

Will definitely try to come back again next year for the 10km run!