Limping Marathon Runner

Dropping my stuff at work, I went home to pack my items for the night. The NTU - NIE Director's Relay tonight for a 12 hour relay race, starts at 9pm. Form a team of 6 for competitive, team of 10 for fun run. With 12 hours, run as many laps as your team can do. Each lap around is 2.4km. No runner is suppose to do two consecutive rounds.

I met up Sotong, Cheow12 and Tiwazz at Jurong Point for some carbo loading session. My dinner was a little disappointing (no, I shall not take any pics of it).

IMD and SV did meet us at NIE and we secured a spot for us to dump our bags. After some briefing, the flag off took place at 9pm sharp and everyone sprinted! Since I was the second runner, I waited for IMD to come in through the Start/Stop line. The first runner who came in was 7mins ++. Fast. Nuclear powered legs, probably. Since IMD will need to leave at midnight, we inserted him after every other runner. At a later stage, we adjusted to after two runners. IMD was really consistent with his timing. Violet came all the way as pom-pom girl to support Cheow12. IMD SMS-ed us in the morning around 5am to check on our slack progress. I tried to keep with a 10min 30secs pace for 2.4km but failed to do so around 5th lap. Fatigue came creeping in around 3am in the morning and at 5am, it was the worst! Around my 7th round, I was really sleepy. As I ran along and over took a lady, I thought she looked pretty strong. That is good. But, about several more steps along the road, I hear a loud thud of someone who fell. It was the same lady I over took. I think it must have been the fatigue that she tripped over something. I ran back to check if she was okay. She signaled a thumbs up and asked me to carry on. I smiled and continued. Sore muscles and a really sleepy Balasing. I better concentrate on my footing. I changed to a new set of running vest and shorts around 8th lap ... wow!! I felt so much better!! I guess it did help me on my morale and I ran slightly faster. But... I did eventually cross over to 13min ++ and 14min ++ as well. No injury is the main thing for me. At my last lap, Renohtaram called me on my phone and I told him we were still at NIE. Sumiko saw me talking on my mobile phone while running and she teased me, "Waaaa... can talk on mobile phone while running??!!!". Oooops.. I'm slacking! We were really happy to complete 60 laps as a team even though we were not podium material. Runners with "A" tags were the individual runners with no team members for relay. They just kept running throughout the night. You guys deserve rounds of applause from everyone!! Personally, I salute you.

A tired body... but the company, food and race made it all worth while!

I slept for a few hours and went out for dinner with my family. We had steamboat. Let me rest for now. The haze seems to be back at 116 for PSI.