This race started with a bit of a drama in the morning. I planned to take the train, the green line, all the way to Chinese Garden, and walk to the start line from there. But as I waited for the train, it never came. I, and many of the runners, were standing around the Buona Vista MRT for about 20 minutes, until there was an announcement that the train was delayed for indefinite time… and it was like 6 in the morning! Pfft.
Everyone started to call for cabs, and many of them didn’t get any. I decided to go to the nearest bus station, and tried to take the bus… But that means, I wouldn’t make it on time to the race start line.
Then, Shinta messaged on our MamaRunners Whatsapp group, that she would be a bit late because she was still on the way to the race venue… by car. So I ended up asking her and Ario to pick me up on the side of the street, on their way to the race village. We arrived just before the race started, but ended up on the last pen and started quite late. The rest of the MamaRunners have already started at the first pen.
Another thing about this race was the knee thing. After spoken to my physio about the knee pain that kept coming up in the past two weeks, she decided that I wasn’t allowed to run for more than 1k at a time, and I need to learn how to tape my knee to minimize the pain… So, I decided to do most of the race by brisk-walking.
After passing the starting line, I ran along with Shinta until the 1k mark… then, the knee started to feel weird, so I stopped running and continued with the brisk-walking. Then, I brisk-walked for the whole 8k… I’ve been brisk-walking a lot since I injured my knee (since I wasn’t allowed to run and jump for a while), so my walking was actually quite fast.
After the 9k mark, there were more race photographers scattered on the path, and I didn’t want to look like I was walking in the picture, so I started running again. This time, I ran all the way to finish, acting as if I was running the whole time… haha.
My time was 1 hour and 20 minutes. Not bad for running only the first and the last km, and walk for the rest of 8k. I guess it was my Walking PB… Hehehe.
I was greeted with Ari, Aina and Snowy at the finish line. They came by later after we started the race to join us at the carnival.
Then, after taking pictures with my girl, we all met up with the rest of MamaRunners. We also met Pak Eddy, the one of the IndoRunner Singapore, who’s also Ari’s soccer buddy.
Ironically, this was the first race that I ever got a finisher tee… This race gave finisher tee to 10 runners. So I got my first finisher tee by walking!
The rest of the photos are in Jurong Lake Run 2013 photo album at Flickr.
