SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL MARATHON 2005 (4 DECEMBER 2005)

Chip time 5hr 58 min 54 sec
Gun time 5hr 59 min 2 sec

This is considered my worst performance out of the 4 full marathons I have completed this year. The race started at 6 am at the Esplanade Bridge. The route for the full marathon was quite similar to the route last year although I ran the half marathon last year. For the first one hour, I ran in quite a relax pacing. At 7 am, the sun began to rise. It was still fine until 8 am. After 8 am, I could feel the heat from the sun. At that point of time I was approaching the East Coast Park area. I continued running until 24km mark where I started to hit the wall. From there onwards, I had to walk and run for the entire 17km.

I was overtaken by some of the familiar running friends including Shrilyn Tay (ST) of Singapore at 27km. From that point onwards, I was telling myself that this going to be crazy as the sun was too hot for me to bear. At 37 km mark, I was overtaken by Chui-Miew (Blue Ameba). I continued walk and run until 40km mark. After the 40km mark, I started to feel giddy and I was gong to faint if I continued walking. I decided to lie down on the bench for 4 minutes. I was lucky as I saw Tony (Penguin 3) approaching me and gave me a bottle of water. I used the water to hydrate my self. I keep on walking until 42km mark where I decided to give myself the last push as the time was approaching 6 hours. I sprinted to the finishing line and screaming in pain as my legs were going to cramp. I crossed the finishing line barely less than 1 minute before the standard cut off time of 6 hours. This race however has no time limit. I was so lucky to be able to finish within 6 hours as I had earlier expected the worst race for me to encounter. I suffered cramps on my legs but it lasted for a few seconds. I was lucky I did not collapse as I had experience before in Ipoh International Run 2004 (21km) and Seremban Half Marathon 2005.

Overall, I suffered in the race but I still enjoy the pain of the most suffering marathon race. The pain is indeed my good friend as I will have to get used to it if I were to run ultramarathon. I shall be back for the next year race. I’ll treat this race as a good learning experience for me under the humid and hot condition.

Some interesting points to share with you.

1. The plum powder drink that I used in Singapore could not work as I hit the wall at 24km mark as compared to 41km mark in Songkhla. It can only work when running under cooling weather condition such as Songkhla and Kuala Lumpur.
2. If you are planning to perform better in Singapore, you need to train yourself to run under the hot sun for 30km. If lack of such training, you can replace this with high mileage training run. Otherwise, you may be suffering like me or other runners.
3. I suffered from sun burn as a result of scorching sunlight.