Singapore Marathon - 1st Half-Marathon

I ran my firt half marathon on Sunday and am very proud to say that I completed it; running all the way! Slow, but still running.........

I woke up at 4.30am to chow down a piece of peanut butter bread before heading off to get a ride from sister Peng and BIL Paul. My darling sister had bought me much needed equipment: body glide, gu-gel and a super thick pair of socks to protect my blistering feet!

We got to Raffles City before 5.30am and I still managed to be late for the 6.30am flag-off! I met up with galfriends; Chin, San and Lynette and we mucked about going to the toilet, eating bananas, drinking red bull and were 10mins late starting. The girls were so super-lapak about the race that we ran at snail's pace and chatted non-stop for the 1st hr. I have only run with Chin once before and found the chatting quite disconcerting since I normally need to be quite focused when I run! I am however very relieved that I ran with the girls this time because the chatting helped me pace myself and made the whole run go by so quickly!

I ran with my pedometer but the distance per the distance markers and per my pod were so different that it confused me. (At the end of the run, my pod read 24km!!! Think it is time to get it calibrated!) The 12km mark was probably the most difficult. Chin had been up since 2am recce-ing the site for work so was not taking the run seriously and Lynette had a bad knee and wasn't really allowed to run. Both girls dropped off at about the 10km mark and I pretty much ran with San all the way except for the last 2km. I was starting to hit the ceiling and needed to pick up speed to stay focused so I "abandoned" ship and went ahead.

I finished the race at 2hrs33mins (chip time), 11mins behind my alpha-sis Peng (that gave birth 4 months ago!) I could probably have done it quicker, but I didn't kill myself over the run and actually had fun! (995th place out of 3,000 people is within the 50th Percentile so Nic won't give me an ear-full this time!)

The champ of the day was Stephan though. He ran the 750m kids dash like his life depended on it. He kept telling me that he wanted to get the Gold Medal. I told him that everybody was gonig to get a Gold Medal anyway but I guess he didn't believe me! Honestly, I had difficulty keeping up with him!
Steph collecting everyone's race kits!

All in all, it was a great day. I felt so good after the race that I was ready to head-off to Hawaii to do the Marathon with the girls this weekend. I was all psyched up to go but could not get a flight! sigh.