We reached Singapore around 1pm by Tiger Air, head straight to the race pack collection point at Changi Exhibition Center. It was very well organized, it took only few minutes to collect my race kit. After the race pack collection we wander around the exhibitors booth, everything seemed expensive since the ringgit doing badly (1$=RM3.20+-). We went to Changi Point to have lunch at the food court, and the Chicken Rice at the food court was so good. I ate normal portion while my friend Jubaque who’ll be running FM the next day, eat extra portion for carbo loading.
We checked in at our hostel , 5Footway.Inn at Bugis, which was few KM away from starting point. Sean joined us at night, he’s running same category as me 10KM Men Open, we discussed about our goals for tomorrow. Three of us were pumped up to break our PB considering the flat course throughout the race. Jubaque went early to race point to start his FM, me and Sean walked from hostel around 5:40am to the race point. The luggage deposit was systematic and there was no que at all, which gives runners additional time to warm up.
Our race scheduled to flag off at 7:15am, me and Sean warmed up nearby esplanade bridge. There was lot of crowds, everyone seem to be excited and cant wait to run. They opened barricade around 6:40am and the crowds rushed to starting line. Me and Sean stayed and did some quick strides before joining the crowd at the starting line around 7:00am. While waiting for the race to be flagged off, the Men FM leading runner ran on the other side of road, and followed by 2nd place runner.
Our race flagged off at 7:18am, there was a around 5 male Kenyans, an Eurasian, and few Kenyan females lead the race. Knowing I can’t keep up with them, I stayed on my own pace waited for someone with same capabilities to pace along. There was a Thailand runner seems to be running at same pace with me, 3:30 while closing the 1km, and I told him lets stick together and we can clock 34:50. After reaching 1.5km, he dropped and I was like ‘ughh’ with an eye roll. There seem to be no one to pace with me, the pack in front of me was going further and no one coming close to me from behind. It was going to be a lonely race, so I told myself to mark the Kenyan female in front of me and outrun her. With this plan in my mind, I hope to maintain myself the target pace and try to clock sub 35:00.
When I reached 5km mark, my timing was 17:50 which was 20 seconds away from my target. I pushed myself harder, and try to overtake the first 3rd position Kenya lady who is ahead of me. Around 7km mark I passed by her. There was another Kenyan female who’s in 2nd position , I marked her and I increase my cadence and try to maintain good form. I only managed to get close to her near , but I didn’t managed to take over her. She was really good, I should have tagged with her from the start. I managed to cross the finishing line with a timing of 35:21.
I went to #SCMS2015 with two aim, one was to break 35:00 barrier and another is to place myself in top 10 position but I only managed to do the later. I think if there was few runners that can run along with me, that might helped me as we would push each other to maintain the race pace. In meantime I must train myself to be able to maintain desired pace when I run alone. It was quite devastating when I looked at my timing, but nobody said its going to be easy. I will work harder to break 35:00 barrier.
Thank to Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon (#SCMS2015) for sponsoring me a slot to take part, without their support I wouldn’t be able to challenge myself and push myself. Thanks to Coach Din & Lau for guiding me. Thanks to my friends who kept telling me I can do it when I doubt myself. I also would like to thank my sponsors RockTape Malaysia, Marathon Baker Kyserun Krew and my friends for the support. I’ll see you in next race, till then keep on running and break the limit!
*Oh yes, I have shaved my head -_-
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