Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore 2010
In summary, this race was a bad race for me.
3 days before the race, I was down with a bad sore throat and the day before the race, I was having slight fever. I tried to rest as early as 21:00hrs on the eve of the race date (i.e. 4 Dec 2010) but I just could not get to sleep and I have to wake up at 02:30 (on 5 Dec 2010) to get myself prepared for the race. I finally fell asleep at about 23:30 and that mean I had 3 hours of rest before the race.
At about 02:20hrs, I woke up and went to the loo to do my "big" business. I had a cup of milo and a potato for my breakfast before I went out. Reached Raffles City at about 03:25hr, waited for Jason and Fred before we took a 2km walk to the start point in Orchard Road.
My target for this race was just a sub-4 timing but it turned out quite badly this year because of a few reasons. I was aiming for a 5min/km for the first 30km and let the rest of the distance be determined by my condition of my soles. Everything seemed to work accordingly to plan pretty well until I hit my 28km.
I was doing 46:47 for the first 10km which was slightly faster than 5min/km pace. 21km was 1:42:23 which was within the 3:30 finishing target. At 28km, I had a pulled on my left calf muscle and I was forced to stop to do some stretching. At this moment, I knew I was going to be off limit for my sub-4 finishing. I was having this feeling that something was wrong with my left calf muscle a few days before the race because I could feel some pulls on the muscle occasionally while walking or sitting down. When I reached the 32km mark, my timing was 2:46:43 and I knew if I could maintain running, a sub-4 was possible, but I couldn't because
1. The muscles were complaining (maybe started to fast and lack of serious training).
2. The road surface from 30km onward was very bad because it went through construction sites from Fort Road to Marina South.
3. The merging of 42km, 21km and 10km runners at the Benjamin Shears Bridge (plus up-slope) where most of the 10km runners were walking.
I started to walk from 38km to 40km because I was blocked by the "walkers" along Sheares Bridge and the bad road surfaces before I could start to run again to the finish line. Nevertheless I finished this marathon in 4:44:05 which was my personal worst of all my marathon races.
Anyway, though it was a bad race, but it was still a valid barefoot marathon for me. I met a veteran barefoot marathoner from Malaysia (Wah Sing) and he told me that my sole is still very tender, need more training on it. Wah Sing did a remarkably good 3:36 timing yesterday.
I think in running a marathon, determination is very important. Last year I did 3:40 for the marathon (SCSM 09) with full determination and effort barefooted. This year, there was no determination and no effort put into this preparation and hence this result.
Guess what will I do for the next marathon?
Check the result here
Marathon photos can be found here.
I accidentally found an article that mentioned about me.