Here’s the yin to the ST Run yang.
It has been around twelve hours since I finished my first Sundown half marathon, and the experience is still pretty vivid in my head. I thought it’ll be nice to have a longer write-up/reflection on this race because it has got to be one of my worst races in my years of recreational running.
In short, I had trained and was pretty confident of hitting a target timing of 1 hours 35 mins for 21.1km, or at an average pace of 4:30/km. My previous personal best was 1 hours 45 minutes. Today, I completed the distance in 1 hour 57 minutes.
Basically… today I barely hit an average pace that I was previously very comfortable with, so much so that I was able to pace others during the Run 350 half marathon.
What went wrong?
Probably everything… Hahaha.
In fact, I should rename this post as “Everything you should not do during a race”.
Getting to the Start line
I wasn’t late for the race, but I might as well have been. I made a total beginner’s mistake of queuing up for toilets too late before the flag-off (and worse, I picked a very slow moving queue). By the time I “joined” the snake for the flag-off, don’t-know-how-many waves of runners have started their half marathon. I crossed the start line a full 21 minutes after the initial flag off. It has got to be my latest start in a race.
And of course, waiting in line with a few hundred other “late” runners to enter the start pen meant I got dehydrated pretty quickly. It’s not the coolest weather around, especially with the heat from other runners.
The first 3km – Start point to Fort Road
Being at the back doesn’t bode well for my goal to hit 4:30/km. There were too many recreational joggers/walkers occupying every piece of space they can find on the roads. As usual, there was zero race etiquette in Singapore, but in this case I can only blame myself because I am clearly in the 7:xx/km zone. Second noob mistake: trying too hard to squeeze out of the crowd. There was too much sudden acceleration and deceleration involved, not to mention lots of lateral movement as I tried to find the path of least resistance. Needless to say, I was planting a lot of fatigue into my legs, as these are actions that I don’t do during my training.
The route designers at Hivelocity clearly wanted runners to have a memorable and so-called limitless experience, and they went pretty much no-limits on the route. Just after the first km (where I surprisingly managed to clock 4:48), we were running up the slip road from Republic Boulevard to ECP, on the Benjamin Sheares bridge… which is probably one of the highest in Singapore.
I’m not overly worried about hills. As the crowd thinned and as most started to walk up, I found the slight increase in space liberating and unfortunately, I sped up the steep incline. The long decline immediately after was a bit too shiok and I was going too fast. In my head, I was like “I can still keep to 4:30/km”, especially after clocking 4:09/km on my second km.
Unfortunately, the five-lane wide road soon came to an end and we started to filter out of the expressway through the Fort Road exit, which is single-lane (or at most double-lane). Because I’m so behind, there are many runners here too, and I had to resume the dreaded “find a nice path to speed ahead” motion. By the time the path got a bit better (which equated to less jiggling around), I was well into East Coast.
4-7km: To the East Coast U-turn
The first leg of the East Coast leg was me trying to find a rhythm and trying to keep to the pace. This was when I realised the fatigue from the earlier kms is catching up to me, as despite putting what I felt was a 4:30/km effort, I was only able to hit around 4:45/km (which is ironically slowly than my overall ST race pace, which felt comfortable to me). And I was also getting a bit dehydrated, as I had missed out on the first hydration point. When the 2nd point came along at 7km or so, I was probably too dehydrated (since my sweat can only remove the heat to a limited extent and I sweat way too much).
At the water point, I needed to stop, grab a cup and catch my breath. Pretty weird, huh? Well, at least that was what I thought at that point.
7-11km: Getting out of East Coast
After the u-turn, there was much more space. I finally felt a bit cooler, too. Time to focus on completing the race. At this point I thought I still had hope to at least beat my PB, because I was well under 5:00/km average pace. I didn’t check my watch during this stretch (‘run by feel’), but turns out my pace had dropped further, and hovering in the 4:55/km to 5:15/km region. That is not good because I thought I was putting in a pretty consistent effort.
Unfortunately at around 9km, I felt like I still wasn’t able to get into a consistent breathing pattern, which is probably crucial for me to sustain a more or less even pace. It was haphazard and weird. I also found my legs to feel heavier, especially when exiting from East Coast.
That’s when things really took a nosedive.
11-15km: Marina East Drive, and that long long stretch
Leaving the familiar environs of East Coast, the running pack around me thinned considerably. I had run past the 2:30 and 2:20 pacers by this point, which frankly doesn’t say much, except that I finally had the air I needed. At this stretch, however, I found my body to literally start dozing off. Wasn’t able to really wake those legs. Fatigued or tired, I wasn’t sure… but they just won’t move at the cadence that I was previously used to. And my, they just grew more and more tired.
Until I gave in and started to walk a bit.
Oh, that slippery slope of walking.
The last time I walked during a race was during my maiden full marathon at StandChart five years ago. And it wasn’t even until 25 to 27km then.
Needless to say I was already disappointed and upset with myself.
I soon adopted a walk-a-tiny-bit-and-jog strategy for this stretch, but as the watch beeped and I saw my splits freefall it was hard not to feel bad.
5:16, 5:30, 5:45, 5:38 (a slight rebound before…), 6:30.
The last part of this area included a very long straight stretch down a long straight road next to Bay East gardens. Right after the u-turn, I walked again. It was too tough – the tight turning almost made my right leg cramp. That’s when I know things were getting even worse.
15-20km: Marina East to Bay East, to Barrage and then to Bayfront Bridge, aka the “Wow this sucks pretty bad” phase
I was super dehydrated by the time I felt that initial twitch of a cramp. I don’t think I was even losing heat anymore – merely accumulating it. The only respite was pouring water on myself, and the water points were not close enough for my comfort. For prevent the cramps from really coming, I decided to play it safe and walk more. I knew if I cramped for real before 20km, it would be a very painful walk to the finish, and at this point I just wanted to finish, go home, and sleep.
After the water point at Bay East, we entered the so-called “Skyline Promenade”, which is the long stretch next to the water as we headed towards Marina Barrage. It’s a beautiful stretch, and it’s also familiar. Ever since joining RD, this has been a usual part of my Wednesday runs. Needing to walk and jog (it was becoming equal-parts-walk-and-jog by this point) was extremely mentally draining. It made me wonder how I did all those 4:xx/km runs along this stretch.
There were some positive points along this section. I remember as I neared Bay East, someone shouted my name and that was such a morale booster that I went on a pretty good jog (relative to my current physiological state) for a while. Until the twitches came, of course.
Soon, the Marina Barrage loop loomed. The pain of knowing that I’ve run 6 rounds of the loop at 4:20/km pretty easily just last week stung as I walked all the way up, and slowly slowly jogged my way down. At this point I was incredulous how I was breathing pretty hard even though I was just walking.
The return leg soon beckoned, and this part is even more familiar. The stretch along Gardens by the Bay, between the Barrage and MBS. Virtually every RD run on Wednesday will cover this stretch. I thought of the happy moments running with those buddies, and the moments I had covering this stretch alone – tired, but still strong. Here, I was basically making a mockery of the race theme of “Limitless” – clearly I found my limits for tonight.
Rui Feng ran past me nearing the end and was shocked that I was walking. So was Alvin. I tried to jog but it was difficult as I was already cramping by now. (Guess my conservative strategy didn’t work all the way)
20km-Finish: That Bayfront Bridge
There was a last water point at 20km, just underneath the Bayfront bridge. How funny that they have one last hydration point just one km from the Finish. I drank enough, and told myself that there was just one km left. And it’s the Bayfront bridge – I have done it numerous times in both directions. Just gotta do it one more time, and slowly.
Perhaps it’s the fact that I know that I’m really nearing the end and the cramps didn’t matter that allowed me to just slowly move up the slope and move back down without cramping. The end soon neared and I hobbled my way across the Finish. It’s so funny thinking about it now. The runners around me were picking up pace and ending gloriously, and I was just glad that I didn’t have to walk across the line.
And then I heard the final beeps from the timing mats, and I stopped my Garmin.
Finally.
Conclusion
After chatting with Declan for a bit I headed home, relieved that I made it, and even more relieved that I didn’t cramp up during the drive back. As I was clearing my stuff before I showered and slept I thought about the race and realised that it felt quite a bit like the second half of a full marathon than the first half. In that sense, I’m glad because I have plans to complete a full marathon at the end of the year, and it’s a good, timely lesson about racing and knowing how to pace yourself.
There are probably many reasons why this race failed. One reason is my late start. One reason is also due to the weird timing of the race, which only made sense to me during the run. I was basically running in the hours that I would normally be sound asleep by. And of course, another reason could be I just wasn’t prepared enough. In this case, it’s the mental preparation than the physical one.
After all, I did a 4:42/km rather easily last week, on a race just 3km (less, actually) shorter than a full marathon. It was the relaxed mentality, the “anything also can” mindset that allowed me to enjoy the run and feel the strength to say “good morning” to the volunteers and move on. (One good aspect about this race is the volunteers – they were cheering the runners on, some albeit quietly. Other races… any encouragement is pretty much a bonus) I was running that race with a smile on my face.
That is probably the biggest takeaway from this race.
Enjoying the run will probably do a lot more for performance than worrying about achieving even or negative splits.
So, in the end, PB unbroken (even though it was almost a sure-thing), cramped legs, and disappointment. But it’ll make all my other runs a lot sweeter.
Swee Life 