la merde en direct: le marathon!

Voilà! I'm back from the marathon! Weather was extremely good today, mostly alot of cloud cover and was not sunny AT ALL!

Started my marathon last night by carbo loading at Brewerz with 3 pints. Reached home but only slept at 12+ as my bodyclock is now like totally screwed up. No matter how I tried I couldn't sleep! Woke up groggy at 3am this morning (hey at least I got up!) then proceeded to the Marina after the usual pre-race preparations. (afternote: parking at Marina is damn expensive! Paid $11 for parking!!! Seriously it is more siong than the marathon! Next time walk to Padang or take public transport..)

Saw alot of people I knew even before the marathon. Met the rest of the pacers at the Cenotaph. Proceeded to the starting pens like 15 mins before the start. Even then, it was extremely packed! Whew.. After the race started it was much better. Did a very easy pace as my target finishing timing was 5hrs.

The 1st 21km flew by very easily. My team was laughing and joking most of the way to alleviate the boredom. We also checked ourselves quite constantly for our pace to make sure that we were not going too fast (very easy to lapse into this problem) or too slow. Maybe the pace was too slow or what, it started to get quite bad for me about the 30km mark. Was it the dreaded wall? Maybe. My body was not suited, even after 2 months of pacer training, to take the slow pace. Furthermore, I really felt like going to take a dump. Haha. Nevertheless, managed to keep the pace even though my body felt like running faster, so that I can stop running sooner.

If people were overtaking us in the first 21km, then we were overtaking alot of people in the 2nd half of the marathon. You could see that these runners were really struggling, and it reminded me of my race last year where I had a terrible ITB injury. Luke, Yanglyn and me took turns to cheer people up, commenting on their Adidas reasons, making small talk and generally keeping the environment positive. Meeting people we knew was also quite inspiring as we could encourage each other along.

The last 10km is always quite torturing cos the route turns into Lavender and there's alot of traffic. However it also means that we are 3/4 done. Yep we did a countdown all the way from 32km to the end. Everytime we passed a distance marker we would clap and cheer. You could see that the cheering really helped some people as they made some effort to start running/hobbling/fast walking. Wah got this girl who came up to me and told me I was her inspiration somemore!!! =D So touched lor.. Quite chio somemore. Hehe.

So yeah last 1.195km onwards I started really herding people, yelling at them that they had to be in front of me if they wanted a sub-5 hour timing. Hehe. Quite fun leh. Machiam PTI liddat, so sadistic. So yeah I finished the marathon in 5 hrs 00 mins 11 secs (gun time). Not bad for a first time pacer! It was truly fun and rewarding. Met alot of people too, like BG Bernard Tan (former CAO), LTC Lim Tong Peng (who never fails to have a smile on his face), MAJ Paul (I told you that you could do it!), Grace (of course! my training partner cum swim coach leh. Plus I tompang her, how to miss?!), Susan (who went with us for training ever so religiously), Billy & Tricia (triathlon's golden couple), Boon Tat (trailblazer bitch), and not to mention all the many many other trifam, NUS or Army friends along the way. (Sorry too many of you to remember! I shack cannot think.. =P)

The route this year stayed largely similar to previous years. The only difference was that the marina loop was slightly longer as we had to run to the new ferry terminal. This meant that we looped around the lagoon at ECP instead of heading all thw way down to Bedok jetty. Well I thought that this was a good move since usually most people hit the wall at about 30-32km and having more supporters situated at this critical area could help to boost their morale.

Aching knees and sore legs now but yeah still have to study for fluids later. Bleah. In the meantime there's IM WA on-going. Ah Beng has finished with a great timing of 13h 28 but Jin Seng, Adrian and Ron have yet to finish. Really worried for them.

Ok gotta go already. Looking forward to Tuesday - the end of exams! Till then, au revoir!