20km @East Coast Parkway

I SIGNED UP for a training run that was held yesterday at East Coast Parkway. Such training clinics would provide water points and distance markers to simulate the actual run for us. For only SGD6, I would say that it's quite a reasonable deal. One gets a feel of how the actual race is going to be like. It's like a rehersal prior to a performance.

I went for this run alone as Aung had a course at Outward Bound School for an Abseiling Instructor Course. I arrived at the gather point early and got myself registered. The organisers put up the route map on a big piece of cardboard beside the registration table. To be honest, the distance that I had to cover really appeared threatening. The angel in my head was shouting, "Go for the 20km! You can do it! Pace well! Tell yourself that you can!". But then the devil also suddenly woke up and said, "Hey, you sure you can do this? Come on, you should only increase at most 10% of your last longest distance. Which means you should run at most 16.5km!"

I stopped looking at the route map and shooed the Angel and Devil in my head away. While I was stretching my limbs, two cheery faces appeared before me. Hey ... it's Ting & CH! I had seen their pictures and read of their runs, makan night outs, sightings ... etc so many times on Ting's Blog, but never managed to meet them in the earlier runs that I had participated. Ting commented that I looked very much more serious when I was not smiling like the pictures that I put up on my humble blog. Hey, how friendly can one look trying to shoo away an Angel and a Devil fighting in my head??

I was happy that Ting and CH slowed down to match my pace and ran with me. They had only signed up for the 10km run as they had not been running much recently. Ting was exactly what I expected her to be in person. She was very friendly, chatty and sincere. CH turned out to be quieter and more shy a person than I expected him to be. With his passion for kilts and photography, I expected him to be more whacky and talkative.

The one hour or so of run with them passed in no time at all as we got to know one another. I was sad to wave them goodbye as I continued the second 10km on my own. The second half was definitely tougher as the route was very much less shady and the heat from the sun was getting merciless. I willed myself to keep a steady pace and not to stop.

*

As I reached the finishing point about an hour and 15 minutes later, I was greeted by the same two cheery faces again! They had decided to wait for me while they "pat tor" (rendezvous) there! It was so nice to see familiar faces at the end of a run. Thanks guys!

*

Ting offered me more valuable tips on preparation and nutrition to prepare myself well for the coming Standard Chartered Half Marathon. She's really like my mentor for marathons! It's too bad that she will be having a business trip on 7Dec08. I would love to run with her again. Here's her post for the good run yesterday.

*

By the way, I sent in my story of my past failed attempts to join the Standard Chartered Marathon for the Adidas Inspirator Contest. I was informed last week that my story was chosen to win the one-day Adidas sponsorship for the half marathon. The T-shirt that I would be wearing for the run would have my own tagline printed on it. What an encouragement!