You Only Live Once, I think many runners can link it to a tagline that You Only Run Once 🙁
Confirm many people gonna boycott the organisers. If next year there is no huge discounts for runners that were in this mess, next year they can expect the runners to be very little. Not angry but disappointed because the run is only 6.9km according to my Garmin! 😕 Maybe I’m silently wishing I can run a personal best for this run but my Garmin was telling me I might just run about the same timing at most. Recently busy till some runs I did not blog but this one really must blog because of such madness. YOLO Run Facebook page are full of complaints from frustrated and angry runners.
My 10km medal is not really something memorable and meaningful or something that I could keep with pride anymore because it’s just 7km, the organisers should mail us a 7km lanyard right? And sibeh jialat, a friend said he queued 4 hours to collect his bag! WTH! Luckily I returned in 40 minutes for the 7km and the first thing I did is to collect my bag and done within 5 minutes. While queueing, I heard that the runners front and back also says they ran just 7km, so it’s not just me. The first thing I thought after my baggage deposit when I see the baggage deposit has only a few counters for all the 21km, 10km and 5km runners is confirm jam one. And it really jam till jialat jialat. Lucky me if not queue 4 hours, really can siao 🤢 Runners even end up go and find their own bags. Volunteers must be very poor thing, confirm kena scold a lot although it’s the organisers fault.
See this picture I took, it’s not the start pen hor, it’s the medal and finisher entitlements collection. Honestly, sorry to say that it’s the worst running event ever so far 😰
When I woke up at 5am I thought jialat already, struggling to wake up, dilly dally then took Grab down. Reach race village at 6am and deposited my bag with a queue of about 10mins. Thought hoseh liao, start pen will have many people already but end up start pen not even open leh. Then I heard that 21km runners were flagged off at 6am when they should be flagging off at 5am. Erm, though we tick the we agree to the terms and conditions blah blah blah but is too much lah, is really poor organising. Everywhere is queue seriously, it’s a queue at every point. Nightmare. Queue for baggage deposit and toilet. But the queue for baggage collection and medal entitlement really really is horror 😨
There was a delay in flag off for 10km and end up we were only flagged off at 6.50am, saying that the route near sports hub is in a jam. I squat down after standing too long as I get a little dizzy. I’m anaemic and I thought had gotten better already recently apparently I need more iron pills. Finally flagged off and the distance board is “cheating” the runners for the whole run, like 500m into the run and 1km distance board is there and haven’t even 7km there’s the 9km distance board. Though I’m not stucked in any human jams or had any bottlenecks for the run but the lane for running is really so small and some part we can only run in a single file. The organisers maths and agaration failed really badly. Ratio, how many runners to how many baggage deposit counters, how many runners running and your path to run on have to be how wide. Tsk tsk tsk.
Race pack collection is another chaos. A friend told me that during the race pack collection, she was told by the volunteers that the sports bra for the ladies ran out of sizes and they asked the participants who chooses M size to take either S or L. LOL! But if our boobs not that small cannot squeeze them into a smaller size ma or if our boobs not that big also need a loose sports bra for what right? 🤣 Plus, we actually selected the size that we wanted during registration so why was there delay or shortage of sizes? 🤔 At least the organisers let the runners change the size on race day.
I like the idea of sports bra as an entitlement for the women runners, it’s the only run that I know of in Singapore that gives sports bra as an entitlement with the race pack and my sports bra from last year’s YOLO run is still very fine and have it’s elasticity and support. Not bad quality actually. I dare not collect race pack on the first day of collection very long time already because I scared of queue. Heng I never collect on Friday during the first day of race pack collection, many participants complained in their Facebook page that they waited 3 hours to collect their race pack and some can’t even manage to collect their race pack when they make their way all the way there. Tsk tsk tsk 😩 I went on Saturday afternoon to collect queueing for about 45minutes. Also can faint sia 😢 Anything less than 15 minutes to queue for a racepack is reasonable for me. Next time always collect on last day or collection. I was told that the sports bra not ready for collection and asked me if I would return in the evening to collect or collect on race day. Tsk tsk tsk. So I collected chop chop for the sports bra luckily on actual day.
Have to say, they really need to apologise for an event that is supposed to be fun and happy day to spend time at turns out so jialat. I’m sure next year they will not expect many runners to return at all unless they make deals sibeh nice nice for this year runners. Luckily it’s still not that bad for me as I’m not stuck in the queues and jams, if not I will definitely not run anymore YOLO run. But still, I ran only 7km, can I get a 30% refund? 🤣
