This is the last performance series race for year 2017 and also my first time joining the Performance Series race.  It was held at Changi Exhibition Centre. I signed up for 10km category. I decided to join this race because of its unique race route.

I missed the collection of my race pack because I wasn’t notified by the organiser and I didn’t check out the race pack collection period. So I had to proceed to the organiser’s office (near Tai Seng MRT) to collect my race pack on the following Tuesday or Wednesday during office hours which I did. When collecting my race pack, I realised that Esprimo is the organizer for this race.

It rained in most parts of Singapore the night before the race. I didn’t concern myself too much this time with the weather forecast. I Took Uber to the race village at Changi Exhibition Centre at around 6am. I arrived at 6.20am, deposited my bag, used the toilet cubicle and arrived at the same time when 1st wave flagged off at 6.30am. Bag deposit was swift as there was no one queueing at that point of time.

The 10km race was flagged off in time.  The ground was wet and the skies were still dark but the weather was cool and there was some wind at times.  It was a pretty simple route, 5 km to and fro.

Before the race started , I was only expecting to run slow and complete my 10km in 1 hour or more as I had little sleep the night before(3 hours).

After I finished the race, I realised that the distance was slightly short of 10 km. My Garmin watch measured a distance of 9.77km. I completed it in around 56 mins. I was surprised, never thought I could do it. Managed to run most of the time and stop only at water points. That’s even better than my previous personal best of 58mins 10secs which I got during straits times run 2017 (but the distance measured at exactly 10km)

Hydration consists of water and Lucozade but the water points wasn’t evenly spaced. First water point was at about 1.5 km and just over 2 km or so. Subsequent water points was spaced even further away because of the U turn. I didn’t have much issue with this but I guessed some runners may find it challenging if they started later (due to the heat) or took longer time.  The race results were released almost immediately! I enjoyed the race because of the unique scenery and flat terrain which is good for PB (personal best). I transcended myself with an official timing of 56 mins 22 secs which is my new PB.

Finally, a big thank you to JustRunLah! for offering 5% off promo code for this race.  I’m sure many will also look forward to what the new series will bring too next year! Transcend yourself!

19^th Nov was a good day for the outdoor activities. There were showers the previous day, which resulted in an excellent weather condition for the 500 or so participants starting the walk & jog at 7.30 am at the Pasir Ris Park.

The event was organized by the Tampines Central CSC at $ 8 per pax, very affordable considering that the perks included event tee, isotonic drinks, buns and the finisher medal.  There were even lucky draws at the end of the event! ?

The Walk & Jog

Participants were led to do warm up exercises before the start-off, after which runners chiong at the front while walkers like myself and my family started at the back.

The route began from the Central Plaza to Camp Site 1, U-turn and heading towards the other end of the park before turning back to the finishing point at the Central Plaza.

Along the walk we passed by mangrove swamps and were treated to scenic view of the sea. There were people enjoying the beach as well as cycling on the track. One plus point is you also get a feeling of ‘holiday mood’ when you see Downtown East and the chalets! ☺

We also saw chickens running around, though I am not sure if they were wild or domestically kept. There was no sign of wild boars too, even though we saw a sign board advising caution.

At the finishing point, we were given lucozade ? , sunshine buns, bottled water (this was also provided during hydration points) and the finisher medal. The lucozade wasn’t cold, but I guess it was all right as I just walked and wasn’t ‘shack’.

The lucky draw took place once all participants were back and rested.  There were 10 prizes of Capital Land vouchers, ranging from $ 10 to $ 80.

Closing Thoughts

Though this event may not be as ‘glamourous’ as the usual races, I think it was well organized with sufficient volunteers and hydration points along the route. The park is scenic, without being too crowded in the early morning. Definitely a recommendation for families looking to bond together in a healthy lifestyle mass event!

I’ve attended all 3 years of the YOLO run since its inauguration.  First year, I was impressed by the call to run free – to run unhindered.  Liberating oneself by being shirtless while running was probably just symbolic.  It wasn’t easy to be shirtless somehow for me.  Especially when he had reached beyond 50 and had only started to run a number of months before the event and still have body fats in the wrong area.  But still, I decided to do that in the first year because I wanted to contribute in my small way to charity – dollars donated to charity for each shirtless body.

Second year, I wasn’t feeling that well and I was also made more conscious of body fats by friends.  But I did manage to get some new friends to run who had gone shirtless near the finish line.  But I started to notice and wonder how exactly the organizer was counting the number of shirtless bodies.  Third year, I almost did it again. Except that the whole marketing focus seemed to have shifted.

The marketing communication is, I believe, one of the more attractively worded ones :

“The YOLO Run is a fun and performance run event where participants are encouraged to free themselves, be a part of a run that gives back and also partake in a mass yoga session after the run. The spirit of the YOLO Run draws from the aphorism “You Only Live Once” and encourages participants to seize the day, not care about what people think, and free themselves from labels, stereotypes, body types and inhibitions. This action of liberation is signified by participants running shirtless and is supported by X-Change Republic (the creators of the YOLO Run) or the sponsors, through donations to the adopted beneficiary for every runner who runs shirtless. YOLO Run believes in the appreciation of life. Everyone only lives each day once, therefore when one is able to, he should always help those in need, simply because there could never be another chance for it.”

I believe in helping others whenever possible through whatever means.  If you earn a lot, then chip in money, if you run a lot, then raise funds by running etc.  Now, there is however another part to the equation, communicating well is one thing.  Execution is the challenging part of it.

The first year it was just a fun event, the second year it incorporated the competitive run and this year there is the inclusion of the half marathon as well as the challenge to break the national record, with the possibility of taking home the Alfa Romeo.  This, when one were to read closely the terms and conditions, would actually preclude the majority of the local running population.  Still the hype was built perhaps.

When I turned up to collect the race pack on Friday, I was greeted by a long queue.  I wasn’t exactly surprised because I have seen longer queues before.  I have probably participated in around 24 events each year since 2015 when I took up running.  So I thought this was also an indication of the crowd that would be appearing on race day.  I was only reminded of the ‘lengthiness’ of it because I was collecting on behalf too, of a FB friend.

I explained to him the queue I was facing and at the same time too, I decided to share the queue status online so that other friends could be more prepared for the wait.  It probably took me more than an hour 15 minutes or thereabouts, in the end.  Still, I didn’t think that much of it because I had queued for longer in the past for other events.  When I left, I thought the queue had reduced in volume somewhat.

But subsequent reports and updates by friends showed that the situation was getting worse, for its long wait and for the wrong sizes/unavailability of the ladies’ apparels.  I read also the offer of alternative collection dates and then the cancellation of one of the days.  This didn’t seem like a good sign of things to come.

On actual race day, I was early again, and was able to participate in the first wave of the 10 km race.  But I saw in the distance that a crowd was still at the starting point.  It turned out to be the half marathon runners. Their start time was delayed for more than 50 minutes.  The one thing that struck me was that the F1 Pit was shrouded in darkness when I reached there before 6 am.  Usually it would be all lighted up even with earlier start times.

For ‘popular’ races (and the size of the race pack queue is usually a good indication), I would follow my own checklists of what not to do.  One, don’t use the deposit baggage if possible, so don’t bring too much stuff.  Two, don’t depend on the toilet cubicle – so try and release yourself on the way to the venue at other public toilets if possible.  I therefore didn’t go through the hassle and frustration that many runners experienced that day before and after the race itself.

We were flagged off after waiting for about 20 minutes after the start time, one of the longest I experienced.  The explanation given was that there was a held up at the Sports Hub area.  The organizer also apologized for the past week’s of frustration and unhappy experience due to the waiting time and availability of right sizes of the apparels.  I thought that was a good gesture.

It was still a pleasant morning, weather had held.  To me, the weather was better than the week before at Newton’s Race.   Then a few hundred metres on, I saw a sign that said 1 km.  I would have been blur as sotong if this was my first few races because I didn’t even wear a watch then.  I looked at my Garmin and knew the sign was wrong.  So I just dismissed the accuracy of the signs for this race (apparently it was because some of the signboards were meant for the GEWR race).

Then soon after we hit a hydration stop.   As it was only 10 km, I didn’t worry about hydration as much.  So I continued with the run.  There were narrow stretches along the bridge but probably because I was near the front of the wave 1, I didn’t encounter any stoppages.  But as I was running back in the loop, I did notice the narrowness of the route as I saw the oncoming crowd from the later waves.

There were a few more signs that seemed a bit out but I wasn’t depending on the mileage sign anymore as I looked more at my Garmin for this race.  That aside, the run experience while it lasted for me, was still probably fairly ‘routine’ as in other races.  Perhaps I have little expectation too.   I noticed too there were more than the usual photographers too on this race.

So suddenly, when I made a turn, it seemed like the route was ending.  It was just only 6 plus km ?!  6.94 km, my Garmin read as I suddenly saw the familiar scene of a finishing line and the counters.  If it was 9.64 km, I would still probably think I was cheated of a 10 km race though more acceptable.  6.94 km was definitely a disappointing turn of events.  Sudden Death, I termed it.  I thought maybe there was an incident or something and runners were diverted.  But everyone seemed calm and the volunteers were just handing out the medals as usual.  I commented to another runner, the distance is only around 7 km ?  Yeah, and most folks were just shaking their heads.

I took my hydration (Lucozade Sports and I believed there was Ribena too though I skipped that) then and walked off to cool down.  That was when I saw a solitary figure behind the building, my friend Chris.  We chatted and I would spare you the frustration we vented.  We also talked about my recent races and some of his next year’s focus.  So it was a pretty good chat amidst all the unpleasantness.  I had to take a walk to Swissotel Stamford to collect the race pack for the Vertical Marathon since I didn’t want to take the long journey back again after going home.  It was still early.  I decided then I would just run the rest of the 10 km race and did another 3.5 km, also as part of the challenge I was still doing.  After that, I walked back to the car park to take some hydration before I walked off again to Swissotel Stamford to collect the race pack.

I read all the ventings and the attempt to explain also by the organizer.  I thought perhaps if there was time to cool down and have clearer explanation of what happened to cause the major delay of the half marathon, and the severe shortage of the distance meant for 10 km, it would perhaps put the ‘fiasco’ in the right perspective.  It had its merits in its lofty vision though it might have somehow gone a bit wilder with its expansion into the ‘performance’ goal.  I messaged the organizer on FB and emailed too, after being told that I should email instead.  After waiting for a week and not receiving a follow-through response, I decided that I would just leave things as they were.

An explanation had been given about an external consultant giving the instruction to divert the route.  I am guessing the consultant would have been given authority to make such decisions in the event of a ‘crisis’.  It didn’t seem to be clear what the crisis situation was.  The organizer needed more time to investigate probably too.  Hopefully some lessons could be learnt from this situation still.

So the race pack collection, the handling and logistics of the ladies’ apparels, the queue management, the reported shortage of cups at hydration stops,  the delay in the start time of the different categories and the unexpected diversion of the route for 10 km race, resulting in a severe gap from the planned distance would have contributed to a unsatisfactory rating for this race.  And unclear accounting on the failures made it worse.

For runners, perhaps this was one of those ‘expect the unexpected’ race.  I chose to run off the frustration that day to make up the shortage of distance.  It was my way of handling my own frustration.  After that, I would not let this mar my day.  The running while we didn’t know that it was going to end at 7 km, had been the usual ‘experience’ for me.  I was lucky to be in the front and not get caught up in the bottleneck and also not in the half marathon race.  Everyone’s experience would be different and there would be different ways of handling the situation.  Running parallels the life situation even as shown in such races.  The organizer would need to resolve the crisis satisfactorily or hope perhaps with time, memory fades somehow.  Still, lessons would and should be learnt.

YOLO (the phrase) extorts you to live your precious life wisely.  That comes with all your perceptions of the different situation you had been through and how you want to live it.  So make the wise decisions.  Still, run safe and run happy in all situations.  (Disclaimer: I have paid for all three years’ race entries and I’m not related to the organizer.)

On May 24th of 2015, the year which I got rather active physically – where I attempted them all: half marathons to full, aquathlons, Spartan races, OCBC Cycle, I also did my first official vertical marathon (National Vertical Marathon it was called then,  63 storeys) because I wanted to accompany my son.  But it turned out that as we were in different category, we had very different starting times – a couple of hours’ differences.  As memory faded, I forgot how hard it was to run up vs the usual horizontal plane and also mistook that I had climbed 40 plus storeys !

Recently again, on the last day of early bird, I signed up for the Swissotel Vertical Marathon (SVM2017).  I did this partially because I had to skip the Spartan Beast Race due to my back injury.  And I felt there was a vacuum.   The other motivation was that I thought I would really like to see the Sunrise from the rooftop and dedicate this marathon to my father who would have turned 82 years old just 3 days before this event.  As it was, by coincidence, I also dedicated the 2015 vertical marathon in his memory because he had left us 4 years then on that very date, 24th May.

Overview of Event before I dive into a narrative of sorts. 

1.  Seize the Day, Catch the Sunrise is the theme.  Catchy and attractive, but disappointing when due to reported lightning alerts for some of the first category and most of the veteran men’s at least, we didn’t get to the top – read below for more.
2. Personally, I was surprised that the non-competitive group was the first category to start off so maybe the focus was to let those who wish to take a more relaxed climb and enjoy the sunrise for a premium ?
3. Race was well organized – not much waiting time and collection was conveniently at one of the rooms in Swissotel itself.
4. Race Pack was ‘attractive’ in my opinion.  The backpack with the Swissotel building was a nice change from the usual running race drawstring bags and the tee was of a nice bright red color with interesting design.
5. Race started on time, a bit earlier for men’s veterans but nobody was complaining because there were early birds like myself.  Unfortunate thing was the false alarm of the lightning alert because seriously I didn’t see any signs of bad weather.  Still, for the safety of all runners, I have to accept this.
6. Hydration was sponsored by both Polar and Pocari Sweat, provided at the start and finishing point.  More than adequate.
7. Volunteers were cheering at almost every few levels, and very helpful, providing hand held fan when they saw some of us sweating and fanning with some big ‘cardboards’ or something similar.
8. Overall Rating, I would rate it 7.5/10 still.  And onto the narrative …

Race collection was pretty much a breeze – took a few minutes especially in contrast to YOLO run then, the week before.  I have yet to blog on YOLO Run because I was awaiting some information back from the organizer – will follow up later.  In fact, that day, I finished the YOLO Run very early, and I decided to stick around the area till about 10 am to collect the race pack from Swissotel itself.  I walked from the race site to the hotel and sat in the lounge there for the volunteers to get ready.

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One volunteer suddenly talked to me.  Turned out that she was an ex-colleague.  Somehow she had seen me several times during race pack collection and recognized me from my old working place.  She made the observation that I was not active in running while working there.  I told her she was right.  I didn’t even like running then actually.  She was soon called to man the ‘counters’ and after waiting for a few minutes, I joined the queue for the race pack.  After collecting the race pack, I waved to the lady and left, thinking I do have a lot of volunteer friends from the races these days.

I thought the back pack and the bright red tee from CompressSport was rather attractive in this race pack.

I woke up at 5.00 am, attempting to sleep earlier the night before.  As usual I wasn’t very successful.  Still, I think I was getting used to race day routine.  Looking at my schedule, for every weekend since October 7th, it was always a race day except for one week where I took a break and first week where there were two races.

I reached the venue early and the first category was getting ready for flag off at 6:15 am.  The first group was non-competitive and meant for those who wanted to go up to catch the sunrise.  The second category was the Veteran Men (ie my cat), to be flagged off at 6:50 am.  So I thought it was good that they were giving priority to veteran to have a go at catching the much harped upon sight at the rooftop.

After almost 3/4 of the first cat had gone off (in waves of 4 and subsequently bigger groups), the DJ said due to lightning warning, there was a possibility that the race would end on the 69th storey instead.  I had heard no thunder nor saw any lightning nor any dark clouds nor experienced droplets of rain falling on my head.  She also said, just a maybe so perhaps it would still be clear.  I didn’t think too much of it because the weather was pretty good.

I had brought a pair of old gloves to protect my hands because I had injured my hand while pulling on the rails of the stairs.  Looking back, I had only trained by climbing stairs 5 times before this actual race.  The first 4 times were between 10 to 22 storeys, and the 5th was up to 44 storeys and this was over a span of about 4 weeks from mid October, so about once or twice a week at most.  Most of the activities the last 43 days had been spent on running.

I was in the 6th row of 4 persons when our category were flagged off.  Blare, the trumpet went off.  I ran a short stretch and then up the first flight of stairs.  I used my hands to pull myself up as I covered two steps at a time.  Think on the 7th storey or thereabouts, we ran a very short landing and then up the stairs again.  Reached 10th storey, climbed, climbed then I saw 20th storey. 30th storey, I was feeling the heavy thumping of the heart against the rib cage.  Breathe..breathe.. then I looked up and it was only 34th storey, not 40th.  Continue to go up, breathe, move, breathe, move.  40th storey, 45th…

Suddenly it was 60th storey… but I was already almost bent over, and breathing very hard, though I was sensing that the finish is close by and getting ready to ‘sprint’ with last efforts.  63rd, 65th… then I thought I was just at 68 or 69th, and the volunteers were standing on the stairs leading up and pointing to their left.  So I started to walk quickly and then bang again.. (almost like YOLO 7 km for 10 km race).  Finish at 69th storey – sudden death !  Lightning alert so race stopped at 69th storey.  No rooftop.  I had carried my smartphone in vain.  BIG Disappointment in an otherwise well organized race.   A volunteer hung the medal over my neck.  I forgot to stop my watch so I pressed the button too.

I joined the small crowd which was there and walked around briskly to look for the window views.  Didn’t look like it was raining out there.  Anyway, I took a few photos and then caught my breath again.  I took the Pocari Sweat and finished a bottle.  I took another one after walking briskly again.  Then it was time to take the lift and go down.

Then I heard a young man saying to an old man:’Wah, if you can do it, then we have to be able to do it too.’  The old man asked ‘Why ?’.  There was an uncomfortable pause.  They were behind me so I didn’t turn around.  The old man answered himself, ‘Oh, because of my age ?’.  I walked into the lift and turned around to look.  Guessed the young man was probably mid 30s.  He said, ‘Yes, you are a good example so the young should follow.’  Okay, at least recovered a bit with that.

I thought to myself, sometimes there is an art to a conversation and you can’t just blurt out whatever you think of first hand.  Anyway, somehow it ended up I was walking with the older man down the escalators.  He asked me if it was my first time so I said it was first time for Swissotel and he said he had done it a number of times.  He seemed to be someone who exercised very actively.  He was 81 years old, proudly saying he was born in 1936.  That was one year after my father’s.  I just said so.  After he asked how is my father, I explained my father had passed away already.  Oh, sorry.. it’s ok.

We then continued to talk about ways of keeping active.  I asked if there was a chance that he was the oldest in this race.  He said he wasn’t sure.  He was eager to check his results and I told him that it was announced that the results would be available within 2 days.  We saw the information counter on the ground floor, and I suggested that he might want to check with them too.  The volunteer told him that it would be available within a day.

We parted and I left for home.  I thought it was still early so I went for another 2 km run.  But realized that the climb did end up with me quite spent as I wasn’t able to keep my usual pace.  So in my ongoing challenge to complete running 500 km in 86 days for charity as a SCS athlete, I’m currently at 239.25 km on the 44th day.  Running slightly behind in terms of average per day if I were to run every day.  Will catch up later as I still have two more races to go, the last one being the full marathon in December.

(Afternote :  I had looked up my ‘records’ of the last vertical marathon after the race.  Somehow at the back of my mind, I thought I had done only 40+ storeys in the National Vertical Marathon at One Raffles Place Building – it was in fact 63 storeys and I had done that in more than 18 minutes.  This time round it was 69 storeys and I had done it in 16:32 min, unofficial record for now ! So it is possible to improve even as you get older each year if you put your heart to it.  Would have been nice to be able to say a belated ‘Happy Birthday’ to my dad if he was around still !)

Run Safe, Run Happy.