Sunday LSD From MR To Seletar Reservoir

This Sunday morning's weather was great. The air felt cool. However, there seemed to be less people gathered at MacRitchie. Even the car park was relatively unoccupied. A few of us were speculating that it may be due to the end of the school holidays, and parents spending more time preparing their kids for school instead. The usual MF Runners were gathered - Adam (ad), Goola (g.), Eng Hwa (eh.), Derrick (d.), Hock Soon (hs.), Jimmy Tan (jim) and myself....huh, only the 7 of us. Met some from TP but they did not join us. Our plan was to run to Seletar Reservoir (2nd. toilet) and back, but this time taking the reverse way of Thomson Road first, then Upper Pierce, then OUTR, all the way, later coming back by Ngee Soon Rifle Range, and then back via MR Northern Route.

We started off at an easy pace. hs. was already in front, with the rest of us bunched along Thomson Rd. This stretch is where we normally finish our run, with the sun beating on us. So starting off here meant that it was still cool. From Thomson Rd, we turned into Pierce Reservoir Rd. and made our first toilet stop. Our friend, jim, was having the runs (stomach problems). He will try to catch us later, after his arty bombardment exercise. 6 merry runners carried on and once we reached the main gate along OUTR, d. decided to move ahead. I ran behind him for a while, with hs. and the rest. When d. hit Upper Thomson Rd, he continued. I decided to join the rest, since I am not familiar with the Rifle Range area.

5 merry runners then continued towards the road leading to EGC, and this was where I broke off from the pack 2 weeks back. I finally knew which route they took, and today we went again via this route up on over a bridge, crossing the scenic Seletar Reservoir. By this time, the sun was beating down on our backs, but still ok lah. As we approached the 2nd toilet, I saw Derrick on his return on the road below (to carpark A, which he normally takes). I whistled at him, and he waved. We bumped into some familiar faces and eh. friends at this point, and they told us how to get to the trail into Rifle Range. We skirted along EGC, and then moved into a smaller road...

All of a sudden, hock soon's ear got caught by a dangling stick of thorns. His whole head and body was pulled back. Goola exclaimed 'You've lost your ear!'. eh. and myself were so shocked. I quickly looked back to see if pieces of hs. ear were dangling on those thorns. Fortunately, there was no serious injury. g. apologized for cracking the joke, and scaring us. Wow...we were all awaken by then...it was funny for us, yet the pain was with hs...we hope hs. won't mind us having a small joke at his expense...haha. eh. offered some water to cool hs. ear and cleanse it. hs. felt much better and we carried on, skirted around a fence of thorns, and finally onto Ngee Soon Rifle Range. This was a former range for live firing, and was no more in use. Adam and myself were having nostalgic moments of our army days, how we enjoyed being the butt party, holding up the targets for the firers. Also the amount of waiting time we spent waiting for our turns to fire. We ran for about 1.5km inside the range, and then moved onto another trail leading us to the pipeline that will bring us back to MacRitchie air-cond road. In fact this road at Rifle Range is even cooler than the MR one, and we felt like it was about 20deg or less...we were almost getting cold.

We chugged along, walking sometimes, through the undulating, slightly muddy terrain along the pipeline. We tried to jog, and walk over those muddy and undulating areas. I was following behind g. who was familiar with this place. Very soon, I hit out to the MR air-cond road, and immediately turned right to follow g. I looked back to ensure that ad was behind. After a while, we reached the toilet, and waited for eh. and hs. They came 15min later, and they actually thought we went the wrong direction, and went to look for us. That's why they were delayed. From here, it was familiar territory, and all of us ran back across the bridge, skirting the SICC course, up and down the series of road slopes, then into Northern Route. I felt ok, since we have had a couple of stops, so I increased the pace slightly. It was a lot cooler inside, and the number of trekkers and walkers seemed a lot less today.

When I finished, Derrick was already there chatting with a friend. He mentioned that he ran to Seletar R. via car-park A, and back along OUTR. I told him we went through a few new places. Very soon g., ad and the rest were back. ad, the newly appointed f&b committee immediately brought out his chilled 100plus. It was welcomed by all of us, and we had a very good, refreshing drink from there. We were discussing about some of the even longer routes, and g. and eh. were sharing about their adventures through track15, the 'Desert' route, and also the 38km route. We agreed that we should try them soon, and we were all given tips by the 2 experienced lady marathoners how we should prepare ourselves for these long runs. I will not say what the tips are here, because I think they are truly good tips. We were all very satisfied with this approx. 25km run, and with the carbo and water load from the 100plus, we decided we didn't need breakfast. We now look forward to trying out track15, and maybe g. can advise when.

Distance Ran:25km XC___Time:2hr25min____Pace:5:47min/km
Average HR:148bpm___Max HR:170bpm___KCal:1730KCal