30km LSD To West Coast & Kent Ridge Parks

Today was our long Sunday Run from SAFRA MF, and we had a new person joined us. He came after I posted an invitation to the sgRunners group. I was glad to see renohtaram aka Chris. He came looking for Dreamer, and was promptly welcomed by cm and the rest of the SAFRA runners. We had a smaller group this morning, about 10 of us.

We started off at 7am as planned, and proceeded to run along Depot Rd, then out along Alexandra Rd, Queensway, and then into Jln Hang Jebat. I ran at a pace more like the desired start I am looking in my marathon pace, and my plan was to keep that for as long as I can. Chris was enjoying his run, and adopting a reasonable pace in front led by hock soon. Aha..hock soon normally likes to start out fast, and that seemed to go down well with our young runner, Chris.

We reached the Buona Vista MRT station for a refill of our water bottles at the toilets. I was telling Colleen and Chris that the Soloman water bottle was indeed good, wit hits ergonomics, and good capacity too. At that point, cm came and told us that Andre had turned back. We continued on, and soon ran along the West Coast Road, and finally made it to West Coast Park. At that point, we were joined by Wong, Jimmy, Adam and a few others too. They mentioned that cm and Jaime had also taken another route back. We took a short break, and contionued on to loop around the Park. We must have covered about 15km by the time we finished the loop. Chris mentioned that he was feeling a tad tired, and I asked him to join Wong and the other group back to Clubhouse, whilst Goola, eh, hs, Yuen and myself went on to run the Kent Ridge Park. Once into Science Park, hs brought us for a loop and slope tour of the campus. The sun was beating on us, and the heat really drained us. We had to make another stop midway at a canteen and toop toilet breaks and some bought 100plus to do carbo reload.

From the canteen in Science Park, we ran up and down, and finally to the entrance to Kent Ridge Park. Yuen decided to take another route back on his own, and it was down to the four of us, running through the scenic ponds, slopes, jungle vegetation, and suspension bridge. It looked great in the day, but the slopes up were taunting our tired legs. We finally made it to the top, where we say hs emerge to join us from a short-cut he took? From there, we made our way down along the road to Bukit Chandu, and into Pasir Panjang Rd. I told the rest that we were about 5km away from ClubHouse if we were to take the Telok Blangah/Henderson way.

When we hit Pasir Panjang Rd, I took the lead and increased my speed to get out of the hot sun soonest. I ran all the way to the ClubHouse in what seemed to be about 6.5min/km pace. When I reached ClubHouse, it was 10.20am and cm and the group was about to washup, after their cool down. My use of the HRM today was erractic, and I only started to time at the Buona Vista MRT stretch, and even then, there were many times I paused the watch, but did not get it re-started. Maybe I was having a good time talking with the various running kakis, that I did not focus on pressing the buttons. I estimated I covered a total distance of 30km in 3hrs. I felt good during the whole run, and it could be due to the fact I had 2 small bananas before the run. I also had good water refuelling all along the whole run, which helped me maintain good body temperature and heart rate.

Distance Ran:30km ___Time:3hrs____Pace:6:00min/km
Average HR:154bpm___Max HR:172bpm___KCal:2,100KCal est.