Sunday LSD - New Trail

I almost did not get out of bed for my Sunday run at MacRitchie. We had a lot to eat at last night's BBQ, and I drank at least 4 Singapore Slings, along with a glass of after-dinner red wine. I slept all of 1hr the whole night as I was awake with too much food? As I laid I bed, I remembered telling Corrine, Derrick, et. al that I will be at MR this morning, and I dragged myself up. Moreover, Chris, the new runner that joined us last week, was coming. My legs felt heavy and tired after yesterday's 10km race, and all that standing around the BBQ area and poolside.

MR's carpark was full again this morning...Ahhh, the SPCA 4.8km run was to be held today.....Hmmm, wondering which of my running kakis might be participating. Bumped into Ah Leng from Toa Payoh, and we discussed a bit about his brief apperance on TV at the National Day Run...hehe. Soon we were joined by Goola, Eng Hwa and then Chris. We waited for a while, and realized the rest were not coming. The 4 of us started our run at about 7.05am. Chris showed me his new toy, the Polar RS200sd, which could measure distances in trails even. Good! At least we can have estimation of our distances ran, especially through x-country and new routes. We ran from the Northern Route, and at the end of the 3.6km stretch, instead of turning left, Goola showed us a new trail by turning right...Interesting, we never tried this before. This trail was deserted, and at the end of about 2.5km, we reached the SICC car-park along Upper Thomson Road. It was a nice and interesting trail, and there were streams of clear water. We will have to spend some time coming back here next time. The SICC carpark was the other entrance recommended for those going to the TreeTop Walk.

We ran along Upper Pierce Reservoir, then to Old Upper Thomson Road (OUTR), met a bunch of MR25 runners doing their training...Hit the end of OUTR onto UTR then onto the usual route to Seletar Reservoir toilets via the nice stretch of reservoir. When we reached the toilets, my HRM watch read 1hr32min. It seemed that we had run a bit further, maybe 3km more, for that first stretch...since normally we will reach there in about 1hr10min. Chris' Polar read 14.5km...the distance we had covered. We had a 10min break and stretch, before proceeding onto the Ngee Soon Range, Seletar aircon road. Chris was saoking all this in, and he remembered doing his own 'live firing' by urinating into the bushes along with his army mates during training sessions many years back....From there we took the muddy trail which led us back to Pierce Reservoir Rd, dotted with monkeys along the roads. When Chris emerged from the trails, he showed me his muddy shoes (which were orginally white). I told him he should wear trail runners when he runs at MR with us next time...hehe

Along Pierce, we met Lai Chee running from the other direction towards OUTR. She probably had finished her SPCA run, and was going for her extended training run afterwards. We assembled at the Pierce toilets for our final toilet break. Chris mentioned that his heart rate was surprisingly high, and we decided to jog slowly back along Northern Route. When we reached the car park toilets at MR, the time was 10.18pm. We had run for 3hrs, though with a slow pace through trails. A check with Chris' foot-pod reflected 24+km, but I reckon the distance to be more than 25km (since the Polar dstance measurement needed to be calibrated and used a few times to improve accuracy). My legs felt tired, and Eng Hwa too. I was soaking wet, and was squeezing water off my running shorts. We were all quite happy that the weather held out, and we could put in the mileage without too much trouble.

Distance Ran:25km ___Time:3hr est.____Pace:7:12min/km
Average HR:145bpm___Max HR:170bpm___KCal:2000KCal est.