2nd SgRunners Run-Together Session @ ECP

Today was the 2nd Sgrunners run-together session at East Coast Park. I decided to do my Sunday LSD with SgRunners instead of joining the SAFRA MF runners who were doing their 30km LSD at MacRitchie. There was a big crowd of at least 35 from SgRunners coming, and I was looking forward to meet up with many familiar faces, as well as new members who had recently joined.

I woke up at 6am, took my time to brew a cup of nice coffee, and then brought along a banana for breakfast. I had a heavy dinner last night, and I wasn't feeling that hungry. My plan was to run at most 25km today, so there wasn't a big need to eat much breakfast too. I put on my new Asics Cumulus VII which I just bought yesterday. I arrived at carpark C2 near East Coast MacDonald's (the meeting point) just after 7am. Shortly, I saw BrokenRunner driving in, and went over to say hello. Then Alvo and Meteor arrived, followed by Bee, Balasing, Kay, Tiwazz, YankeeII, Cheow12 and his wife. We chatted for a while, and proceeded towards MacDonald's. Along the way, we saw Kops21 and found that he was there even earlier. Upon reaching Mac, we saw DO, bselby0, LaoKaYu, and a few others who were there earlier. DO had already done his 10km warmup run from his home to meet with us.

A few runners already noticed my new shoes. DO wore his new pair of Cumulus too. I didn't do much stretching as I was busy talking and getting introduced to new Sgrunners. It was a good crowd, Alicia and her friend, sotong and wife, Cyberkinetic, True_Atlantean aka Malcolm, and many others. Fatty came and passed me the $10 Running Lab coupons, and he went off shortly. Thanks, Fatty. Of course, TLR and Fd were already there and gathering the people together. It was my first time standing near to the 1.97m sotong..hmm, seemed ok leh..didn't feel too much like a midget near him. This sotong really has runner's legs.quite lean and firm, not like those of the wobbly squid's. At 7.30am sharp, we started off and jogged slowly towards Fort Road. We were having fun chatting with one another, and I got to speak with Clive, Osama, Slacker mainly on the first 5km stretch. I moved sometimes to the back to catch the tailgater and had some fun talking about snail78, Pilates and Yoga. Tiwazz also shared a bit of his tailgating techniques...haha.

We reached Fort Road shortly, and did a U-turn. A few km after the U-turn, we bumped into Joggers running in the oposite direction. We did a round of high-fives with him. Then we saw Balasing coming in with Renohtaram and his 3 friends. Along the way, Kops21 was busy doing some fartlek runs, and taking candid shots of the running group. Good work! Kops21, who already did a LSD yesterday with his friends. I then moved up to the front and chatted with Superboy and gentle. Superboy is a TAS (Triathlon Association Member) while Gentle is a member of trifam (Triathlon Family). Both were explaining the virtues of doing cross-training and superboy actually does a lot of runs around his housing estate which was quite near to my nest near the gurkhas camp ...hmm, it seemed like he could keep a good pace. Gentle told us how the Ponggol run was initiated by a teacher near Senkang looking for people to run with at 5am...interesting stories...a bit like why some runners like snail78 would like to run after 11pm...tiwazz will be doing a field report on that one...hehe

Just look at those long tentacles of sotong! [Pic courtesy of Kops21]

As we moved back to Mac, we saw that another group had gathered at the meeting point. We gestured for them to join in. Among them was cyberkinetic & skyvers. As we got on to the pond area, we increased the pace slightly and very soon, me and superboy were running ahead. As we decided to make a toilet stop about 2km in front, we increased our pace further. My legs were feeling quite ok so far, and when I reached the toilet, I felt the tightness in my IT Band. Maybe I had increased my stride a bit too much. I did a quick stretch, and saw BrokenRunner, cyberkinetic, skyvers, Alvo, Cheow continue moving up. I went for a drink of water, and went on to catch up. DO mentioned that he will wait for our return, since he had already done 10km prior. I ran a bit faster and soon caught up with the group. The skies looked gloomy, and very soon there were light showers. I was talking to skyvers about his good performance at his recent IPPT where he did 8min+ for his 2.4km...whoa! The second guy, according to skyvers, came in at 10min. Imagine how fast our skyvers was. We all ran to the Country Club, and did a U-turn. Along the way, we were discussing our need for more LSDs for marathon preparation, and that BrokenRunner should actually try to do 42km instead.

Cheow and myself took a toilet break, while the rest carried on. I did a quick stretch, and both Cheow and me ran together after that. Cheow mentioned that he too, with the increase in training mileage, had developed some knee pain at the front. We ran slowly at first and then increased pace and passed a few groups of people running along the way. Cheow mentioned that we had covered about 16km then, and roughly about 5km more to go. I increased the pace slightly to catch up with the rest, and nearing the end, we did see Alvo and Balasing again. We turned towards Mac and met up with the large group of SgRunners who had finished their run. As I finished, DO was gesturing to the rest to ask me to show them the techniques of Chi Running...haha.. I told them that yojanjan was the actual Chi Running guru, and Phonmooda probably will know all the theory and techniques about it...incidentally, both did not turn up for the run today...hehe.

I checked my HRM. We had run for 2hrs15min. Not too bad. I had wanted to do longer, but since my ITB was quite tight, and all SgRunners were back already, I'll just take the 21km. Taz who went to run with another group came to join us too. I was busy doing my ITB stretches and cooling down. I put on my SgRunner T-Shirt, did a quick wash-up of my face, and barely made it in time for the customary SgRunners' post-run photo-shoot in front of Mac. This must have been the largest gathering of SgRunners, and I must not miss this photo opportunity. I switched 3 positions in the shoot. Arhh...Mythos and his wife joined in too. Good to have as many of the kampung as possible.

We stayed behind for lots of Big Breakfast and Pancakes carbo-reloading. More chit-chat and talking about tailgating with tiwazz, DO. Tiwazz was expounding the beauty of Pilates and Yoga...it was great fun. True_Atlantean got me a coffee...cool, that was what I needed after a good run. Met eunice (with the leaf) who was late for the run. We got our 168km stickers from Fd and all were so excited. A few new members who did not have the SgRunners T-Shirt was so jealous of us, and they were asking TLR to go for a third round of T-Shirt orders...wow, hot stuff! We took more photos, exchanged more running ideas and tips, and left for home very satisfied just before noon. I look forward to the next SgRunners' Run-Together, and I heard that someone is planning for a Pulau Ubin nature reserve run? Cool!

Distance Ran:21km ___Time:2hr15min____Pace:6:25min/km
Average HR:147bpm___Max HR:168bpm__KCal:1,602KCal