The NTU Vertical Marathon 2006

Finally did my first Vertical Marathon this morning, all of 43 floors up Suntec City Tower 4. Yeah, conquered The NTU Vertical Marathon 2006 challenge. Having just completed my KL road marathon last Sunday, I wasn't really in a anticipative mood for a martahon of the vertical kind....haha. I did have 2 sessions of stairs climbing around the Farrer Road HDB blocks with the KK Climbathon team. That was about all the stairs I've climbed in recent times.

SgRunners @ The NTU Vertical Marathon 2006

I picked up DO and Superboy at 6am in the morning, after my breakfast of a cup of coffee and a banana. We reached Suntec City at about 6.30am and was way too early for registration. Met up with the group of SgRunners TLR, Kops, Commando, Tiwazz, astrogal etc as well as Melvin from SAFRA Running. By the time we finally registered at 7am sharp, we were allocated a start time of 8:54am. Waah..that was way too late for our planned run with Divey, Bug and Cokiee at 8am. While waiting for our race, we met Divey, Bug and Cokiee in the basement food court for a cuppa. DO and I finally decided to talk to the organizers to allow us to start a little early, and we got to race at 8:30am.

At the finish after 43 floors; legs were in a jello state

DO went ahead in detail 20. I was added on to detail 21, and the group of 6 of us started off with a slow 20m jog to the first flight of stairs. I took double steps for the first 10floors, in what seemed to be shorter floors than the typical HDB Block I trained at. The ventilation was bad, and the stairwell was stuffy. I overtook 2 panting runners on the way up, and from 10-15 floors, I switched back to single steps. I skipped the water point at around floor15, and posed for photos by the camera ppl standing at strategic corners. By the 20floor, I was getting slightly tired. I had reverted back to taking 2 steps at a time. All that point, the runner who was just trailing me, started to fall back. I moved on steadily, and by floor28, I was panting. A peek at my watch showed that I have taken 5min+ to reach that point. I slowed to take single steps to regulate my breathing. I skipped the water points, and noticed another camera person snapping away. A gal was saying '10 floors more' in a faint voice when I reached floor32...hehe, maybe she was feeling the strain too. I took single steps for the next few floors, before finally upping to double steps for the final 5floors. With 2 floors to go, I caught up with the last 2 persons in the front detail. Finally reached the top, and as I tried to dash for the finish, my legs wobbled and shook badly. My quads were feeling like jelly. Took the finishing chip, and got a chop onto my bib. There was no scenery on top, and I took the next lift down after a cup of water. My throat was so dry from the bad air, and my lungs were HOT. Official Results have my finish time as 7min38sec. For the next 15min, my throat was dry; DO and I were coughing badly as we collected our goodie bags and went to the carpark.

Met up with Divey, Cokiee and Bug to go for our recovery jog. We planned to do a 20km orginally, but due to the late start, we finally did a 13km to/fro from Suntec City to Marina South. The sun was out by the time we ran, but I felt good to just run along and release lactic acid from my legs. My lungs got the moisture it needed as we ran. We took time out to recce the route to the end near Marina South where we might want to do our next sunrise run, and possibly have a picnic there. I also tried out my new pedometer (low-cost way to measure distance walked/run by measuring stride length x no of strides). By cross checking with DO's Polar R200sd, I was able to fine tune my pedometer. When we reached back to Suntec City, the gals VM just ended. Saw Colleen preparing for her turn, and wished her good luck. Met run3, astrogal and brokie who just completed their races in good timings. After some group photos, we went to Beach Road for the famous 'Bah Chor' mee.

All Results HERE!