10Km Time Trial @ ECP

Went down to the East Coast Parkway on Monday evening for a 10km time trial, part of the assessment program by the MK Climbathon team. It rained heavy in the afternoon and though the rain had stopped by 6pm, I was caught in traffic, and barely made it to ECP at 7pm. Met up with Hamidah, Yusof and Wilna, the organizers from NTUC along with the Climbmathon team-mates of David, Henry, Xavier, Timothy, Sim, Sabrina, Rodney, Roland, Zul and Yi Sheng.

After a brief about admin matters and the route, we started off from MacD. Hamidah and Wilna were on bikes to follow us through and wait and turning points, including timing the run. We ran towards Fort Road, and did a turn back at the lagoon area. My plan was to run a 5min/km pace, and run together as a team. We started off a tad fast, and Sim was wah ahead. Zul was running fast too. DO, Xavier, Timonthy and myself were running as a pack, with the rest following behind. We did a turn at the lagoon upon seeing hamidah, and ran towards Bedok Jetty direction. The night was cool after the rains. I could hear Tim breathing heavily after 3km. We still ran as a team at a steady sub-5min pace. After about 4km, before we reached the seafood centre, we overtook Zul as he slowed down. We continued to keep pace and ran past the Cable Ski area, the food centre and then along to Bedok Jetty. With about 400m to the turning point, we saw Sim running back very strongly. We kept up and saw Hamidah at the toilet after the Jetty, and she told us we had run 31min already and was heading for a 51min pace. My reaction was like 'Huh?'...it seemed we were either behind in pace, or the distance was longer than expected.

With 4km to go, I pushed the pace a little to try to get it down to sub-50min. Tim was complaining about his stitches and knee, but he kept on with his strong endurance...amazing; I would have slowed down. It was quite dark, and not that many people were around. We ran mainly on the bicycle paths which was better for the legs. With about 400m to finish, we saw Sim walking towards us and giving encouragement to finish it off. I ran ahead and finished ahead of Timothy and then DO. My time of 49:30min was ok, but I felt that I worked quite hard. Later it was confirmed the route was actually 10.9km...wow, really longer than thought. No wonder we all felt the route was long. Hamidah had actually waited a few hundred metres more in front of the lagoon...haha. Never mind, we had a good workout. We walked ahead to cheer the rest who were coming back. After the run, Hamidah gave a short brief about the stairs climb time trial for Wed. Future runs will be on more hilly grounds to simulate actual Climbathon race conditions...looking forward to some of those actually...hehe

Distance Ran:10.9km ____Time:49min30sec_____Pace:4:32min/km
Average HR:N/A____Max HR:N/A____KCal:800KCal est.