Chinese New Year Eve Run

It was a small but comfy gathering at the Chinese New Year Eve Run (Animiles Route) this morning from the Lower Pierce Reservoir. The actual Animiles group had earlier changed their run to 8km at ECP. Richy, DO, Cokiee, Cheow, Bug, Brokie, SealBoon, RealRunner, Sportsventurer and Dream gathered at about 6am. While waiting to start, Teo Ser Luck was seen running by doing his ninja training run...wow, he really starts early.

We started off along OUTR, chatting merrily about some of the recent races we did, as well as preparations for the upcoming HK, KL, Gold Coast Marathons. Midway along OUTR, I ran alongside Richy to lead him to the first water stop at Seletar Reservoir. Richy was enjoying the clean and green atmosphere in what would be one of the green lungs of Singapore. Though the humidity was on the high side, we ran at a steady pace of about 4:50min/km pace. From Seletar Reservoir, we ran out towards Mandai Crematorium, and turned back when we reached the first water body....Cokiee estimated we had done about 10km+ by then, since we had ran for about 50min+.

On the way back, we broke off from Cheow and Cokiee, who had wanted to run the 18km distance. Brokie had turned back slightly earlier and we pre-arranged to meet at the gates of Upper Pierce Reservoir. The remaining 5 of us ran out to Upper Thomson Road, then OUTR, and reached UPR in about 1hr50min of running time. We waited for a bit, before deciding to push ahead towards air-cond road. Along UPR we met Bee, Ronnie, Kops, Hee Shen and gang doing their 'ninja run'...hehe...and further down, met another pair of 'couple run' from SAFRA MF....wow, seems like this is a conducive place for such ninja couple runs....haha. Jokes aside, we were enjoying our run along UPR with the rolling slopes and air-cond road. We met up with Bee and Ronnie at the toilet area, to introduce them to Richy and SealBoon.

RR established that we had covered about 19.5km up to that point, and with an estimated 4km to the end point, we maintained a steady pace all the way back up the 2 slopes and OUTR, to reach LPR toilet area in 2hr9min. It was a good run for us, and I think all enjoyed the nice company and conversations. Lots of isotonic drinks from DO & Cheow, with RR providing yummilicious carbo-recovery choco milk...hmm, my fave. We had a good wash up, before proceeding to the usual food centre....the queue was long because of CNY eve....we had lots more nice conversations before breaking off....not before many of us agreed to show up at SAFRA MF on the 3rd day of CNY to do yet another run, only this time, it will be the CNY Heng Heng Run, to burn off all the goodies and glorious food we would have consumed over the next few days...so till then!

Distance: 25km__Time: 2hr9min__Pace: 5hr10min