Haw Par Villa, Herbal Duck Soup

The NUS Hill Runners @ NUS Guild House

I made all the necessary re-arrangements and even finished off the meetings in town early, just to make it for the NUS Hill Run....why? the promise of good food and a 'happening' group of runners to enjoy the run with :)

Reached at 6.30pm, and saw SealBoon at the carpark who was joining us for the first time. Walked to the usual waiting area at Guild House and saw Brokie, leh-lio, wend88 and dkw warming up. Ronnie, Freddy and xdd were early as well. Then DO walked by, followed by tktan (who was to take a rest after a hard Tue's workout). We were complete and started off at 6.45pm to make it up the slopes of Haw Par Villa (HPV). xdd was kind to kickoff with her slower-than-normal pace, so we were able to chit-chat and catch-up.

Up the slopes of HPV and into the quite enclave of housing estate, before coming out onto Buona Vista Road. Knowing that the steep Vigilante Drive was coming up, I urged all to save some energy. We had a steady and good climb up. Wend88, who was not to used to slopes, took it easy and made it to the top to all's applause. We carried on to Kent Ridge Park, took a quick toilet break, and then ran steady out Science Park I, crossing over to Science Park II. tktan surprised us at a strategic corner and snapped at us.....hehe.

All were enjoying ourselves, and then at the start of PGP slopes, Freddy could no longer contain himself, and sped all the way up the slopes. We followed closely behind, and made our next stop at the top of PGP slopes to cheer all runners. With a final 3.5km to go, we increased the pace slightly and ran all the way without stopping anymore. It was fun for me pacing the runners, and the final stretch had Brokie, dkw and myself pacing to the finish...dkw was more than able to maintain a solid pace....he should do well at SCSM07. We finished the 12km run in about 1hr17min...a good workout sufficient to burn off some excesses so we could indulge :)

The highlight came after a quick session by the 'sauna' and 'pool'...yes, 9-course dinner at the Guild House Chinese Restaurant. The Herbal Duck Soup was just great, the veg dishes I loved, the fish was quite interesting, although the dessert was so-so. Discussions about the Chiangmai and GE30km runs in December and January took centrestage, interspersed occasionally about the Gentle-Brokie Challenge....team BroKiE's spirits were high, although we can be sure Gentle's spy would be feeding him some of the strategies that were discussed.....we can expect counter-measures and insurgencies in the remaining 3 weeks to come....this is just getting so interesting....last I heard Brokie was even prepared for a nail-biting head-head finish, and have requested for video cams to capture any photo-finish just in case....haha