My Inaugural i-Run Duty

Made time after my seminar to go down to International Business Park for my first i-Run duty. Met up with lactic_acid and Maverick, who was the lead trainer. I was supposed to be the sweeper for the 10km runners, while Kenneth was to do the 5km lead. There were a few other young runners taking the lead for the 3km distance.

A large turnout of about 50-60 came at 6pm. I recorded the heart-rates for 10 of those who wanted to do 10km, before assembling for warm-ups by Mave. It was refreshing to see so many new faces. We proceeded from The Atrium towards the Park Connector. Along the way I chatted with a number of the new runners, one of whom was a Thai guy called Tim. I gave him some advice on how he could progressively work from 10km to do a Full Marathon by year end. Slacker, whom I have not met for a long time, joined in the 5km distance. I invited him to join me for 10km next week.

The U-turn for the 10km was just before the road-crossing to Buona Vista MRT. I waited there for the last few 10km runners to turn back, and gave them some encouragement to maintain their steady paces. I moved ahead to try to catch up with the mid-pack, and bumped into Runalone doing his ninja tempo run along the canal. The entire canal stretch were linked, and other than the small crossing along the bridge, it was a pretty smooth route.

I showed the way to some of the final few runners, before getting back to start point. By then, all the 3km and 5km runners had finished their runs and went off. So did the fast 10km runners who finished earlier. Maverick and lactic_acid were still around to take the finishing pulse-rates for all the runners of the 10km. All of them felt good to be able to complete the 10km, which could actually be longer at 11km.

Chatted with lactic about the possibility of sharing with the I-Runners some of my marathon preparation and races. I think it would be good to organize a session for someone with Sports Science background to give a talk about Distance Running, and I won't mind helping to share my experiences. Maybe even get other kakis to share their experiences too. Lactic, if you are reading this, I still hope to get a nice i-Run T :)