I reached the City Hall Padang at around 4:30 am and there was another 1 hour before the race would be flagged off. Immediately checked in my luggage and headed towards the mobile toilets. Moved towards the staring area but the gate was not opened yet. Did some warm-up and at around 5.10 am I walked towards the start line when I found that runners were moving in to the enclosed starting area. The 1st chamber was reserved for the elite runners where the 2nd chamber seemed to be left empty intentional as a buffer zone to separate the elite and the rest of the runners. Just few minutes before 5.30am, the officials removed all the barriers separating the chambers and we were allowed to move forward behind the elite runners.
The gun went off sharp at 5.30 am with a brief count down, all runners heading west along the Raffles Quay. Took a U-turn at around 1.5 KM and headed towards the starting line along Robinson Road. I could see that there were still hundreds (perhaps thousands) of runners trying to pass through the start line.
I ran an easy pace and around an hour, I found myself running in the East Coast Park. As I moved eastward along the park, saw the elite runners returning on the other side of the park. I did not increase my pace because I knew that it was a long long way to go. It was quite pleasant running in the park at the dawn as I could see the sky slowly but surely became brighter and brighter as time went by.
Decided to take a toilet break at around the 18KM point, as I re-joined the race I soon saw Liew was returning from the other side. I estimated it was 3Km ahead of me! After taking the 20KM U-turn and running along the path closer to the sea, saw Victor Loh on the opposite side and trailing behind me about 1.5KM.
At around 8.20am at the 31KM, I turned into Stadium Road and found the road was crowd with the slower 21KM runners. I (as if running an obstacle race) have to duck around to find a clear path to move forward. My speed was affected by firstly my tiredness and secondly by the human traffic jam. Luckily it last only for about 3KM and then the full marathoners were separated from the half, immediately I tried to speed up a litter to compensate for the lost time.
As I was getting more and more tired, I hit the moving obstacles again (this time was much worst with thousands and thousands of 10KM women & 21KM runners) at the last 3 KM. Since I did not have much energy left to duck around, I just squeezed my way through the crowd. At one point, one young lady gave me a hard stare when my sweaty arm touched her “clean” shoulder.
At the 42KM mark, there was 192 meters more to run, the right lane was dedicated to the full marathoners, since there was so much space to maneuver, I increased my pace and sped to the finishing line where the clock shown 3:57:54. Although I was exhausted after the race but I felt quite relax and able to roam around the finishing areas. There were many queues for the 100plus drink and it took only a few second to get a chilling bottle. There was no problem getting a second bottle or more as the volunteer very effectively distributing the drinks.
The organizer really did a fantastic job, where you could found unlimited supply of banana and gels at the designated stations. The water stations were aplenty and the “extra long” arrays of tables could easily cater for a large crowd.
The graph below really shows that I was getting tired along the way as the pace decreases gradually.
The finishing medals and T-shirts were given out orderly as you walked out the enclosed area by returning the timing chips.
Collected back my luggage and rested for an hour without meeting any friends. As the weather became warm, and I decided to take the MRT back to my brother’s house.
