Singapore Marathon 2011
My
Singapore Marathon Report:
The Singapore Marathon started for me at
the race pack collection expo -
I'd booked my collection time for between
1900-2100 as my flight was
scheduled to land at 1700hrs. The queue
snaked in and out round the large
conference hall and I was pretty sure we'd
walked the marathon distance by
the time we got to the collection point.
It was moving fairly quickly
though and the organisation was efficient.
The race itself started at 0500hrs in fresh
24degC temperatures! There
were 20,000 full marathon runners and
although everyone got into different
pens before the start according to our own
estimated times, it only took a
minute before we crossed the start line.
The start point was beautifully
lit with Christmas lights, along the famous
shopping precinct Orchard Road.
It then went through Marina Bay and
Chinatown (where we encountered a
bottleneck situation and reduced to
stop-start because they'd only closed
one lane of the road instead of two!).
When we hit the East Coast section
along the beach, it was just as the sun was
appearing and was beautiful,
but it was a very loooong route right to
the other end and then double
back, which can be demoralising when you
start to see runners coming from
the other direction!
It was also getting hot and humid. I
stopped to take a drink at every
drink station, which was every 3km. At
19km, we ran through a cooling
station, a marquee type tunnel with fans
and water vapours, but I was
pretty sure it was spurting out hot air!
There were also stations where
Sholtz gel and tiger balm muscle rubs were
dished out.
At about the 36km mark I started to suffer
from cramps in my right calf and
had to walk a fair bit. I was glad to be
walking by then, to be honest. I
was feeling the heat and kept pouring water
over my head. I did another
little trot up the last bridge and dragged
myself over the finish line in
5:24hrs. That was about an hour over what
I would have like to achieve but
hey-ho, I survived with no blisters and no
aching muscles the next day.
The plantar fasciitis did flare up a little
though.
Altogether across all distances - Kids
Dash, 5k, 10k, Half Marathon, Full
Marathon and the Corporate Relay (6 in the
team), there were about 65,000
runners. Maybe we could send a couple of
teams to run the relay next
year?!
One fatality was recorded when a 22-year
old local man collapsed on
finishing the HM and died in hospital an
hour later. He was reportedly a
fit young man who'd just complete his
national service and ran regularly.
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Clara Halket
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