Sunday 6 September 2009

Yellow Ribbon Prison Run 2009

1st run for the year 2009.

The journey to the run did not really started well. Despite waking up at 5.30am with every things prep the night before, leaving at 6.00am still was obviously not good enough.

Hiccup 1 - MRT towards Pasir Ris was delayed but no public announcement was made. You'll be surprise to see such a crowd at the station at 6.00am on a Sunday....Hmm...waited for almost half an hour for a train to arrive.

Hiccup 2 - Shuttle bus from Singapore Expo was caught in a traffic jam to the start point. Took the 6.55am shuttle bus but reached Changi Village only at 7.25am. Well, all thanks to all those kiasu people who wanted to try their luck driving to the start point despite the organiser's advice not to....can see people parking along the road and slip raods...haiz....

Hiccup 3 - Baggage point to the start point was like 1 km away!! Guess it must have been difficult to find a right location for the for all the logistics. But the baggage point point and start point on the map certainly did not say it was 1 km away! (Awww...the fineprint says map not drawn to scale...hahaha) Hmm...from Changi Village Hawker Centre to Changi Air Base....figure out the distance...

The run had already been flagged off when finally reaching the start point....so no warm ups (luckily from all the walk to the start point, the legs are kind of warmed up) and Ready, Steady, Poom Bi Bi. The weather drizzled a little but luckily it held out throughout the run. The race route was narrow and the crowd was larger than expected. But it was kind of good forcing a slow paced start. The route was a little tougher with many uphills and downhills but generally the run was in good form and the breathing was consistent. This is one of the better runs so far and able to finish off to a sub-1-hour timing. But am really perplexed by the stupidity of a race route to have a U-turn before the last stretch to the finishing line after a down slope run. Oh well....I guess they need to make up for the 10k distance

The final hiccup must have been the baggage collection. The trucks did not arrive till almost 10am due to the road closure.....hmmm...wonder if there had been a dry run prior to this. When they finally arrived, it was another chaos...despite the well planned queues, the baggage were mixed up between the trucks. Too bad, did not have a camera to take down all the runners becoming "bidders" on the floor raising up their number tags, as if bidding for our belongings. Hahaha....

After the baggage collection, it started to drizzle again just when Mr. VIP Teo is taking his leave after all the I don't know what is going on at the main tentage....'cos half the time I queuing for something (from Goodie Bag, Sports Massage, Food & Beverage and Baggage....hmmm...damn I missed the Anderson Ice Cream queue)...haha

Oh well the last queue is to queue for the Shuttle Bus back to Expo....