hi

another paper... actually planned to take it 1 week after the tutorial on the 13th and 14th but the last paper by sci this year is on the 17th.

i had sat in for the class previously at tampines but that was before i got the new textbook and before i cleared m5 and m9 so alot of what went on then wasn't fully understood. armed with the new text, i attended the night class at changi last month. this was to help me prepare for the paper and then go for the day class on the 13th and 14th for revision before attempting it today.

why the trouble? because this paper has a reputation on being very tricky and i didn't want to re-sit for it. i try my best not to do unpleasant things more than once if i can help it. ;)

thankfully, the tutorials by julia together with the study guide were really helpful in making it a successful attempt.

yeah!

half marathon

so after much hullabaloo whether we're going to have 1 or 2 marathons in december, the dust settled and the inaugural scms was born today with a record 60,000 participants.

the most visible change was the different start points for all 3 races. the full-marathoners starting at orchard road, the half-marathoners outside sentosa and the 10km runners starting at the usual esplanade bridge.

and so i didn't sleep over at swissotel this year, neither did doris and thomas since the hotel was rather full. (a sign that the economy is doing really well)

some of the 'likes' for my run this year include: early mrt trains to ferry half-marathoners to harbourfront station which is near the start point, gel instead of bananas at the halfway point, the 'fun and happy' route within universal studio with very enthusiastic staff cheering us on. i spotted shrek, fiona and charlie chaplin.

the main dislikes are: the hot weather with the sun blazing from 7:30am onwards (i'm thankful i didn't do the full marathon. :P), many upslopes, the suffocating underground carpark route at resorts world, overcrowding at the point the half marathon first merges with the 10km.

another not so good arrangement was the collection of the bags deposited by half and full marathoners at the f1 pit building. that was kind of far from the end point at the padang and made me decide against bringing a change of clothes.

i was hoping to improve on my last year's timing of 2:46:14 but it was not meant to be. the upslopes were too daunting and demoralising. my timing this year is exactly 1 minute more than last year's, not a second more or less.

some statistics regarding my run:

1. Result in Entire Field - 3639th place [7635 finishers behind About 32% of finishers ahead]
2. Result in Gender (Men) - 2745th place [4372 finishers behind. About 39% of finishers ahead]
3. Result in Division (M 30-39) - 1044th place [1511 finishers behind. About 41% of finishers ahead]
4. Average mile: 12 minutes 45 seconds. Average speed: 4.7 m/h
5. Average kilometre: 7 minutes 56 seconds. Average speed: 7.6 km/h

More trivia from the run,

Of the 11,274 who finished, 37% were women and 63% were men. For the record, you were ahead of about 78% of women finishers.

that means 22% of the women were faster than me... how humbling. :)

The winner of the event was in division M 30-39 and achieved a time of 1:15:56.

the winner of the half marathon happens to be in the same age division as me and he completed it in less than half the time i took! i was practically crawling compared to the race winner. haha...

after my run, i went to look for doris and thomas 'cos jaden was going to do the kids' dash. the kids' race comes with their own tee, race bid and minature finisher medal too. very cute!