walked over to the start point in 5 minutes... am so glad that i stayed over at swissotel. :) if i had taken the shuttle bus, i would have to be at the clementi stadium at 5:00am! gosh!
i'm so not prepared to run the half marathon but what the heck? can always walk whenever i want to. i only aim to complete the 21km, not run the complete distance. ;)
the first half was still bearable, i wasn't running fast but just a really slow jog with stops at all the drinks station plus a toilet break.
then the muscle near-cramps started after the half way mark. first on my left quadriceps then on my right, followed by both my calf muscles. had to make a beeline for the deep heat rub stations and 'whiten' my thighs with the ointment.
from then on, i had to stop periodically to stretch and massage my legs so as to prevent them from having a full-on cramp. so i would run for a few minutes, stretch and walk for a long time until i'm ready to run again and the cycle repeats itself. at the last 2km, even my toes threaten to cramp up.
needless to say, i didn't meet my target of 2:30 for the half marathon. it was a disappointing 3:07:43 and my results were embarassing to say the least. of the 9090 who completed the half marathon, 32% were female and i was only ahead of 31% of them.
Average km is a crawling 8 minutes and 54 seconds and average speed is 6.7km/h.
7127th place in the entire field with 1963 finishers behind and about 78% of finishers ahead.
5112th place in the male category with 1051 finishers behind and about 83% of finishers ahead.
948th place in my age category [35 to 39] with 137 finishers behind and about 87% of finishers ahead.
just for comparison, the male winner of the half marathon completed the run in 1:08:02. that is less than half the time i took. if he can run at this constant speed, he could have ran 3 x half marathons in the time i take to complete 1!
what's worse? my ipod nike+ recorded a longer distance than 21km! argghhh....
