What a terrible experience for me today.
Going into today, I had not run 2 weeks since Bangkok 10.55km on 23/11/08. I was hoping the knee would have recovered but it wasn't to be.
At the start, I went slow. At the turn to Prince Edwards Road, many 10km runners do a short cut and ran across the car park. The poor volunteer marshal had to use loud hailer and plead with runners to go straight on Raffles Quay and not cut into the car park. So much for runners' integrity. At least 30 runners when I was going through.
I skipped the 1st water station at 1.5km mark. Shortly after that, I felt the discomfort on my left knee. Slowed down my pace but partly also because people were walking. Marina Station Road to ECP, down to Rochor Road, all were up and down. This year route was really not as flat as last year's. The up and down roads + curving left and right was bad news for people like me with knee problem.
Somewhere along ECP around the 4km mark, I had to walk. The pain was really painful. I walked probably a km along ECP, some jogging and overtaking. Many, many walkers this year (including me unfortunately). But I tried to walk behind another walker or slow jogger. Still when I wanted to restart jogging, it was siam left and right. The mass of participants is good for Singapore but bad for people who want to achieve a certain finishing time.
I skipped the first two water stations and drank from the third which was around the 6km mark. The bad thing was I did not see any distance markers though my wife who walked most of the 10km saw the 1km, 2km and 6km. I only hear 2 volunteers who shouted "you're past the 5km mark" and "Reaching 6km" and that's it.
I know I could not run much after 4km. I stopped for Deep Heat cream 2x, most ever. Bangkok I stopped once. Still the pain persisted and I couldn't run after the second time for Deep Heat just before the F1 pits. I had to walk. It was not a nice or enjoyable experience walking for many kilometers. And I was probably in someone's way.
The last 2km were excruciating. Every time I jogged a bit, a winced in pain. I saw cameramen on both sides of the route outside the floating platform but when I jogged, the pain was shooting. The last km was so painful I was greeting my teeth and controlled my tears from falling (while walking some more). I jogged the last 100m just for show. The Gun clock was 1:26:47. Considering I started when it was more than almost 4mins after the horn blast, I probably completed in 1:23 which is terrible as last year, my first SCSM, my time was 1:18. But last year the route was flat and I had no knee or ankle injuries. Will update my official time when it is up.
Conclusion: With the mass crowds, I might not take part next year though I will encourage the kids to do the Kids Dash. Whether my wife wants to run is debatable since she did not have a good experience at the race expo being told that the selected size 'S' was not available on last day and to choose 'XS' or 'XL'.
.jpg)
