Singapore Biathlon 2009 - 1.5km Swim, 10km RunLast weekend, I participated in my very first full distance race. Somewhat a delayed posting but only cos I have been beeezeeeeeee........ :)
It seemed like a natural progression to do this race, so I did. It didn't matter that I hardly trained for it. I think since Corp Tri 2007 (which was my last race that included a swim), I swam less than 10 times. As for running, I haven't been doing a whole lot of running since the half marathon in Dec, but for this year, I've tried to run the 10+km Macritchie Trail with Paul at least once a week. Not a whole lot, but enough to ensure I finish. Paul was perpetually nagging at me to swim cos he was worried that I would drown in open water (bless him), but I assured him that while I may not be a speedy swimmer, I am pretty drown-resilient.
Anyway, the day didn't start off too well with me not getting much sleep cos Sophie had a 40C fever all night. Paul and I headed towards the east with the top down enjoying the cool morning breeze. ;) We got there about 630am for registration and body marking. It was still dark and I found my little transition square to lay out my stuff. (I don't know how slim the organisers think we are, but those transition squares are tiny!)
The swim was a single loop, which was nice. The initial leg out was crowded with too many people and at one point someone was literally hanging on to me from behind and pretty much using me like a kickboard! I stopped, grabbed her arm, twisted around, pulled her out of the water and sternly told her not to use me as a float. I mean WTF! Anyway, after that I swam pretty leisurely on, lots of people passing me by as expected. The toughest part was after the u-turn point on the way back where I think we must’ve been swimming against the current and I felt like I was swimming on the spot. I swam on, fighting the boredom,.... I wasn't tired, but I was painfully bored. I even started swimming backstroke at some point in an attempt to break the monotony…. Then I saw people with different coloured caps swimming by. Oops! The next wave is overtaking me. Man, that sucks.... Then it started to drizzle, making backstroke somewhat uncomfortable with droplets falling on my face. Fine. I flipped over to make a better effort towards the shore. I think it took me about 52min for the swim. Haha....Appalling! But hey, I didn't drown - Yay!
I ran through to transition area, relieved to be done with the swim. Looked out for Ruth (kids' Godma) who was my communication channel to the kids. Got some reassurance that no one has called about Sophie, hence she should be fine. Phew! I packed my things into a trash bag in case the rain got heavier and was on my way…
The run was fun. I have slowly started to enjoy running. So with the nice cool overcast weather, I did a slow and comfortable jog in about 1hr.
My 1st full distance race completed – YAY!
My total time was 1hr 57min. Which kind of means I spent about 5 min in the transition. Oops! Will work on that for next time…. Anyway I managed to keep within my loose target of completing it under 2hrs.
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