Race review for SCSM09

I have earned the title :  "I am a barefoot marathoner!"

I woke up at 3am on the 6th Dec 09 morning in preparation for the race that I have been preparing for 14 weeks, yes 14 weeks of hard work!

Drove and parked at city hall at around 4am (parking cost me $8 from 4am to 11am). Met up with Jason Leong (I seem to have alot of friends whose name is Jason) and we proceeded to the usual meeting place with the Animiles. This year, the Animiles numbers had drop significantly probably due to Ankor Wat marathon happening on the same day and WAIM on saturday. After a short chit-chat with Steven and the gang, Jason and me went over to the start point.

The race started at about 5:30am and my game plan was to maintain 5:00 min/km pace for 30km and the rest of the journey will depend on my sole condition. Everything went smoothly as per planned and on the way I was met with many stares, questions and encouragement. The road surface condition was fine except the part alone East Coast service road. This part of the road seriously needs some resurfacing as the tarmac are gone leaving behind sharp granite on the road. I ran on the white painted lines for this part of the route.

After the U-turn and sailing club, everything was fine and I was going strong. When I reached Fort Road (about 30km mark), again the surface of the road was terrible. It slowed me down and from then on I could not maintain a 5:00 min/km pace. The merging of the 21km and 10km slower runners did not really matter to me since I cannot run any faster due to hot and soreness on my sole, but I was still very happy that I could overtake alot of these runners.

My leg muscles did not cramp after coming to 36 - 38km mark (which normally do), I continued to run on at about near between 6 min/km to 7min/km pace from 40km onward till the end with a finishing time of 3hr 40min.

Did I forget to mention that I breathe using nose method only for the first 40km,  I used my mouth to breathe only for the last 2 km because of the lack of oxygen and tireness.  I used nose breathing method for this race was because I can maintain a more consistent pace using this method.  I wondered how it will be like if I breathe through my mouth for running now since I have changed this habit for about 4 months.

It was so disappointing that my timing was not captured in Runpix, I believed it must be the disposable timing chip problem because I used a ankle chip strap (used for triathlon) to put my timing chip instead of shoe because I don't have any shoe. The disposable timing chip seems more unreliable compared to the original champion chip. I used the same method for Army Half Marathon in August 09 and it worked fine.

I don't have any official timing, but the unofficial timing should be 3:40 as there were 2 other runners who crossed the finished line with me.

Belows are some of my pictures.