Boon Pin's MR25 Ultra

i did something crazy yesterday: an ultra marathon at macritchie reservoir organised by mr25

the challenge: to run a minimum of 5 loops of 10.8km to qualify for a finisher tee shirt and cert

it was one of the toughest things i have ever done in endurance racing, possibly tougher than my experience for langkawi ironman

the race started at 7am and there was a fairly sizeable number who started - easily more than 100 runners

for me, i was doing the race with charles teng, a fellow triathlete from the group animiles, some of whom we met in langkawi

the first round was ok. legs were their freshest, of course, and we took about 1hr 10mins to complete the 10.8km loop

the second loop was also fine and we finished it a few minutes faster than the first loop, probably because the crowd of runners had thinned out from the first loop

the third loop was when my body started to protest against having to run on such undulating ground that was alternately rocky and softish

it was what i call the east coast syndrome: the 20+ to 30km stretch when the mind starts asking "why are you doing this??"

after resting for 7 minutes after the second loop, my morale hit rock bottom, pardon the pun, at having to tackle those rocky slopes again

all credit to charles who pushed and motivated me to keep going

but, it did not stop me from thinking repeatedly that i wanted to give up

so what, i thought. there's no shame in calling off a race when the body is suffering so

we managed to trudge through the third loop then started thr fourth loop when my stomach started going loopy

more specifically, i started to experience what i usually do in longer-distance events - i got all bloated and windy and that was mostly what i thought about throughout the fourth loop: going to the toilet

by this time, i was thinking seriously about giving up after the fourth loop: it was late morning and the sun had come out in full force

like an angel, anna from animiles appeared after our fourth loop with morale boosting food and drink. i had a date with the toilet and let go as much as i could

i was so wiped out by my stomach that i could barely eat a sausage, while charles enjoyed his chicken rice

nonetheless, our spirits were lifted after this lunch break and i felt good enough to carry on with a fifth loop

however, charles' old ITB injury was flaring up badly, so we decided to walk for most of the loop. in any case, it was almost impossible trying to catch up with any runners in front because there were hardly any left!

the fifth loop was the easiest, relatively speaking

it was also our slowest: about 1 hr 50mins, or as charles pointed out, slower than it would have taken us to run a normal half-marathon!

we ran our way to the finish line and completed the day's mission in abt 7hrs 30mins, or about 1.5hrs each round that we had planned

it was very slow but given our inexperience with offroad racing, i was glad i stuck it out for the nike finisher tee shirt. wahahahaha

having had this experience now, i would recommend hivelocity's sundown ultra instead. it sounds crazy having to do 84km instead of 5 x 10.8km, but trust me, it will be a more pleasant experience! :)

Written by boonpin

Future Saturday's ride

For future Saturday's ride, there will be up to three parts :

Part I : C2T Identity (just to retain your C2T membership)

- Usual 65k loop (Mandai-LCK-Bahar-West Coast-Clementi) or 70k (with Sembawang-Admiralty extension) with NTU hill.

Part II : C2T Supremacy (for IM readiness)

- Part I + 40k loop or Part I x 2 (RV at Caltex gas station along Dunearn Rd)

Part III : C2T Ultimatum (for IM lagi-readiness)

- Part II + 10k run up Rifle Range (RV at Ching Hong's gate and remember your shoes!)

So you can pick and choose as you like : Identity, Supremacy or Ultimatum - depending on your goal. We will always have our Identity ride, so no worries. When you respond, please also indicate your menu choice so that like-minded people can flock together.

Posted by

Terence Ng

10 reasons to drive to Langkawi IM race

10 reasons to drive to Langkawi IM race :

1. Cheaper
2. No worries about air tickets
3. Flexi timing of in and out
4. Can cancel anytime :-p
5. Want to experience driving to north part of Malaysia
6. Carbo loading at Penang (Yum!)
7. No airport jam
8. It's the journey, not the destination
9. Good way to taper
10. Get use to the speed of 140km/hr, so that you will find 35km/hr a crawl

Terence's SC Marathon race report

Boon Pin really gave new meaning to "Amazing race" and marathon. Will upload his report onto crazy2tri blog for archival.

I, too had my own magical moment. As I prepared for this year marathon, my target was to beat my last year's time of 5:06hr by breaking 5 hours. Frankly, I thought 5 hour was hard to beat because I ran quite hard last year and the weather was really cool. Beyond my wildest imagination, I clocked 4:33h. For me, the biggest satisfaction is not the timing but that of a mental block removed, with the surge of "you-can-do-anything-now" energy.

Unlike the previous two marathons (05 & 06), my game plan this time was to go at a pace at 6min/km for the first 30km and then get myself to the finish line, even if I have to risk stoning out after 30k.

My splits was 21km - 2:08h, 30km - 3:20h, 37km - 4h. At the half-marathon U-turn along Nicoll Highway, only 2 elite yellow-tags (half-marathoners) passed me (unlike previous years - rocks, man). 20-25k stretch : I found myself "clinging on" to this lady with a great running pose (chi-running?), going at 11km/h. Roger Chow passed me around 25km - he went on to beat his target of 4.5 hr (4:23h). The last 5km, after Stadium link, was PAIN, felt like I have legs of Transformer.

Mark Chang asked me for the training plan and I didn't really have one, roughly one 30k, one 25k, two 20k long runs and several short runs as fillers. Three weeks before the race, I bought the Chi-running book, read it and decided, against conventional wisdom, to adopt what I read for the race. I find the "steel and cotton" principle useful. The biblical truth for this is "His yoke is easy and His burden is light" which I meditated whenever my brain was "on".

By the way, "steel and cotton" means maintain your form with your core muscle and make your legs go "limp" or soft, so that you minimize the use of leg muscles and feel "light". Lean forward to go faster - let gravity does the work.

Another difference : due to lack of time, I didn't really taper this time. On the week leading to marathon, I ran on day 1-3-5, 7km, with average speed of 10km/h - my targetted pace.

Signing off.

(At Beijing, -2 degree C)

Boon Pin's SC Marathon race report

what a day this was!

it started when terence came to pick me up in his super spacious race mobile and got us to the race site in no time at all.

he lent me a spare tube and taught me how to use the hand pump which i've had on my bicycle all this while but never used. :p

we met bernard tay and his friends outside peninsula and chatted for a bit before i went off to SCC to meet Yuan Ping, my race partner.

though it was cumbersome to carry my floor pump, i was glad i did as i was able to pump up the tyres on her wheelchair properly for the first time (we have always been training on slightly soft tyres). cos Yuan Ping started to question me about not pumping the tyres too much in case they burst, i decided to err on the side of caution (even though her tyres said can pump to 145psi, the tyres felt pretty pumped by 70psi).

one thing l learnt here was that handicapped people can't use floor pumps like we do cos they can't stand on the base to pump.

we still some distance away from the start line when the gun went off so i panicked a little about losing time. but in the end, it was not too bad cos by the time we got to esplanade bridge, there was still a considerably-sized crowd walking forward to the start line cos there were so many people for the marathon.

as we had agreed with SSC, we waited till the bulk of the marathon participants had crossed the start line before we started ourselves. i think at least 15 minutes had lapsed by then...

we spent the bulk of our time in the first part of the marathon being hemmed in by the sheer size of the crowd and it was difficult to get into a rhythm. most of the time, it was jog-run-jog-run. i didn't mind so much cos i felt it was probably better to be forced to slow down than do a cheong-ing first half from all that adrenaline and then run out of gas in the second half.

what was very touching was that a lot of the runners would break out into spontaneous applause whenever they saw us. their cheers and kind words were very encouraging. we saw ivan at marina south and i introduced him to Yuan Ping.

i can't remember our split times very well but i vaguely remember we did the first 10km in about 1 hr 5mins. thank you, powerbar! at this point, we saw bernard tay.

more wild applause followed when we returned to esplanade bridge and the 10km runners were waiting to be flagged off.

by the time we got to mountbatten, i remembered feeling the onset of fatigue and wishing the 20km mark was a little closer. i think we were about 2hrs 7mins at the 20km mark.

when we entered east coast park, my throat was feeling parched though i had kind of been drinking regularly at the water stations. i felt the first twitches of a cramp but willed it to not overcome me while saying "Supernatural strength" to myself. :)

as i had expected, my pace dropped at east coast cos my legs were starting to feel a bit tired. still, i resisted getting some deep heat cos i wanted to see how long i could last this year without it.

we saw richard and CG at east coast when they shouted out to us. :)

shortly after the u-turn, we had to stop for a toilet break cos Yuan Ping had to go. then just as we were wheeling up the ramp to the handicapped toilet, one able-bodied runner went inside ahead of her. i asked him in a loud voice to use the normal toilet and he came out and apologised. heh

when we got to the seafood centre after the u-turn, i decided my legs had had enough and so, i slathered on some deep heat cream. it was niiiiiiice and my legs thanked me for it. :)

i think we reached the 30km mark at about 3hrs 27mins. at this point, i was thinking "wow, maybe we can wrap this up in under 5hrs". but at the same time, i was not sure because i was really feeling very hot from the sun and knew that it would take a lot to carry on cos my body was screaming out to "WALK! Relack!!".

then we saw joe waiting at the side and his smile lit us up to carry on. all of a sudden, chris appeared magically and we got a second wind, thanks to him.

he cleared the path in front of us by continually asking runners (most of whom were in a daze by this time) to give us some space to pass through. what we had to resort to earlier was shouting out "excuse me" to runners and then saying "thank you" when we passed them.

also, he would run ahead to get us cups of drink. before that, we always had to slow down, and then get close to the tables where the water was, all the while avoiding other runners who had also stopped to get water themselves.

his words of encouragement to Yuan Ping and I were also appropriate and it was then that i realised how invaluable his deciding to run with us for the last 10km was. from his actions, i learnt that it takes an athlete to know what another athlete needs to keep going. (hearing a volunteer screaming "c'mon, don't walk too much! the sun is very hot!" is not my idea of encouraging fatigued runners.)

when we got into stadium link, we saw michael. then after we exited kallang, we got a vehicle escort watching over us as we navigated the huge downslope and upslope near crawford, all the way to where the singapore explorer was. as a form of motivation, i pretended the vehicle was those which accompany podium contenders (wahlau, thick skin or what!).

chris was with us all the way till the last 200m, then shouted at us to take over and that this was our moment. what a guy! thank you, chris. we couldn't have pulled through the last 10km the way we did without you.

the time on my watch read 4hrs 46mins. gun time was 5hrs 1min, i think.

after the race when we were being interviewed, mike denoma from stanchart came over with wong ai-kwei to congratulate us. i thanked them profusely for sponsoring our wheelchair and they were very kind about the whole thing. just before he left, he said "next year, we get you an even better wheelchair". what a guy! i have read so much about his initiatives and his achievements that i was slightly awestruck meeting him in person. :)

Written by boonpin