This is my first competitive run for year 2009, an event I look forward to as part of my long term training towards a sub 4 hours marathon. I took a day off yesterday from my training runs hoping that I will be fresh enough and finally go below sub 50 minutes for 1okm. My strategy is straight forward, that is to run below 5 minutes per km.
As the gun goes off at 7am I started off by over taking some slowly runners, oops... almost fall as I tried to find my way through the crowd. As the roads are quite spacious I managed to find some space around me and starts to settle down with steady pace. I took a glanced at my Polar watch and it shows 4:90 minutes per km, deep inside I hope I can maintain this pace throughout and so far so good and feeling strong as along the way I get to wave at some familiar Safra runners and enjoy the nice Sengkang Riverside park scenery. However as I leave the Riverside park I started to feel a little breathless, well no choice but to slow down as my watch shows 5:30 minutes. Feeling a little disappointed with myself but then I thought I should just run and just do the best that I could and I tell myself I must not go any slower.
At about the 5km make I met Safra runner Lawrence not to far ahead of me as I tried to keep pace with him knowing that he is definitely capable of finishing the race in 50 minutes. Soon I gradually find some momentum in my run as I slowly catch up and managed to overtake him, consider my pace I do wonder perhaps its also not his day too. As I continue with my run I spotted a girl about some 50 meters ahead looking strong with very consistent pace. I tell myself that is a good pace and should I overtake her I don't think I will not fare too badly too haha. Well she is indeed very consistent and somehow I just could not close up the gap fast, it is only at about the 2km mark that I managed to close the gap to about 20 meters. The last 1km is tiring as I run faster with bigger steps. With 100 meters to go I can see the gun time showing 48 minutes, feeling very surprise while so glad that I am still below 50 minutes and also wonder how did I make up so much time? But without too much time for a second thought I decide to take a 100 meter sprint to the finishing line wanting to finish below 49 minutes as I also overtake all remaining runners that are ahead of me and the moment I cross the finishing line I turn back to have a glanced at her and to my surprise she is one of the elite MF Safra runners who broke the sub 4 hours mark in one of her marathons.
Really glad to have finally break the 50 minutes mark and to my surprise my polar watch only shows 9.1km. Upon verification from other sources that the route is definitely 10km that I realized all these while I have been running longer distances during my training runs. Think back keeping my watch this way is not a bad way to train too :p
Gun Time 00:48:29.68
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