Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy
(pwned by Mount Faber)
On a whim, I entered the Mount Faber run. At 10km, it seemed tough but doable, given that I haven't been training as I ought to recently.So, 6am, rise and shine, then over to Bukkt Merah, still groggy.
As I learned from scuba diving, preparation is everything. So, It's no great surprise when I have checked my bag and then find that the battery of my GPS heart rate monitor is dead, so I won't be blogging a map of the course. It's just as well that I brought two MP3 players,. but one of those is dead too. In the end, I get my bag back & throw them in, rather than schelpping them around with me.
There is the usual mixture of super-fit, low body-fat, people (don't you just hate htme?), stretching and running to warm up (I will save every last step for the 10k, and not run a single extra step).
It is almost exclusively Chinese, although I do see a few older Ang moh, who, for some reason, are giving each other hard stares. With my spare tyre, no one even wastes the effort to sneer at me.
The race starts and we're off, at a slow trot, which is my entire strategy for the run. After a mile or or, just when I have caught my wind and am settled, we enter a long, slow downhill slope. Most speed up, but I just fear its inevitable doppelgänger.
I should note here that of dozens of races in multiple countries (including many here in Singapore), this is teh first time that I have experienced the runners stopping for traffic, rather than the other way around. To stop - in the middle of the run - is generally to be unable to start again.
There seems to be no end to this gentle downhill, but as long as it is it has had a considerable vertical drop. We turn a hairpin corner and the horrible truth dawns …
Until now, I have thought that we were running 10km around Mount Faber. But, no, the bastards will have us run up it. Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy indeed!
Three hundred and forty-four vertical feet does not sound like much … until you are faced with it. The gradient was one in eight, maybe a gentler one in six, but seemed to rise vertically before us. By the brow of the first hill, after only a few hundred yards, there were walkers. A quarter of a mile later (there were several horizontal miles required to cover those three hundred and forty-four vertical feet) we encountered the first water station.
"That must have been welcome", you may think. "What fucktard planned that??!!" was my thought.
To stop is to have difficulty to start; to stop on a hill is to have extremely difficulty to start. And, gasping for air as we all were, one would have to wait a few minutes to even be able to drink without drowning. I checked a cupful over my head and slogged on.
By the top, thirty or forty percent were walking - your humble narrator among them. Sometimes you own the race, and sometimes the race owns you.
And sometimes you are pwned by a ruddy great hill.
At the top it flattened, so we all recommenced to run, only to discover it was a false top, with another beyond. I slogged on.
After such a gruelling climb, there has to be an equally gruelling descent. And in some ways running downhill is harder. Lean forward and you might fall, exhausted, and roll, or skid along. Run too fast and you risk shin splints. So, there I was, leaning backwards at about 15 to 20 degrees, going almost as slow downhill as up (a great time this is going to be).
Eventually we reached "ground level", which was just another few miles of up and down more gentle hills and dreamed of the finish line. We struggled, exhausted, past MappleTree storage and I just wishes that I were home playing Maple Story.
Now, in every race, I pass people and people (probably more) pass me, but there is generally someone whom I pass, who passes me, whom I re-pass, and whom I am determined will not finish in front of me. Someone who, when I pass them, picks up their pace, and such behaviour encourages me to pick up my pass when they approach and hence have a better time. This race it was an Ang Moh woman of about thirty-something with a knee bandage.
A mile from home I had left her well behind, and sprinted to open a gap which she could not close. Alas, I had started my home-stretch sprint too early and when she passed me again a few hundred yards from home I could not summon a single Joule of energy to chase. I plodded onwards and finished in what - as for most - must have been an absolutely atrocious time (the results are not yet posted).
Straight to my bag, for the can of Tiger beer which is all that has gotten me through the last few miles. I drain it, lying on the grass, the stand under a hose pipe on the void deck of an HDB and soak myself through until I cool off. Then I cross the street to a hawker centre, where there are already many runners (but I am the only one who orders Tiger).
And before anyone thinks it was wrong of me to be flopped against the door of the pub when teh barmaid came to open for the day, I would point out that beer is better for rehydration than water.
Hmmm, I actually finished in 01:08:37.57 which is about 10 minutes too slow for even a plodder like me, but pretty reasonable, given that ruddy great hill.
I can’t see me making the half marathon, though.
graham (URL) - 25 June 09 11:48 am