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| Monday, June 14, 2004 Race Report for North East Urban Escape 2004: Team Hungry DIno I was rather skeptical about the race when Eugene approached me about it in March. It was an average race consisting of the usual running, biking, climbing, abseiling, jumaring and kayaking components, but the reason for the apprehension was due to the biking part of the race and biking was never my strength (that was probably the understatement of the year). Anyway, somehow I was convinced by him and thereby begin the task of conquering my childhood fears of mounting a bike. It was a fine Sunday morning when my dad decided to take me to East Coast Park and fulfill my wish of learning to how to bike. I learnt how to mount and bike smoothly after an hour of coaching, but shortly after I crashed into a tree due to the malfunction of my reflexes in trying to receive water from my mum standing beside the bicycle track. Since then my biking experiences have been very limited and even after purchasing a moderately equipped market bike for a rather hefty sum, the situation did not change much after the initial enthusiasm died. After registering and sitting down to discuss about the team objective and trainings, my heart was set despite my contribution during that discussion. I decided to start training hard. Thus, I pumped up my “moderately-equipped” market bike on an eventful night and went on a ride that sadly ended after nearly resulting in an accident. The brakes malfunctioned. Picking up the telephone, I decided to let the “man” help me source for a bicycle suitable for the race. After some consideration on a particular red mongoose and an overpriced diamondback, we decided to make a trip down to Hup Leong to take a look at the Raleigh bikes. Kudos to Eugene’s resourcefulness and Hup Leong’s good offer, a deal was set. A new M600 Raleigh bike was delivered on that day and serious training soon began. Not many trainings of rowing, intervals and long runs past by before the team decided to put our biking skill to a test at the Mandai X-country trail. That was the beginning of the problems that plagued the team. The morning began with all of us meeting up at Chestnut avenue leading to the trail. Being the weakest biker in the squad, I was inevitably placed in the middle of the group to prevent accidents. The route was filled with ups and downs literally and we were doing fine till it came to a mad uphill. Mingheng and I pushed our bikes up and team captain pock started to cmi. Therefore pock told me to go ahead and soon I was spinning down the trail faster thatn I should as a rookie cyclist. Inevitably the accident unfolded at the a downslope not far form the end of the trail. I totally lost my balance due to the rocky terrain and fell facedown with my bike tumbling over me. There was a relatively huge wound on my knee and I was very quickly evacuated from the area. However, a whole day’s worth of training and many more to come went down the drain from then on. The only good things about that day were the motivation and determination that I got from some cyclist who told me that he was made of “cuts”, and the encouragement and concern of my teammates. Nevertheless, I was barred from training for a week. With diminishing motivation and the onset of lecture tests, the team seemed to have suspended training as well. The different expectations for the race also caught up on us and things were at their worst. With one injured team member and another unwilling to train, Jamin and Eugene continued to persevere on. My first training after the injury began with the archery session when Jayce finally displayed his prowess at being “hou yi” and ended with some good hotdogs. Training sort of resumed for me but we were still constantly interrupted by events like rugby finals and a lot of miscellaneous events that cut trainings to the minimum. Deep in my mind I began to question the team’s goal of winning which I think everyone did, but no one had the heart to voice it. We met up on the Monday after the holidays started to explore “homeground” tampines XC trail. The day started with a 16km route from my house and we met up with Jamin to explore the area. After some serious overestimation and hilarious bashing, pock’s tire punctured. That pretty much ended the day as we headed down to whitesands to get cheated of some cash by the LBS over there. Following that was another 16km of biking for me and a bit more for pock and jamin (another understatement). It was a good 40+km for all three of us but a pity that mingheng could not join us. More problems surfaced as my parents banned me from the original race simulation day due to my bleeding wound and my no-show on kayaking day which eventually resulted in it being cancelled. The uneventful week before the race week ended with some personal and secret trainings and a visit to the doctor to set my parents’ hearts at rest. The following Monday was set as the new race simulation day- the last one before the race proper. It was heartening to have all members of the team down for training and pock running though his cramps like a man. The day ended with a high note at qiu lian ban mian and celebrations for mel’s and tiff’s birthday bash at marina bay. The race day was nearing and I could really feel the effects of it. Being more conscious of my diet and spending more time thinking and psyching up for the race, stayover night came. Before that, some intel work and the email informed us that there were 26 other teams competing and that really set the mood and heightened the anticipation. The ecochallenge video was inspiring and the Mr Low’s sms was encouraging too. The phrase “do odac proud” just got stuck in my mind. The race came as we made our way down to Pasir ris carpark E. We finally got to see our competitors in their battlegear for the race during the briefing. Some were intimidating and others less so. The question that jamin asked after the briefing broke our effort of trying to look “mild” and after putting on our helmets and racepacks, we appeared to be the most prepared around. All effort to be modest were dropped. The race began with the biking leg which nearly made me see my breakfast again. Being the first team of the first wave added more pressure to us but we made use of that very well to avoid the bottlenecks at the various checkpoints. Upon reaching the first checkpoint, we were told to select 2 cyclists to complete a puzzle in the XC trail which we explored previously. The natural choice was jamin and pock who were our best. They sprinted off quickly while mh and I rested. The second tem came in subsequently and many fast teams came in pretty soon despite their disadvantaged timing. We could really feel the heat of the competition then. J&P came out pretty soon and after parking our bikes, we were off to the next station: archery. Jamin, who was our best archer (besides team manager aka jayce aka hou yi), took the ten shots quickly. We incurred a time penalty of 5 minutes there and wasting no time we raced off to the next station at tampines west cc. Traversing the HDB estate, we arrived there only to find a bottleneck due to the slower teams of the previous category. 2 of us were required to jumar while the other 2 would abseil down the clock tower. J&P and YX&MH respectively and we completed the station pretty fast after getting our turn. More teams appeared as we rushed off to St Hilda’s which is just down the road. We met a familiar face over there- Yonghui, a guy who owned us in kayaking sometime ago. He was helping out with the rock-climbing station where we have to choose a member of the team to take on the task. Pock took on the climb and proved his skills once again. Having completed all the checkpoints, we headed back to the XC trail to claim the bikes and from then on it was push push push all the way to pasir ris sea sports club. Pock and I could feel the onset of cramps coming in, but it was “all the way” for us. As we past the starting mark, we saw jayce and he looked pleasantly surprised to see us. Upon reaching the kayaking station, the task was to collect letters from buoy to complete a puzzle. The strongest among us ie mh and jams took the doubles and sprinted out into sea. We quickly hydrated ourselves again and we were off pretty soon after they are back from the kayaking leg. We sprinted all the way back for the gold and lived up to the team motto: Only one way, ALL THE WAY. Elated on the podium, we were also “glorious in victory”. The month of glory had come and gone. We set down to our mugging proper. But I could only ask “when’s the next race coming?” |
| template © elementopia 2003 |
| TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. TIFFANIE. JAYCE. YUANXIANG. SAUYEE. CHUENKANG. EUGENE. JOSHUA. JAMIN. CHEECHONG. ZHENGYUAN. NIZAM. YONGLAI. NITA. KIT LING. DARYL. RUIMING. MELODY. MINGHENG. KENTOH. SHIHUI. DREAM. DREAM DREAM |
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