| o d a c 19 |
| Monday, October 17, 2005 To be honest, half the time we were racing, I had no idea where we were. Well. Me and my lack of a sense of direction, that’s rather infamous already I suppose. All I recall was that we were looping the marina-east coast-kallang area like mad, and most of the time we just followed the team which happened to be visibly ahead or the green light sticks or the friendly marshals (well most were friendly anyway). Let’s take it from the top. I must admit, and I think the both of you (ie jamz and pock) know, that the race was generating a rather negative pressure on me in the weeks leading up to the race day. School work, mountaineering training and various other ‘human’ issues were taking up my physical and emotional strength, and to me, the race was becoming a drag rather than something to look forward to, as it should be, exacerbated by pock’s one-time anger vent on me. so fine, suck it up and live with it. on friday, a strange flu shit nonsense descended upon me and I spent that day feeling shitty. Upset, obviously, with my recalcitrant body, that always lets me fall semi-sick before races (think army half fever), but still manages to sustain me through the end of everything. Was popping pills on Saturday in the vain hope that the flu would magically disappear. Wake up, eat, pop pill, read, sleep. Wake up, eat, pop pill, sleep. Wake up, pack for race, buy last minute stuff, go to pock’s house. At pock’s place a mini crisis came up- I was late, not in large part due to me, but the unreliability of singapore’s public transport system, namely taxis at bishan and a certain xxx company’s bus service 156. no matter, I made it there ultimately and there a light hearted atmosphere I found. Relief, cos I thought it’d be tense etc. Pock’s father sent us to marina promenade (start point) and we lost pock 1 minute after arriving. Fantastic start. It was dark and jamz and I were blind and pock cycled off. Crisis averted again, we found him queueing at the registration counter already. (jamz, we shouldve known, huh) great, all systems go after all that admin nonsense; time for warm up. I felt like shit at the warm up and was a little apprehensive about how my performance at the actual flag off would be. In any case, too late to worry, time to justdoit. After staring out at the pitiable Singapore river for a while, with sweat dripping off me (yuck, why am Iike a guy), minutes flew by, flag off time was rapidly approaching. A quick prayer (by myself) and we were off. I thought we started out running at a good pace, but pock seemed to have huge problems keeping up with jamz and i. made me worry quite a bit, especially since it was only the start! It was Really quite jialat, no kidding. (pock, I admit, I was questioning your run trainings at that moment) Finally we reached somewhere in east coast, and transited to bike for the team biathlon. Pock was obviously half dead, so he took the bike and my bag. Jamz and I ran. Whee. I was on my runner’s high, when your body’s on clockwork and you feel nothing- not fatigue, not breathlessness, certainly not cursing that you have to run. So all was good. Reached big splash, had a very fun first event, jumping down into the pool and swimming and untying knots. Was even more high thereafter and let out a whoop as we ran back out to the bike transit point. Toward the end I thought it wise for me to get a short rest on the bike to rest after running all the way for so long, and so I “pillion-rode” with pock cycling. Hey, one bike can take two, okayyy. The best component of the race, I felt, were the abseils. Shiok. The first time was rather early on, before our first navigation activity (the find trees one). But the marshal again pissed me off by being brusque and irritating. He set me up on the figure of 8 the wrong way and insisted I go down. Ass, really. And my carabiner wasn’t even locking well. I guess he was stressed but wth I righted the kreb and just had to make do with the gross set up, feeding the rope from the bottom instead of the top, which is mother Jerky and Slow. Grrr. No matter. the kayaking segment was a little unconventional, but really fun, I thought. (yaar stingy organizers cant be bothered to rent one more singles kayak I JUST KNOW IT) We were just wondering When The Hell we would get to kayak and rest our tired, cramping legs. Finally. But wheeheehee 3 people all on a doubles kayak! Yay and with me being the Weakest kayaking link, I got to sit and do nothing. Nothing much except balance vigorously with my legs gripping the sides of the kayak (not a good position when your legs are already cramped) and get whacked front and back by pock and jamin’s paddles respectively. Jamz also got my right ankle which is @#%$& painful. Dig in deep, YAAR. k. and you thought I was lucky to be not paddling. Had to fill up some pail dangled over the bridge across the sg river and hoist our passport up. Idiot marshall smartly Didn’t ziplock back our passport so Wet and gg thereafter. I had to take special care of it. Then bombshell event where jamin had to carry me out I think about 100m ? and pock was the blindfolded. what a task. Good for me but poor jamin. I felt So bad, a dead weight concentrated at the ass and no help at all, at one point I felt so helpless I close to tearing. (bet yu guys didn’t know that haha. shhh, weakness) cant remember what was the exact sequence, but there was a whole shit load of running in between CPs. I hated the navigations, BOTH of them, yes. (recap: sau’s directionless-ness) and the latter one was Mother irritating, the one at marina park. The questions were gross and we were already seriously debilitated, with blisters, fatigue, incessant muscle cramps, abrasion-beginnings et alia. Thank God jamz was suddenly using his brain very brilliantly, and we made use of the map at the park and managed to score rather well at that station, minimal time wastage and energy expended. But we Very Nearly lost it all here. Always the damned navigations I tell you. Directions… what the hell for. Just make us run la. Stupid question solving, think very fun is it? like in primary school. Basket. I recall we were ahead of the other two teams the whole time, and we never stopped running in between all the checkpoints, so I’m very satisfied with our effort. I can only remember well the starting and ending checkpoints, the middle’s a huge Hazy mess because I was just 2%$&^%*&(% tired and it took all the focus I had to keep running. Finally we reached the second last checkpoint and it was jumaring. Great. It was one that we did smiling and happy because we knew we were near The End and the other youth teams were wayyy back (at least i thought so. maybe i was delusional). But all of us paled after the ascend, jumaring is Not fun at all. ran down the bridge and abseiled off somewhere near the rochor road exit on ECP. This was the most shiok abseil I had. Wheee went straight down, was set up all correct this time. The feeling when you zoom down is fantastic, especially since the end point was barely 25, 30? metres ahead. Figure of 8 was burning hot but I just grabbed it and zoomed off. Ended the race hand in hand with the two of them and there was such sweet relief and tremendous satisfaction. In retrospect, I really liked this race. Consider it the best race I’ve ever raced to date. Does help that there wasn’t any trail biking (hahahaha yay! run run run!) And I think our performance isn’t bad, overall. Might be what, the top 30, 35% ? of the entire lot of teams. First place in our category anyway (with the next team 1hr? + behind), and no spats, no evil disputes during the race. That says a lot, I feel. So jamin and pock, I really liked this race, enjoyed racing it, and I think we raced well. Despite the pre-race stress I had. Thanks for the experience and memories. And the brand new sponsored equip, etc heeheehee. Thank you freescale semiconductors. (that was a formality actually I couldn’t care less but they say, in life, one must be grateful) *One thing to note is that, even though we’re rather fast on foot, on the move, we suck at transitions. If you noticed (if you were awake enough to notice) I was ready at all the ropes transition with whatever equip the marshal needed to do my exchange. For eg at the abseil jamz, you didn’t have your figure of 8 and kreb ready and that will cost you time. Compound that by the number of stations and you get a lot of time wasted. Furthermore, we always have to wait at bottleneck ropes stations so Use that time wisely to get your equip ready. Helmets, gloves, gear. All. if there is a next race, I’ll nag and make sure you guys know what to do exactly and Do it. so I suppose we have sufficient speed (could always be FASTER) but technical readiness needs some work. pock where are my photos! send? thankyou. |
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| 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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