Singapore Biathlon 2006

Singapore Biathlon 2006
Sunday, 26 March 2006
East Coast Park(Carpark F2)
7:45am


This is my first attempt at Singapore Biathlon. This is my first official 1.5km swim with 10km run too. I did a few training swim/run in pools and on the road. Have a sprint event in New Balance Aquathlon last year and a training swim/run in Sentosa last week. Guess that should be alright to get myself ready for this event.

I meet with tiwazz, astrogirl and sportventurer at Paya Lebar MRT and took a cab to the event venue, reach there 7:35am. Meet up with familiar faces throughout the event. Somehow i make a miscalculation and reach the staging area 5mins before the start.

I didnt have a clear briefing on the swim route, though i roughly remember how it goes. I don't even have a proper warm up, before the race was flag off. It was a mad dash at the start. OMG, this is what they meant by mass starting. I am going to go in slowly and swim slow during the initial stage until everything is more or less settled before pushing forward.

It was quite an experience for me. Getting kick constantly, sipping sea water here and there. Being cornered near the rope with no where to swim. Treading water due to traffic jam, asking fellow swimmers to spread out and dont anyhow kick. It is chaotic. Ohmmm....the smell of the petrol suck big time. Timing is slow, water current keep pushing you to a side. I hardly even can strings 20 freestyle together through the entire race. Knowing where you are heading and keep finding yourself out of course after doing freestyle dont do justice to the morale. Following other swimmers instead of following ur own judgement and have to take longer route. As a whole, it was a disappointing swim. Just one of those days when everything can go wrong, goes wrong. I even got kick at my groins.

I got out of the water at 1hr+ a few seconds. Take my own sweet time for the transition. Off i went for the run leg. Leg was slightly heavy as expected. Breathing was a bit hard(unexpected), in fact, i can feel the strain already even less than 1km. I just tell myself to endure and shortly everything will get back to their normal - unfortunately, it did not. I have to stop and start to walk at 4km. It was walk/run from then onwards. I was not concern about timing, i just want to finish the run and get it over. Slowly and surely i covered the distance in 1hrs+. Total time for the entire event is 2hrs 04mins+

It was very slow to say the least. Anyway, okay lah. Just wanna enjoy the experience.