MR25 35km Progressive Run

If completing a full marathon is tough enough, i do not know how should i describe this run? Definitely harder than "tough"..Challenging? Yes, of course. Try running 80% of your time on rolling hills. Exciting? Of course, it has a mixture of road running and trail running. To think that i would be spending most of my time on the trail, was a wrong conception. This 35km run consisted of 70% road and 30% trail. It has been dubbed one of the toughest runs in Singapore and most runners would use this run as a gauge for the coming Std Chart marathon in Dec.

True enough, a big crowd of runners had gathered on the early morning itself. Nike Run fellas were also present to do their 15km run. Lam and myself registered with the MR25 and very soon enough, the run started. As usual, we drew quite a few curiosity from other runners with our gears and yes, we were only two guys with a huge pack on us. Started off with a 6:30-7:00 min/pace, i felt very comfortable along the Northern Route. However, Lam was not with his usual self, intending to go slow at the start. I stopped at few checkpoints so that i am to give him some directions. After 10km, i decided to push forward and see how far and fast i could accomplish. Switching to 5:30-6:00 min/pace, i was doing fine along the air con route and Upper Thomson Route. However, things seemed to turn around when i was on my way back to the pipeline route. My thighs started to cramp up and i was reduced to walk/run along the Rifle Range Road. Decided to take a 10 minute rest at the water point U-turn. My last 10km was a mixture of walk and run. The walk part is when i had to transverse up the slope and ran when it was flat. This seemed to work alright. When i reached the end of the Northern Route, the time was 3:47hrs. I knew i have gone below sub 4 hrs and i was happy as i have set sub 4 hrs target for this run. The organisers could not believe i had gone below sub 4 hrs with my load. One of them even asked to "test" the load and yeah, he was dumbfolded after trying it. Well, Lam did not do badly too. He came in 5 minutes after me and also went sub 4 hrs.

Both of us decided to use this run as part of training for the Gobi. It has most of the elements minus the heat. But right now, it's Vertical Marathon this weekend.

Our New Home

Almost done.. just some loose furnitures and cleaning to be done. We are looking at moving in from Monday onwards.