Singapore Race #1 :2XU Compression Run

Before the race start

As Per and I planned to go to Singapore for our major trip of the year, I immediately went to their local running website (www.sgrunners.com) to see which of the road races are available on the days that we will be there. As luck would have it, I registered myself for two races and had my good friend Melody claim the race kits for me (as they were distributed when we were still in the Philippines). The nice thing about booking for a race in Singapore is that everything can be done online (quite beneficial for non-residents visiting the country).

The 2XU Compression Run would be the first race that I would do, with a total distance of 12km, and would be a race around Singapore City. The race would start and end at the Singapore Flyer, the world's largest observation wheel (standing 165m from the ground - according to their website)! So there itself, we were already taking pictures of the wheel and the other buildings around it (Marina Bay Sands hotel comes to mind).

We were there quite early as taxis are abundant in the Singapore and everything is quite near to one another (just a 15-minutes ride from our hotel). I left my bag at the baggage counter, went to Per and did some stretching. But even at 6:45am, when the sun wasn't out yet, it was really hot and humid!

At 7:00am, our race began and it was simply divided into two Waves so as not to have any congestion at the race start. I sneaked into the first Wave even though the barrier was put up by the marshals. At least, I can sort of guarantee I won't be the last runner to finish this race given there were a lot of people waiting for Wave 2's release (never mind my real ranking with the chip timer).

What was awesome (even more awesome than seeing the Singapore Flyer up close) was that we would run on the actual F1 Race Tracks! There were even two uber-nice sport cars standing by at the sidelines, waiting for us to finish before they could even use the race track! Wow, that was definitely surreal and brought a smile to my face.

But the joy was replaced by tiredness as I had difficulty running in the hot weather. With the roads open for traffic and all 10,000 runners needing to use the sidewalks did not help at all. There were a lot of elbow bumping, a lot of weaving and I had to look from side to side just to make sure I don't trip someone. Argh, I really hate running on the sidewalks with everyone else and I can't imagine how I did that for the Sundown Marathon.

There were ample water stations here but had to wait for a few seconds each time as the volunteers pour water into the cups. That's fine, I wasn't aiming for a PR and this serves as a good excuse to not run yet. Hahaha!

Pocari Sweat: One of the sponsors of this race

The race route was great (especially for a tourist like me) as it took me to the various tourist spots in Singapore - we ran on the hexagon bridge (but had to climb some steps to get there), we ran right behind Fullerton Hotel and Esplanade, we ran right outside Marina Bay Sands, we ran in a park, we ran on an F1 race track and our route took us two times back to the Singapore Flyer (both times I hoped to see Per but failed to do so).

I counted the km down slowly and got excited as I neared the finish line. The goal is to just survive this race as still have a couple of days in Singapore and didn't want to be confined in a Singaporean hospital bed the entire time!




so tired... so very tired!

A very nice souvenir from Singapore, don't you think?

Thanks to Per for patiently waiting for me to finish this race :) It wasn't an easy task for her given how hot that day was.


There are a lot of good things in this race, but a lot of bad things too!

The first would be the horrible horrible baggage claim at the end of the race. The lines were just too freaking long! Just 3-4 pax assigned to handle 2,000 bags at a time for a total of 5 different lines. It was the worst experience here and took me 45 minutes just to get my backpack (and that's after I found a shorter line!). Per, who was waiting for me near the taxi stand, got worried as to why I was taking too long! 45 minutes! Sheesh! That's like running 6-7 kms more! Complete waste of time!


Another con to this race: As of this writing (race was held last April 10th), I still have not received my singlet yet!!! They did email me that the singlet will be mailed to my Philippine address next month (May) and gave me a free running cap when I complained about it... like that would help! I hope the organizers would learn from these mistakes. I also heard there were a lot of problems on the race kits distributions and a lot of people went home empty handed on those dates and were compensated by receiving a complimentary 2XU compression sleeves for their legs...again, like that would help.

And did I mention how much I hated running on a very narrow sidewalk with 10,000 other runners?


My race results:

Name	Dennis Quepe
Bib	6469
Race Category	12KM MENS
Nett Time	01:27:01
Gun Time	01:31:37
Rank	4059 of 5411
Quite slow! But it's okay as it is my first 12km for the year so a 2011 PR! Bwahahaha....