PAR 5 Relay Run

Place : Lake Gardens
Date : 30 August 2009
Time : 0730
Weather : Cloudy to raining
Terrain : So so but steep at the beginning.
Distance : 2.6km x 4

This race was very much in the spirit of communal fun. The KK pacers sent a pretty large contingent of 5 teams, of which my wife and I were in one of them, the KK Pacers Racers.

We weren't expecting to break any speed records..... except maybe for our lead team, KK pacers Uno. No pressure, guys!

As usual, the participation from the better runners were quite good, with strong teams coming from KPAC and der Pacemakers.

As it was a relay race, there were quite a lot of time to mill around and mingle while each runner took turns to do their runs.

Running a "shorter" distance race was definitely a different cup of tea, the mindset was to get in a fast pace from the beginning without burning out towards the end. We did a trial a week before. For that, I tried pushing from the beginning and managed to set a hot 4'07" pace for the first km, but gradually slowed down to a dismal 4'37" for the 2nd km. I finished the trial 2.1km loop at a 13.7km/hr pace.

Hence, the strategy here was to keep in mind the distance and pace accordingly, without leaving out too much in the end....Sounded good, right?

I did a couple of mistakes for this run, which may have cost the team a few seconds (or more);

1. I forgot to bring my watch...first time since I started taking part in races that I forgot it. Without it, I couldn't even know what pace I was at. Hence, it was all by feel.
2. I forgot to take care of the big business....Oops!

When the baton was passed to me, I set out on a pretty fast pace uphill, and overtook 3 or 4 runners by the time we hit the peak.

Coming downhill, it was a bit out of control as the slope was pretty steep. Luckily, it wasn't raining, else we might have a tumble down hill, like Jack and Jill.

I was feeling pretty much in control until.....literally speaking, the s*** hits the fan. The urge to run towards the toilet was suddenly overwhelming. Knowing that this is part of the symptoms for over exertion, I slowed down and managed to keep the urge in check.

Heading towards the last loop, I didn't have a strong finish and one of the runners managed to sayur me back towards the end.

As I passed off the baton to my team mate, I felt like I still had about 10% left in the tank. Looking at the time, I managed to finish the 2.6km lap in 11' 20". Good but not great. The pace was only slightly faster than the trial at 13.76km/hr.

The team did okay, finishing 18th out of 33 teams. The rain did dampen the whole event quite a bit towards the end, but overall, everybody had a fun time.

For a bit of family fun and community spirit, I'm looking forward to next year!

Kudos to the organizers!! They had most of the bases covered.

To borrow the slogan from a petroleum company to apply to the der Pacemakers "How do we know what you want? Coz we are runners too!"