New Balance Real Run Club Terrain Race

I first saw this race advertised on a poster on the outside of Royal Sporting House in Tanglin Mall about 3 weeks ago. Scanning the poster, I saw an address for a website with more information. Once home, I went to the website and thought that the race would be fun. I was thinking I would just run the race to finish, not to kill my self trying to get in the top 20....100. Registration for the race was only available at a New Balance shop for people who weren't members of HomeTeamNS. My father (who also wanted to run the race) and I headed down to the New Balance shop in Novena and proceeded with registration. For registering, we got 20% off anything in the New Balance shop. I proceeded to buy some socks while Dad bought some new running shorts.

Race day-April 28th came around and Mum gave me a kick at 5 am to say get going. Lazily and reluctantly getting out of bed, I took a look out of the window and in the pre-dawn mist saw steady drops of rain pouring from the sky. Thought maybe race will be postponed, more time to sleep? Just in case, I downed a few pieces of peanut butter toast and donned my running attire and made the decision to just go for it.

On the cab ride over with Dad, the rain started to let up, but by the time we arrived at Bedok Reservoir it was still sprinkling lightly. Getting out of the cab, we spied the rather small tarp that was the meeting and later to be awards point. We took cover under it and I was surprised to see only about a hundred people there (werent there supposed to be a 1000?). After about 30 minutes of just standing around, Dad and I proceeded with our rather meager warm up of a few stretches and a short jog. I saw some of the seriously hardcore runners take a whole lap of the reservoir as their warmup.

7.30, the starting time for the race finally rolled around but was postponed by the rain for about 5-10 minutes and at 7.40, everyone was at the starting line listening to the announcer trying to get us pumped by saying are you ready in a loud voice and the half hearted response of yyeess, it was too early in the morning lah. Anyway, the gun was fired and the race was under way. Dad and I started in the middle of the pack and watched the rabbits sprint off as we started to plod along. Half of my energy was put into dodging big puddles that were right smack in the middle of the path. It was quite funny watching people weave their way left and right to avoid the puddles. Dad and I finished the first lap of 4.2 kilometers in 22 minutes and I was surprised to still be feeling quite strong. At the halfway/water point of the second lap I told my Dad to go ahead because I was spitting up garbage from my throat. Nonetheless, I sprinted the last 400 meters, passing several people and finished the 8.4 kilometer course in 47 minutes and 2 seconds. Dad finished a few minutes ahead at about 43 minutes.

I felt like I ran a good race, but was a bit disappointed by the goodie bag-a string sack and blue HomeTeamNS shirt. The label on the shirt said 100% cotton, but felt a lot like synthetic. I was wondering why there wasn't a NB logo in the shirt, it was after all a NB sponsored event.