Met up with Erick, Darius & the rest of the track gang at Dover mrt to gather & make our way to NTU , where the annual X Campus run was held. We alighted at Boonlay where we took service 179 to the campus itself. Estimated each college & polytechnic sent in at least 1 team to compete, 2, being the norm. The race was great & I guess I clocked in one the best timings since training on the actual grounds itself. NUS came in tops this year, on the invitional category where we belong in, though we all finshed, Coach was a little dissapointed with our results as quite a few of us didn’t performed as expected to be. Infact afew performed of our teammates came back with stitches, etc where coach ruled “need more training”.

Overall, I clocked in at 31mins 24seconds for the 6.6km run. Not the best, but I tried my best & very much made it in the top 40% percentile, beating even the NUS track girls team, with their guys team being the exception. & man I guess the feeling of overtaking 5-8 people in a row on the downslope is super shoik! haha on the notorious 3rd upslope in the run near building N1.

Alex came with more events lined up for the year, starting with the The Mizuno Wave Run in October & the Raffles Swissotel Vertical Marathon 2005 in November, allowing us to earn more CCA points too. Upcoming events: Newbalance Real Run (28/08/2005, 10km), Sheares Bridge run/AHM (11/09/2005, 21km)

The schedule calls for a meeting at SP stadium at 10am today by the track commitee for a rather short brief & rehersal on the upcoming SP sport complex heats events on next week, Wednesday. I am appointed a track marshall so I am pretty much the witness or orderly of the 14+heats to take place on that day. Ahah authority. Coach Robin treated the whole bunch to drinks during lunch at foodcourt 3 thereafter, each got a cup of ice milo for slurps.

NTU X Campus Run Training
Only 4 from team 1 & 2 decided to stay to train at NTU, so Coach conveniently packed all of us into his tiny brand new blue Kia picanto headed towards NTU through the AYE. We did a drive-thru followed by a the actual runs. The route consist of 4 upslopes, the 3 upslope around block N1 being the real killer, but we are pretty much rewarded by the long 500m downslope which followed thereafter. The 1st part of the orientation jog saw us pacing 34mins on the 6.6km route with coach robin informing us of distances while pacing his car along with us. Just say hes very much a mobile water-point/pacer/distance tracker & a form of great amusement driving around chasing us with his little blue car. We ran another full 6.6km round before doing our standard striding, strengthening & cool down, by then its about 5pm already. In the changing rooms, we were quite amazed that NTU provides free lockers for users too, not to mention actually encouraging people to use them instead of leaving them prone to theft. We kinda completely dosed off in the train, shagged from all the training, luckily I didn’t miss my stop.

Site Updates
Look a new font size selector! In response to the comments I’ve got about difficulty some people have on reading the small fonts in my blog, I ve included a font size selector on the blog page. Please note that this only controls the size of the blog fonts & nothing else & its quote buggy at the moment.

Its a nice sunny day for a biathlon. Met up with ahlong & the rest of the Track members at food court 5 before preping ourselves for the event ahead… 80 over people participated in the biathlon which made out 23 teams, divided into 2 groups (leagues). Where the first league (comprising of the 1st 12 teams) will compete 1st, followed by the remainder in the 2nd league thereafter. Overall timings for both the 400m swim & 3.3km run would determine the placings & winners.

Teams are made out of 4 people each, each too having a disabled member within the team. The 400m swim is primarily for the abled-bodied people as most of the disabled particupants are unable to swim. The run is the interesting part where we have to stick together thoughout the 3.3km run & no team member is supposed to be more than 4m apart from each other, exceeding would lead to a disqualification. Furthermore team timings will only stop when the last team member crosses the finishing line. My team, Team 03 initially we finished 3rd in our league, with high hopes of getting a top 3 placing overall, but later was pushed back due to better timings achieved from teams in the 2nd league. Overall we have of “disabled” member Safiy to thank. Personally being a young 11 year old, its quite a feat for him to run 3.3km with us. We got 9th position overall, with medals & goodie bags for everyone. Our team trophy goes into the hands of Safiy to keep & treasure, our man of the team.

Aquathlon 2005	Team 03!	9th place trophy

Track & field overall cringed various top 10 positions, including 2nd place, not bad overall. Coach should be proud of us. Cheers to Issac our siao-on regular infantry officer, who just can’t stop pitying himself for being “very old or the oldest” in the team, otherwise he’s a good motivator for the team: “Pain is temporarily, Glory is forever!” (pictured left in group pic) Chun Boon our undergrad (center, top in group pic) who, together with me kept pushing Safiy throughout the run, trying to make the run fun & enjoyable by occasional playing “catch” with him during the run to speed him up. & lastly Safiy (center. bottom on group pic) our MVP! you all rock!!

Whee! Heres the juice:

Hi All!
Thanks for your participation! Just a gentle reminder…

Date: 2nd of July 2005 (Saturday)
ReportingTime: 9.00am
Venue: Singapore Polytechnic Swimming Pool
Registration Fee: $5
Contact Person: Amelia 96864138/ Liza 94761462

Things to bring:
- Swimming Attire
- Running Attire
- Sports Shoes
- Sunblock (optional)
- Extra clothing
- Toiletries
- Indemnity Forms
- Registration fee $5
- And a Smile

Just pop by our registration booth on Saturday!
For those who are under 21 years, please remember to bring the indeminty form with your parent’s signature.

If there should be any queries, please feel free to contact any of the above contact persons.

Cheers,
Amelia

See you there folks!

I guess this would be my first post on track & field in SP. Its a bi-weekly CCA on Tuesday & Thursday, where we not only get to run ourselves crazy, but jump & stretch ourselves dumb too. Not a bad combination for running freaks like us. Our coach was previously from SMU & the group of us are split into our various “specialties”, i.e sprinters, long-distance runners (long-d), throwers, etc, with me on long-d of course!

Ok, onto events, first things first, I would like to share about an event- a friendly bialthon coming up next month, the 2nd july. Its a charity event organised by South West CDC, the South West Biathlon 2005 for the disabled. Anyone can sign up, so feel free to do so as its for charity (a $5 registration fee is required, also going to the proceeds of the event). Its kinda like a Para-olympic event where disabled youths will get to participate in the event together with able-bodied people like my track team & me as friendlies within the same team, in the competition. It would cover a 400m (8×50m swim) & a 2,5km run after that. I clocked 8×50m breaststroke last sunday at the local pool with a timing of 11:48.00 on the first try & 10:33.03 on my 2nd run after a good warm up & stretch. My 2.4km timing stays at around 10:20 for keeps, so a 400m swim & 2.5km biathlon event would take me roughly 21-25mins to complete, excluding the intermission/changing parts between events.

Woohoo, 3 more day to ORD, 10 more minutes & its 2 more days to ORD!