Peak to Peak – first attempt on a race report ..
When I was invited by Faith, little did I know what to expect and immediately said yes without much thought.i knew P2P was going to be the last run of the year..
I knew the route had to be different this time and still remember how I lost way after the first session on the way to Mt Faber last year, my mind and body must have been tired climbing and descending Bukit Timah last year.
This time, it was a team event and our initial team were of Edmund Cornelius, Faith and me, unfortunately Edmund had an urgent work assignment and was replaced by Sai – an avid young hiker and ultra marathon runner.
It was a busy work week prior to P2P and due to no runs I decided to do a single loop of Bedok reservoir on Friday morning, felt like one loop is too long and when I reflected on next days long run, self doubt lingered for a moment like a bubble and slowly broke into forget fulness of the outcome..
Run day : reached on time and thanks to Steve, he kindly passed me some religiously packed gatorade packets and it was enough with the extra tailwind in my bag.
Did 4 loops with lot of mud and more mud on the route together with my team mates and felt good running together with Adrian Marc Sim, we had quite similar pace and relaxed form and we moved ahead in nice rhythm and he would always encourage others, in between it was nice to bump into Muthu and Abi doing their own training run and fellow runner friends, felt good running with Philip, Nadia, Eehoa, Mark and rest of the folks
It had rained previous day and the ground was muddy under the grass. While walking Poon Loo spotted us and encouraged us to run in the mud :) , with his contagious beaming smile..
It started to rain on the fifth loop and I felt energised and psyched up and told Sai while descending from Bukit Timah summit, that I wanted to run fast and will meet them at dairy farm and continue together to Mount Faber.
Didn’t realise that leaving the group to run alone would bring disaster to our team – Sai was bit by a bee and due to sharp pain he was limping his way to Dairy Farm and Faith took a wrong turn on the last part to Dairy farm.
Doraemon Man was at dairy farm with ice box and drinks, he caught me staring at the beer can as I was undecided if I should have a beer during run, eventually temptation resisted and chit chat with Jason for a while who spared me some money in case my drop bag came late.
Thanks to Tran Mai for the BT steps pic
Once my team mates arrived , we continued on the green corridor along the big banyan tree that shed old dry leaves and was full of new baby leaves , thoughts of new starts filled the mind and on to Mount Faber , the last team to leave Dairy Farm.
Green corridor was a muddy run walk and glad to spot Katya standing under one of the bridges with porridge, curry puff, coconut water, oranges and what a relief to have a curry puff, those with egg inside and chatted a bit while Faith and Sai had some porridge. A great runner and enthusiastic supporter who came to support some of her friends..
The walk run continued till we reached Seah Im hawker center at Mount Faber.
Saw some of the runner group having fish soup and I decided to have a beef soup with chilli and some rice and packed a fried rice , which later did not taste good.
Now we had to continue with 4 repeats of Mount Faber loop and it drizzled all night and some steps were slippery.
We realised the only person who is good with a sense of map and direction was Sai- while pressed to finish on time we pushed on with speed walking and thanks to Juay, Mel and Starry Lynn on the first loop we followed them and and with the next loop which was other way, it was the test of Sai directing us by looking at map and we follow, thanks to his patience and endurance during the 4 loops and by the time we finished four loops, the thoughts of stopping came back and then saw Chris on his way back and he showed me a raised clenched fist and I felt motivated again and when Faith and Sai told me we are going to finish, I just trusted and followed and that thought of stopping never came back !
Test of Team-pic by Alvin Png
On hitting green corridor, we realised Sai was feeling the pain of blisters, more than 20 hrs of wet feet and I was feeling some pain too but Faith was ok to run and I started running too and Sai was left behind as his trying to run was causing more pain.
Eventually, we planned to walk and Checked our average pace of fast walking and we had 4 hours to cover 15 kms , we had our arguments and decision making issues and finally after one hour of walking and running, we realised it is ok to speed walk and reach within cut off time so we continued onwards in the mud like some soldiers wanting to reach our goal and we finally walked to the finish point at Dairy farm after 27 hours and 13 mins and covering 120kms.
Thanks to your support and cheering during the run and especially to the run organisers on pulling a difficult event very well !
Doraemon Man, Peh Siong San, Alvin Png and Lee Estelle and Thomas Leong and many others whom I missed to mention the names and not forgetting those who liked and commented on the pics on Facebook 😊
Finisher pic by Kim Runner
