One day after the grueling 12-hour NIE Directors’ Relay Race and most of us are still feeling the effects, muscle-aches and what else. I can’t say I am satisfied with my own performance because I can only manage to complete 6 out of the stipulated 11 laps due to triple cramps on both my thighs. Felt quite miserable because I knew my cardio was strong to last me even more than 11 laps but didn’t realise that my muscle tolerance level wasn’t high enough to cope with that kind of speed and endurance race. Felt really comfortable clocking sub-10 minutes (9.55, 9.55, 9.59) and sub-10.20s (10.16, 10.17, 10.19) but after that 6th lap I was suffering from cramps on both my thighs at the finishing part. I was suffering cramping after the 5th lap. Guess the stretching and deep-heat wasn’t going to help me alot aha.
Anyways, enough of my personal grumbling. I was surfing around at the SgRunners.com forum on the NIE relay (they had a couple of teams too) and someone posted this:
From: Michael Craig <michael.craig@.com>
To: macritchierunners@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 4:39:03 PM
Subject: [macritchierunners] NIE Directors RelayI’ve just dragged my self out of bed and am “dog’s bollixed” from
last nights effort.You will all be proud to know that while you were
all lying in your pits a team comprising of
Mark,Sigi,Chuck, Arnaud,Trevor and myself won the Directors relay.I
am sure our official distance was 184.6km (may have been 186.4).
Brief rundown is as follows.Pre- race we decided to switch tactics
from running in pairs with a back up to a “flat 6” for the first few
hours.WE got this spot on as the race started at a fair old pace and
even allowing for Mark getting lost we knew we were in for a tough
challenge.
To cut a long story short Victoria Junior College and SIngapore Poly
(cheating B’s) both had strong teams and although it was difficult
to ascertain I’m sure that after about 3 or 4 hrs we were around 3
or 4 minutes back.After a few hours of one by one reps we changed to
running in groups of 3 doing 2 sets each per hour approx before
switching with the next group.This was tough.
However as the night progressed our consistent reps (all usually ran
it in a 9-9.30 slot for the 2.4km loop) began to pay dividends and
somewhere around 7 hrs we began to build up a small lead which over
the next few hours continued to stretch until finally around 6am we
lapped VJC which meant that we had the title won.
After 6 am we switched back to the one by one method which meant 1
rep per 50 minutes approx.Doesn’ t sound tough but the loop was tough
and we were still making sure we couldn’t be caught.
Finally at around 8.30 am we could relax and with about 17 minutes
left young Trevor set off on his victory lap.
If you guys can imagine running a twelve hour track session you’ll
have an idea how tough this was.By the time they’d got through the
speeches for prize giving we were ready for bed.
Other MR runners did well.Sumiko’ s team I’m sure came third.Chee
Yong was dragged from his sick bad and ran himself into the ground.
There was a good atmosphere that was only spoiled by the obvious
cheating by Singapore Poly who replaced some runners during the
night.This was a real shame as some of the other teams ran
themselves into the ground to achieve their goals.The Victoria Junior College guys were a credit to their school.They
ran themselves into the ground and only our long years of distance
running allowed us to prevail and even then only by 1 lap.
We had wonderful support last night with Mark,Arnaud and Sigi’s
better halves forming a great time keeping and lap marshallling
routine.They were wonderful.Various Aunties turned up including
Aunties JJ and Mika at the start and then Auntie Evelyn pitched up
after midnight on her way back from a disco at Mohammed Sultan.
So thats it as I recall.I’m stiff as a very stiff thing and I bet
Arnaud is still eating breakfasts now.Arnaud asked “was that tougher
than a marathon”… ……indeed it was.
Tomorrow morning ECP @ 6 am is officially a “no way” for me.I’ll go
for a “Terry jog” if and when I surface.
Bye Dudes
Don’t really have anything to comment on this, just that it particularly caught my attention because some paragraphs were a direct attack on our teams. For your information this is what I got directly from the forums. I have not in ANY way edited the words. Oh wells. Bound to have unhappy people around but still, it’s a charity race and the end-results shouldn’t be the priority.
That aside, I have to say that the MR25 group are really good! Only after years of continuous training and mileage clocking can get you results like theirs. Strong runners, really. Heads up to you guys! (Might have even seen some of them during my MR trainings!)
Just another note, I copied the email over from the forums because I think everyone has a right to know what has been directed at our teams. But I hope that nobody makes a big fuss over it because it’s already over and bear in mind that it’s a CHARITY run.
Which is of course, distinctively different from Poly 50 :p
First It Giveth, Then Taketh Away. 