It's been a while since I last logged on. Work, school (yes, INSEAD program) and lengthly business trips have made life stressful these past several months. For November, sadly I was only home for 7 days which isn't something I am proud of. Luckily for me, Khanh was there and with the help of our ladies (chi Hanh & chi Tu), Lucie and Tristan are doing great. Being on the road, training was challenging and those long runs were especially hard to squeeze in.
On December 6th, I just ran the
2008 Singapore Marathon with Jack, Susanna and John. This was Susanna and John's first marathon and we were glad to be there with them. They told us our stories of previous marathons helped inspire them to make the commitment. So since September, we trained together on weekends and during the week, we paired up.
The Singapore Marathon had 50K+ runners for the full, half, 10K, etc. Surprisingly, everything was very well organized and there were plenty of volunteers/water & gel stations all throughout the race.
The start time was 5:30am so after an evening in our hotel room stuffing ourselves with "homemade" spaghetti (boiled 2 bags of pasta in the electric kettle and mixed with jar of pre-made sauce), Jack and I were up at 3am.
We felt great but were anxious to get going.
The path was relatively flat, shady and scenic. We started at the Esplanade and ran through the East Coast Parkway along the sea.
At around 37km marker, we slowly wind back towards the city center and not too far ahead was the finish line by the Fullerton Hotel.
At the finish, we met up after collecting our finisher shirt and medal. Susanna was very happy.
The marathon was the symbolic finish to the months of self-discipline, conditioning and many, many, many early morning runs. In the end, we were all SO relieved it was over (until the next one in June 2009).
