It’s been a really productive week. Since last Saturday, the only days that I didn’t exercise were Thurs and Fri. Today, I participated in this Legs and Paddles event that I signed up with one of my Sec 2 students, who calls herself Kingwen, a month ago. Her parents and her reached the registration counter (at One Fullerton) earlier than me, so they helped me to get my goodie bag (which consists of an over-due SHAPE magazine, some expensive saloon’s vouchers, a waterbottle that I quite like, and a dri-fit event tee). Saw some familiar faces from Sgrunners.

Taken before race by Kingwen’s dad 

The category that we signed up for was the Mixed Team. In this category, the female participant has to run 5 km before arriving at the transition area and don on the life vest. Then, both the male and female participants will get into a doubles kayak and paddle 3 km before the male participant finishes off the race with a 5 km run.

So, King started off her run. Told her not to keep up the pace with other runners, just run at her own comfortable pace. She eventually reached the transition area around 40 minutes later. Her parents were there to encourage her.

We then "queued up" for our kayaks (yes, I personally feel that the organisers were not very efficient, as there’s a bottle-neck at the kayak area) at the transition area. This was the hardest part of the race to me, and probably to her as well, since we didn’t have any prior training on kayaking. We frequently engaged in some "sword play" due to the inability to coordinate the paddling well. I believe we ended up being the last pair to get off the kayak for my final leg.

Looks calm? Was struggling to kayak in a straight direction!!

Once we finished our kayaking, I got to the transition area and changed into my shoes and grabbed a water bottle before running off to complete the final leg. Amazingly, the exhaustion from kayaking didn’t affect my run. The only demoralising factor was that I couldn’t see any participants in front of me. Which means I was very far behind from the pack. I just kept running and hydrating myself.. and after quite some time, I finally caught a glimpse of 2 runners in front of me! I steadily increased my pace, but at the same time making sure that I don’t exhaust all my fuel too early. At some water-point at the end of some bridge, I managed to overtake the 2 runners. Haha, cheap thrill. After about 27 minutes, I finally finished my run. Phew! 

Overall, I would say that this event was a good experience, although it could have been a little better organised (e.g. no suitable size for the event tee, queuing up to get into the kayak, water points not strategically placed). Will look forward to join the individual category next year!!