City Duathlon
This morning, I participated in the veteran category (> 40 years old) of the Saab City Duathlon 2008.
The race consists of 10 km run + 40km biking + 5km run, and supposedly it was to start at 7:30am. However, I needed to be there earlier because both my bike tyres were flat, and I hoped there was a bike service station at the race place to pump my tyres. It was rather tough for me to wake up so early because I went to bed around 2am after fixing some website issues. I only had a light sleep because my mind was too active. Nevertheless, I managed to wake up around 5am. Poor Soik Ching also woke up the same time since she was my chauffeur. We reached the race place around 6am. To our dismay, I was informed by the administrative staff at the information counter that there was no bike service available at the race place!! I was in panic and quickly messaged SOS to Soik Ching while she was driving back home. Then I looked around desperately for help. Serendipitously, I spotted a middled-aged guy taking out a big bicycle pump from his car and started to inflate his bicycle tyres. I approached the guy and asked him for help. Fortunately, the guy was kind enough to pump the tyres for me. Thank you, kind soul. His pump was pretty efficient, even has a pressure gauge. It only took a few strokes to fully inflate both my tyres. I felt that I was really lucky this time. I swear I be more prepared in the future and not wait till the last minute. Say only lah..haha…But one thing for sure, I will try to get hold of the same pump used by the kind soul.
The race started about 15 mins late, after 7:30am. The weather was superb. It was cloudy and looked like it would rain but it didn’t. I felt this year race was relatively easier than last year, partly due to the nice weather, partly because I was able to consciously count the number of loops while I was cycling. Therefore, I did not “over-cycle” like last year event. It took me about an hour to run the 1st 10km, another 1hr to bike 40km and another half an hour for the last 5km run. In total, I took about 2 and a half hour to complete the whole race. I have yet fully recovered from the last week marathon run. My thigh still aches a little. But I am happy that I was able to complete the race just after the marathon.
