Thursday, April 27, 2006

JP Morgan Chase Corporate Run (5.6km)




Let me confess: I'm not a sports enthusiast and have not participated in any sort of competitive run in my life. Yes. Pathetic. Once in a while, you'll see me don my sports gear and jog on the treadmill. It's weird, but I'm not too sure what made me join this year's corporate run. Perhaps it's the free company's t-shirt and shorts. Perhaps Jane Doe's harping on how fun it would be to people-watch spurred me to fill up the application form! Hah.

This year's run proved to be a success, recorded a sky-high number of 11,000 participants. It was definitely an experience.

I mean, how many times in your life do you flounder your way through massive crowds of perspiration-dripping, hard panting people? Most participants were serious competitors! They find every way to squeeze through every possible "human to human crevice", nudging and shoving to get their hands on the bottled water laid on tables along the journey. What is most amusing is the fact that participants can find short-cuts in spite of barricades and run marshalls. But I....I adhered to my pride and continued the normal route, in spite of seeing bunches of participants cutting through pieces of grasslands. Bugger!

I gotta rant about the different corporate sports gear I saw. Thank god that my company chose a simple design and colour. Sad to say, some other corporate designs I saw were outlandish and colours too bright (Purple, orange, lime green...what were they thinking)!

As for my performance, I was disappointed with my timing (39.42 mins). I was asinine, absolutely half-witted. I started the run faced down 80% of the time, There were huge hoardes of people moving everywhere and I wanted to focus. When I saw the 4km mark, I was like "hmm...did I pass 4 km or do I have 4 km more to go?" I thought "I'm not that tired. I think I have 4km more to go. Pace yourself Grace." There I was happily jogging at my my quite "turtle" pace and it was when I almost reached the finishing line (about 400m to go) did I realised I made a frigging mistake!

Lesson learnt. Try again next year! Maybe should try the SCB one. 10km of course...

2 comments:

Clement said...

39.42 min is freakin fast for a girl running 8 km right?

Durrow Gal! said...

hah...it's not 8km...it's only 5.6 km..

Yes. Now you gotta agree I was like a turtle.