Some days you just don’t feel it and the City60 Bike-Run Challenge was one of those days for me. I signed up for the City60 category which consists of a 7km run, 46km bike and 7km run. It’s a new race by Metasport and also, I thought it would be cool to wrap the week of birthday celebrations with this.
In hindsight, it probably wasn’t that good an idea after all. Oops.
M was here in Singapore for a week to spend my birthday (yes, because LDR) and we went out a lot during the week (which means not sleeping much)… including an epic bungee jump at the newly-opened AJ Hackett Sentosa (see below with sound on please). Then M’s flight home was the night before the race so I was at the airport till quite late to send him off.
I know it sounds like a whole load of excuses, but on race morning, I knew I wasn’t in the best of conditions to race. I had a fleeting thought of not wanting to race, but that would be irresponsible so I showed up at the start line anyway. Honestly it was my own fault – I knew I had a race yet I didn’t prepare properly.
I was in the first wave that flagged off at 6am, so I had to wake up pretty early. The transition area was 500m away from the start line, so I got my stuff arranged before walking over. I was willing my body to wake up – kinda tricky since the sun wasn’t out yet. So I decided to go and warm up… I jogged a little and I got so breathless! Oh oh, that’s not a good sign.
When it was time to enter the start pen, I pushed all the negative thoughts out of my head. I know I wasn’t feeling good, but I told myself to just get through this and take it as training. The first 7km was still manageable – we ran from the Sports Hub towards Marina Barrage, along the water, and back – but my pace kept dropping. I didn’t want to push though, because there was another run leg later.
I thought I would feel better on the bike – and I did, only for the first half. We did three loops, from Sports Hub out to Nicoll Highway, down the F1 pit building straight and back. The turns were quite tight so I had to slow down quite considerably, which was annoying because you had to pick up the pace again at all the u-turns. There was also one path leading out to Nicoll Highway which was super narrow that it could only fit one bike at a time, so there was a little bottleneck there.
I was building up the pace quite alright, when my legs just suddenly dropped a gear. I remember a friend of mine overtook me then and he said, “Looking good!”, but all I could muster in response was a shaking of head and a grimace. Terrible of me I know.
After the second transition, I was dreading the last 7km run and it didn’t help that the sun was out in full force by then. Still, I sucked it up and went out for the run. It was really bad wtf. My legs felt like concrete and I looked like I was gonna murder someone. I kept telling myself that I should be lucky that I started early and am already finishing the race. There were other categories who just started! Also, my friends were racing in the Ironman World Championship in Kona at the exact same time and they had a full marathon to run while I only had 7km… so I told myself to quit whining.
I think at some point I was just dragging my feet along and all the negative thoughts were flooding my head, like why did I sign up for this, why is it so hot, why am I making myself suffer etc etc. When I saw the finish line, I didn’t feel a huge sense of relief, but rather I felt like knocking down the finish line structure because I was so tired and angry. HAHAHAHAHA!
Immediately after I stopped, I felt a wave of nausea come over me and I had to bend over. The marshals at the finish line were really good though – they signalled the medics over and suddenly I had this wheelchair next to me. But I was ok – I just needed water to cool down and restore my senses. Phew.
The first thing I said to Connie was, “I want to quit the sport liao. This is damn painful wtf.” Knowing me too well, she replied, “Aiya I’ve heard you say this before. The next thing I know, you’re out there throwing yourself into the pain cave again.” LOL!! Oops, yeah I just needed to rant for a bit and after that I’ll be fine.
So, I wasn’t too pleased with my performance BUT I’m glad I got up and finished it. It’s ok – you have a bad day, you brush it off and you move on. Yes it hurt, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger lor. As I always say, #JustWhackOnly!
P.S. Queen Bitch II made her race debut and I thought she looked pretty bright and cool out there!!
