Saturday, March 8, 2008
My first biathlon
Knowing ecp is damn big, I decided to go to bedok interchange and take the free shuttle bus straight to the area. This way I will never be lost. To my surprise, the whole shuttle bus inside only has 4 person! maybe it is not a popular option. lol.I took the 7.45 bus since my flag off was at 8.30.
Everything was quite smooth. I went to the registration counter, took the race chip and number tag, after that I went to the body marking area where they wrote the number on my arms and legs.
Then I went to the transition area to put my stuff.
Basically my towel, shoes, socks, ankle guard, towel, ipod and powerbar gel.
After I deposited my bag, i went to the holding area waiting for the swim to begin.
This's the first time I'm swimming in the open sea. the swimming leg was quite chaotic. Dunno y everybody so kan cheong, starting chiong so fast! I swam head-up front crawl initially, but then the wave was so big that even with my head up, i swallowed a mouthfull of salt water.
Totally disgusted. Saltier than the saltiest macdonalds fries. later i swam head-up breast stroke, because I was unwilling to put my head down. only after around 5 mins then i gain some momentum and swam normally. Everybody was saying that front crawl is the best for open water, but i disagree. the water is so dirty that I can't even see my arms. When i swim front crawl, I must keep checking every few strokes to make sure I'm going straight.
so i swam breast stroke for most of the swimming leg. Only after the U turn, the wave was against me, and I had no choice but to use front crawl.
I completed the swimming leg in a dismal 40 minutes. Christal fong, national swimmer completed the swimming leg in 18+ minutes! @.@
Then I went back to my transition area. My towel was totally wet! dunno which fucker used my towel! took a while to change into my running attire, and started running.
I didn't push myself when i swam, so I wasn't at all tired. I was very fresh for the 10km run and with my new weapon - ipod shuffle loaded with songs by jay the gay, I was able to run quite fast without exerting myself. at 6km, it started raining and it became quite cold, but still it was better than running in the hot sun. I finished everything in 1hr 30 mins. roughly 40 mins for swimming and 50 mins for running.
After that I collected my stuff and I left my medal at the transition area! DAMN. luckily I'm thick skin and I went to ask for another 1.
I must say it's quite fun compared to AHM. I will be back next year with sub 20 timing for swimming.
Oh yah forget to add in wat's in the goodie bag! There's a speedo water bottle, 1 biathlon finisher t-shirt, lots of other useless stuff and a 30% discount voucher for speedo items!
2:50 AM
