The Poly 50 thread has indeed grown to one of the hottest & widely discussed topics on the net (with over 76k hits & ranking top 5 on Google & Yahoo sg within 3 days). I would like to express my heartfelt thanks towards the various constructive points, concerns & issues raised in the discussion, either through the thread directly, e-mail, gsm, or through word of mouth from both parties, neutral parties, student bodies & the general public alike.

However, the discussion started going out of hand resulting in personal attacks & flame bait which are unethical & in my point of view have no constructive means but to sow discord & worsen the situation. Therefore in the name of good to prevent any further damage & conflicts between clubs, (esp between track & field & dragon boat) the previous thread is now CLOSED & comments LOCKED.

In the sea of discussion & feedback I’ve got, let me summarise in overall with no ill intentions intended:

To the Teams:
You can’t deny that the poly 50 is always an annual battle between the favorites – Dragon Boat, Track & Field & CLS, so cool down as sports people & respect the judges decision. The most important thing is not getting 1st, 2nd or even DQ but to all know that we ran our best with the spirit which what makes Team SP, as mentioned in the Olympic creed:

We all know about the bad organisation & conduct of the race, its everywhere, you can’t deny the notorious campus-wide notions towards the organisation, but its no point thinking about the past, however, people can change for the better.

Track & Field know how Team 2 got DQ, I believe Dragon Boat Team 2 also have their fair share of the story why their team got DQ as well. Mistakes made by the lap counters are all beyond all team’s control that is something we all have to accept. Even with claims that Dragon Boat Team 1 cheating, (due to a wrong lap counting mistake claim), this is also something uncalled for & beyond their control as well. So logically & rightfully speaking, arrows should not be directed all at them. If any offense are made or so, I apologize on the behalf of the flames laid by the general public & for SP Track & Field, (as those comments shouldn’t be there in the first place). Ultimately, the thing is that we all know we fought well & both clubs have all their teams in the top 10 out of over a hundred teams, isn’t that a good enough achievement already?

With this, the only way to change is largely on the participants. Constructively, we all have learnt lots of valuable lessons from the event – Teams, not only to TRAIN HARD, RACE HARD, but RACE SMARTLY as well. After all its only a school event, so I guess we can give & take there & the least we all need are internal conflicts between the top 2 Sporting Bodies in SP, so lets just cool down & don’t cry over spilled milk.

Be rest assured that next year Track & Field will be back with kickin’ butts again! Watch out!

To SAA & Sports Club:
From here there are many lessons learnt, you should know about the utmost importance of the lap counters – they are the most critical deciding factor in the race. Here are some suggestions raised to improve on the next event:

• Make counters comfortable by pitching tents/providing water at the counter tables so they can be a productive & helpful bunch.
• Make the helpers eat, drink, play, sleep & think Poly 50 before the race, the worst thing are an unprepared last minute bunch from various clubs who don’t even know the full conduct of the event.
• Have one counter per Team so they need not micro manage.
• Have electronic lap counting & lap timing where runners pass an electronic card for all 50 laps (similar to champion chip, etc & labelled for their team to prevent mixup) & run through a gantry to count laps all laps shown ‘live’ on a large electronic scoreboard & signals an upcoming girls/guys lap. (Job for EEE)

Peace!

I will take sometime to reflect & open up on the conduct of the Singapore Poly 50 race today. I am sad to say the the poly 50 is one of the worst organised events I ever participated, (even those casual X-crty events in MR can beat this many times over), with 20 out of the 100 teams disqualifed mainly because very inflexible rules. But the problem actually lies mainly on the organiser & lapcounter themselves.

For example:
For Team Quiksilver (SP track team 2)
– Lap counters gave a girl’s red card to team members when running the guy’s lap.
For Team Zoom (SP track team 1)
– Lap counter gave Team Zoom’s 2nd-last lap (No 2) card to another team.

Both resulted in delays & confusion to our teams. Not to mention completely messing out our planned running & lap tables.

As team captain for team Quicksilver (Team 60) & speaking from a neutral point of view, we were disqualified from 4th placing due to guys running a ‘girl’s lap’ where its SUPPOSED TO BE A GUY’s LAP (as mentioned above we are given a wrong coloured card). We highlighted the problem, only to be told by the lap counter to carry on despite the mix up. Given top 5 placing lead & a homerun of 10 laps ANYBODY & I mean ANYBODY will carry on running. We kept our integrity & did all 50 laps despite the mess up. We finished the race only to be told of the disqualification long after the race… (So much for SP CORE values, never works for us here at all, even in SP. Well done SP, another in the books!)

But isn’t this caused due to the incompetence of the lap counters? I mean hey how can the judges trust completely on dinky come-&-go sportsclub students only helping out out-of-the blue primarily for CCA points? I gave my reasons for the team & they are VALID, even other teachers listening around agreed. But the judges still stuck to their stubborn un-liberalistic roots. I mean hey sorry to say this but hey the sports club is notorious in SP as a body to look for only for signing out regular rackets or basketball, otherwise always just slack slack club… no aim, no motive, no direction.. who in SP do not know about this? Tell me.

I am not here for defaming of making noise because we lost the poly 50, I am just voicing what needs to be said in benefit for unrulely disqualified teams & future runners even considering to run this event at all. And mind you we didn’t lose at all, we are all winners infact- achieving my realistic target of top5, not on papers, but we know deep down inside. & I am glad my team made it. Who knows, even without the mess up we can even get 3rd placing as the margin between the 3rd & 4th is an extremely small margin.

If only I know what I can do to brighten their spirits at that bleak & quiet moment, besides trying to waste my breath “clarifying” their mistake where their decision was “final”.

Sure you can take our prizes, our vouchers & stuff, but you can never take away our spirit & team pride, we trained hard for months, we didn’t cheat neither did we break any rules on our side, we completely did nothing wrong at all but why must we suffer the consequences of their mistake? My team did nothing to deserve this. This really undermines the professionalism & outlook of the race… Outrageous!

The organization of the race was flawed & the odds are definitely against the runners from the beginning, not to mention extremely unprofessional at all. For example at the W4 checkpoint, we have Mr ‘D’ making alot of noise & blasting his loudhailer directly into people’s ears ontop of the constant threats to disqualify participants if nobody listens to him/waiting on road, not even knowing that hes actually the one blocking incoming runners. As the saying goes, empty vessels makes the loudest noise, so I leave you to think about that, no comment.

I won’t be touching on such trival matters such as the Judges sticking to their ultimate public display of non-liberalism. But we can round it down to these points:

1. The results & prize presentations are already on.
2. It would embarrass the GOH if theres changes to placing then.
3. There is always redtape in all big organisations, taking forever to get anything voiced/done.
4. It will undermine the organiser’s capablity in front of the principal (GOH).
5. Fear of other exceptions if they consider this ‘exception’ (Organisers are not paid extra for doing more admin work & listening to additional reasons anyway).

Last but not least, for the 1st team, it’s not Poly 50, but Prolly 50. (prolly – slang for probably, Its an its an open secret which everyone knows) – how can Team DragonBall beat Team Zoom, when they didn’t even overtake team Zoom in the first place? Well, if it’s due to desperate measures to claim back the challenge shield after losing to us for 3 years, I have nothing to say. Ultimately they do have to live with the fact & lie that even if they won it officially. But deep down inside, the opposing team know they didn’t.

Nevertheless, cheers going out to our indispensable seniors, David, Weixin, Xiaohan, Gladys, Leslie & helpers Wei Xiang & Derek for bestowing their invaluble experiences for this year’s poly 50 runners, providing their extremely efficient lap counting skills & general aid & help for our teams.

(POLY 50 – legal speeding, illegal organization? – Quote: Elrick Team 1) Even the worst of marathon baggage collection management, crowds, misprint certs, photos, timings & route closures I’ve been through, nothing can beat this yet. SP still have lots to learn and improve, ironically backed by a disturbing lack of wisdom from the past history of Poly 50 events.

Overall rating: 15% for a Singapore Runners event listing rating.

Category– (Disastrous, not even worth participating).

The last week is all about receiving the results of the mid-semester tests & of course accepting them. My Grades are not very fantastic this semester, about 10% lower than my standard grade the previous semesters, with the exception of a few 100% steals, heydoda!

Damage Report:

• Mechanics II: 100%
• Engineering Maths: 100%
• Wildfire Pro-E: 100%
• Thermofluids II: 88%
• DTS: 83%
• CNC CAM: 83%
• Product Design & Dev: A
• GEMS: ICA1 – A

My target for this year will be at least 4 DIST & the rest minimum ‘A’s, the best is to maintain at 5 DIST & GPA 4.0. All these are MST results anyway, so can’t really count the chickens before they are hatched… Nevertheless, had not received a reply on the $$ SP scholarship application $$, hope I can get it this year.

Anyway, with the X-country season ending, the 3rd Quarter running season is back again in force, starting with the Mizuno Wave Run on the 23th this month.

I did my registrations at the Funan’s shopping mall Running Lab branch store today. Got an interesting number of 1944 (yi qiu se se, slowly die die?)…

Haha at least its not as bad as one of the number tags one of my running friends ever got – 174 (yi qi se, all die together?) no one will want to run with him sia, haha. Nevertheless, here are the race details:

Mizuno Wave Run 2006 Race Schedule & Details:

Event Date: 23th July 2006
Registration Deadline: 16th July 2006
Venue: Kovan Hub (Former Hougang St21 Bus Interchange)
Distance: 10km
Reporting Time: 6.30am
Race Start: 7.30am

Competitive 10km Race Cats ($15 Reg fee):
Men’s & Women’s Open (No Age Limit), Men’s Veteran (>45 Years) & Women’s Veteran (>40 Years)
Non-Competitive 10km Race Cats ($10 Reg fee):
Fun Run (No Age Limit)

Goodie Bag (All Cats)
Mizuno Event Dry Tee (worth $39.90)
Mizuno Drawstring Bag (worth $10.00) + vouchers & goodies inside
30% discount all Mizuno products upon registration at outlet

Last but not least, brought a pair of cheap $14 Sony Earplugs for use in my 21km Half-Marathon & Singapore Marathon this year… these babies can’t last me one season at all. Also on gadgets, its stationary to the Maxes! I am always crazy of all-in-one stationary, (not to mention an impatient enemy for correction fluid). Got a new PILOT Feed Pen ($6.50) with Black, Blue & Red ballpoint inks + a built in refillable CORRECTION TAPE dispenser at the back! Whoa! & I thought my current Mitsubishi Uni Ballpoint + 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil + 5cm Stick Eraser pen was an All-in-wonder… Now all I need is these 2 pens & I can throw my pencil case away…

Poly 50 training is speeding up, would be training my team & bonding them before the big event next Wednesday.
With powers come great responsibility – Being a Poly 50 Team Captain

My Mileage is dropping alot these weeks, sigh…

Currently Listening: Fort Minor – Where’d You Go

And there we have it the Edgegames Adventure Race 2006 (venue) held early this morning. The race flagged off at 6am today with us spending the previous night over at the salvation army praise haven building to equipment check & preps. The 1st team is expected to arrive with 3hours of the 20km run/bike adventure event. Neither do we know that the Champion & the runner up finishing close to 2 1/2 hours. With my team being the latter. Yes finished at a time of 2hours 35mins with a 10mins penalty for having 2 checkpoints wrong for the orienteering checkpoints. The 1st team had an overal timing of 2hours 28mins with a 5mins penalty. Minus all the penalties I can say its a very close game with 2 minutes between us teams, not to mention us able to take 1st place (0pt penalty) if we actually found all the checkpoints in the orienteering station. We are unable to find the clues largely due to lack of info on the start of the find, just say we weren’t briefed properly on what to find.

The race was quite “our race”, not only beating the expected fastest in 3 hours expectation, the 3rd team in our category actually came much later, like a 30min interval I guess. Nevertheless, the race saw us through elements such as challenges like “swimming” thru the Singapore long-kang drain systems, passing through jungles & climbing rock faces/quarries besides the all usual navigation & biking team bialthlon.

Pre-race planning (& Food!)

Getting ready to go

Champion Team & 1st Runner up

Collected our Trophy from the Toa Payoh Sports Hall just today evening. Though 2nd place may not be too bad out of 20 over teams (60+ over people that is), we felt we can actually do better. Moreover, the 1st team actually consists of all members from our SAF Army Commando unit. Come to think about it, if my team can pull through with my teammates not even army training & yet finish just 2 minutes behind Commandos, man I guess we are actually quite good! Nevertheless the race was indeed very fun (& dirty muddy) for a first.

The adventure race spirit is definitely within us now. Let do better next year then, let us bring home The Golden Trophy next year in place of this year’s silver.

Its the holidays & really had been very very busy over the last few weeks. If its not catching up & pondering over E-learning homework, its written assignments & getting all the 75 orders & cash for the track & field shirts ready for printing. Busy busy busy. Oh yea besides that theres work too, I guess good work, guess can make some good money over this holiday.

Sporting wise, theres the selection for poly50 hehe, did 20 rounds of 200m with 3mins rest in between last week. All runs must not be less than 40secs or be eliminated to do slow jog laps round the field, courtesy of coach. Last Tuesday saw the timing dropping to 37sec/round which most of us barely made, only to drop out on Friday’s elimination of constant <35secs/round with 5 runners remaining, very challenging indeed. Nevertheless there’s a rule that no more than 5IVP runners can be in one team (a handicap) so we are more of less split up. Coach is sending in 3 Teams for this year’s poly 50. I am in Team 2 of the SP Track & Field Team, would be fighting it out officially on July 12th. In the meantime its more speedwork & passing practices for the team. Also, with training over the summer holiday period, it the norm to have Dinner was at the campus’s house-restaurant FoodHaven after training, only to reach home at 10.30pm everytime whahaha.

How goes?