Sorry for my dated entry. Been rather caught up with work back to back projects. Nevertheless found time to update this very much dated entry which I should last week.
The Poly 50 was on, well last week, the 6th August 2008. This year’s race was my third one in the running in SP and it was infact the only one I didn’t get prepared or actually seriously trained for. Neverthess, all our teams did very well- Our current student team came in both champions as well as third placing. My team participated in the alumni category and given on our side, all we know running the race this year from track and field are our 3 active student teams together with 2 teams from the alumni side. Later do I know that our even more senior track and field alumni elder were in as well, coming in 2nd on our category with my Alakazoom team on third placing, so technically you can say that all top 3 places of the Alumni category are from the track and field! And we have the Challenge shield for Track and Field to keep for another whole year!
The race have it’s both ups and downs for me. I’ve not trained specifically for the event, which I pretty much still set in LSD mode, and not the sprint-stop sprint-stop demands for this type of race. Moreover, neither did I actually did a full dry run for this year’s event, as opposed to my previous year’s race in the active team. No wonder I felt rather light-headed midway in the race- No wonder one of my team helpers notice I was rather pale at one time- I ran myself out during the first half of the race. Then for the 2nd half, I was not panting crazy like what I did initially- a bad sign that my lactic is building up and my muscular endurance cannot meet the demands of my Cadrio- no wonder I started finishing my laps rather relaxed, but heavy footed. Constant stretching before and during the race kept any potential cramps and pulls in check. As usual David Goh was around with his hailer shouting at anything that moves. Our Principal, Mr tan was on the field himself as well, cheering runners along, never saw a principal so down to earth before remarkable!
After the race, we celebrated for the night with a planned steam boat dinner at Bugis’s popular street of Steamboat restaurants. It’s at this restaurant called Xian de lai (which laughingly reads “lazy to come” in Chinese). Reservations were made courtesy of track mate KC (whom I always share his police stories on my blog), so we were already more of less prepared to party for the night, whether we win or not. So it turned out to be a bonus celebrations for us. Together with big Leslie, we kinda raided the joint with continuous orders of seafood and meats. The placed remained open even till late 11pm+, so there was not issue of being chased out.
Looking back at how this rag and bone team emerged champions- my team was formed under the leadership of Eric, who is also my fellow DSTA scholar. I was the team captain for my last few year’s of poly 50 races, but so given my lack of time and commitment I have last month, Eric was the best person fit and experienced enough to take on the role of captain for this year and he did a rather good job in getting all us ex-trackers back together whether it’s email, msn or cold calling.
I went with the follow as a member as good to be a follower once and get together for this “leisure race”, little do I expect anything but a finish, but there’s more.
And so my team “Alakazoom” was formed, well if that didn’t strike any bells of it’s similarly to a harry potter spell call, this name actually dates back to even way before the potter frenzy took place together with the other team name “Zoom” which track and field always used.
The team was not totally the best of a team you can expect, comprising of a mixed set of trackers with some serving national service, some working and we were not always all present for training on the weekends. But I can say, the thing evident in each and every one of us is the bond and spirit for running which we all shared during our active student days, flourished over countless races all together.
I guess that’s what made us run, and win the alumni third place. Go Trackers! Go Runners2
