Saturday, June 4, 2011

Have a Great Day!

One of the surprises I got from Ironman Lanzarote was discovering that 6-time Ironman World Champion, Natascha Badmann was taking part. She placed a high and respectable second in the women’s category. She has a firm reputation for her enduring smile (while racing) and making a bad day better! She leaves an indelible mark for me of being a gracious competitor and being appreciative to volunteers and spectators.
This evening, our open-water swim group met for Happy Hours and exchanged war stories. Everyone who completed a recent race had to wear the race tee or suffer a mild penalty; I suppose it was the buying of drinks, fried chicken wings and pizza – high-calorie, tasty, punishment. Several had completed their first 6.5K open-water swim, first night marathon, and even Ng Lap Huan who completed a back-to-back 21K and marathon on the same evening, a week ago; he will making his personal assault on his first ultra-distance of 100K. Big shout out goes to Le Giang (a 3:55 marathoner) and Winston for being generous pacers at the Sundown Marathon last Saturday. Without pacers, less runners would have crossed the line, and others meet their personal best times. Thank you, Pacers!

When I arrived, the enthusiastic (and barely inebriated) team noticed that my participant t-shirt for Lanzarote had the names of all the 1,500 competitors on it. Predictably, a camera zoomed in for a close-up of my name. I had difficulty recalling where my name was in the confusing scatter of names. Not my fastest race, but certainly memorable for being the very first in my country to do it – not just once – but twice in four years. There is word that one of our triathlon buddies may break his personal achievement of ‘most Ironman finishers ever by a single athlete in Singapore’. As tempting as it is, I will reserve my energies for other mountains of my mind.

We will resume our open-water swim at Sentosa Lagoon next Saturday, as there are residual jellyfish and an abundance of sea-lice. We have avoided the bad case of the itchy for a few weeks. I will be off to Bangalore, India on Sunday and look forward to next Sunday’s 10K Mount Faber Run – my third attempt for a PB and, possibly, nearer a podium finish.

Off to a 21K tempo run in a few hours’ time, and watch a friend finish her 5K run. Hopefully, I make the cutoff time.

Video courtesy of TheTriathlonCoach.com

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