Round the world in 195 days.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_207384.html

Today was NUS biathlon!



I'd nearly forgotten about it. Like I remembered last Sunday that I had to collect the race pack on Wednesday (which I did after HR), then ever since I forgot about it until Friday night.

Anyways I completed my first biathlon ever! WOw! Ha ha. What an accomplishment.

Here's how things went:

I arrived at ECP carpark F2 after a sleep and leisurely ride from home. Interesting to note was that NParks has removed ALL the speed humps along the cycle track! Finally took them awhile to realise that the only things humps do to cyclists are to launch them into the air, and to trip bladers...

The registration booth was moderately crowded, and I got in a few people's way because I was the only fella with bike in queue. The transition are was so small I didn't even notice it yet so couldn't decide where to park first. Also, I had realised upon observation of others that I had conveniently forgotten about my usual make-shift race belt to attach the race numbers. Which meant I was either going to: Pin the race number onto my tri-suit, pin the race number to my t-shirt and wear it over, run the race without race number, or look for a string to do a make a belt.

I chose the last option (duh) and found some blue cloth-string thing which worked. Think I was the only guy on the course with such a unique race belt!

I got the swim cap and the body marking and proceeded to look for the tranistion area, which I found and locked my bike nearby.



Hmm, well, the extremely small and packed transition area took some getting used to, and I was afraid my stuff (esp my sunglasses and helmet) would get trampled upon. Also some fears of theft because the security wasn't exactly very tight. Imagine if my bag was stolen.... How was I going to remove my locked bike after that??? Ha ha.

Saw a few familiar faces: Sunny, Matthew, Noah, Dzarrin, Samuel, Joseph, Teck Wah. The event really had quite a big turn out, and I think a very large percentage was from the expatriats.

Ok, so the race started, and I found myself swimming for the 3rd time since Ironman 70.3, and for the 1st time a distance of more than 1km... This was going to be a blast I thought, since I had conserved like a few months worth of swimming energy. Hur hur. So cold. Yah, so I started with front crawl, was conveniently over-taken by lots of people, squeezed to the side, squeezed between swimmers etc etc. In the end it was 75% breast stroke and 25% front crawl.

No idea how long i took, but i would say about 40 mins. Then it was off to the run. Well, compared to tri, my legs were like so much fresher. Duh. But well, it was pretty much a lost game with my strongest leg removed. Like virtually impossible to make up for the swim deficit.

Ok, I confirmed once again that my running ability is subpar. I was passed by about 8 people along the 10k run. Managed to claw back 3 of them in the last 4km though. The water points came slightly late but they were pretty ample. No isotonic though. Saw quite a few bad practices amongst the runners though: People running with ipods and running with bare torso. Prohibited stuff in triathlons basically.

Oh and about the finishing, I was going to run down another guy in the last 100+ metres, but as I approached say 20m of the finish line, possibly going to overtake him at the line, I simply stopped: No point gaining a position but blowing up each other's finishing pic right? Ha ha haha....

Overall NUS biathlon was a well organised event, with helpful and more or less knowledgable volunteers. Logistics was ok too. Only a few small gripes.

A parting pic, people ski-ing.