Another Pain-free Run?

It was a sizeable turnout for today's run. The route was new to me, I had done snippets of the route but not in the combination today. Safra - Depot - Alexandra - Tanglin (towards Orchard) - Orange Grove (pass Shangri-La) - Stevens Rd (hey, I passed Cheryl's house!) - Bt Timah (pass SMU) - Cluny Park (to turn into Botanic Gardens) - Botanic Gardens - Ridley Park - Lower Delta - Kg Bahru - up MF hill - Morse - Henderson. I modified the last portion to return from Harbourfront. Not sure of the total distance.

I started off relatively strong. Tried to keep up the front runners - Ricci, Ong, Stardust, Freddy, Ultraman. Of course, keeping up was a misnomer. Would be happy just to keep sight of them. :) They were simply going slow in the first portion so that our runners did not get lost on the new route. My hip felt good. Yeah. I managed to give chase, sort of. But I had to be conservative and watched my steps. Did not want to risk over running or triggering the ITB again. So my chasing resembled a tempo run instead. Fast for x distance, slowed for a few minutes, fast again. Heng caught up soon enough and overtook me. Routinely I tried to lift my chin and elongate my spine, like having a plumbline pulled from the top of my head. Good posture to have, the steps seemed lighter and required less effort. Of course it was easy to say all that when one was not tired yet. When fatigue struck, it was a different story altogether. Ha.

After 1h we reached Botanic Gardens and took a short toilet break. We headed out to the main gate and towards Ridley Park. Alber was feeling sick and had slowed down behind. I waited for him to cross the road into Dempsey. Melvin still had his ITB problem so was running at the back with Trevor and Jimmy. I felt like I had enough energy to try and catch up with the runners ahead. I passed Siew Lee, Shirley, Wayne and some others. I saw KK and Heng a distance in front but I could not close the gap with them. The Alexandra park connector section was always depressing to me, I just had to get over with it. Darn.

Sipped my powergel after turning into Lower Delta Road. I was already looking forward to refilling my bottle with icy water at the MF cafe. Ricci, who had waited to give directions to the back runners, zoomed by in a flash. It was a half-walk-half-run up MF. I started counting lamp posts and using them as targets to get up the hill. Got my water refill atop MF and met Jimmy. We ran down to Morse Road and I told him I was going back from Harbourfront. He waited for Alber to come down the MF while I went to Esso to buy a much needed Pocari Sweat. 2 for $1.80 promotion! Passed a can of drink to Alber before I went off alone on the Harbourfront stretch. It was so hot by then. Today's weather was more humid than yesterday at MR and it was quite a pain to go through Telok Blangah Rise.

Distance covered today should be about 23km. There was a very slight tightness in my right hip, but otherwise, it was a relatively pain-free run. Again. 2nd in a row. :)