Friday, June 5, 2009

Pancake and a Stranger on 21km

Had a great evening run at ECP. 21km from Fort Rd - Safra NSRCC.

Do not eat pancake before a run - kept burping for a good 15min! Barely 10min into my run, some random topless guy ran alongside and asked if he could run together. Uh, sure.... Then he became talkative, tried to impress and chit chat. I must have looked like a recreational leisure runner?!? There I was, trying to warm up into a good rhythm and pace, and he was robbing me of precious oxygen! Tried giving mono-syllabic answers as politely as possible. Graciousness was a virtue to be practised....

Man: "So where are you running to?"
PS: Safra
M: Where is that? (obviously don't know ECP well....)
PS: Country club
M: Oh,... how far is that? (still clueless)
PS: 21km (of course must return to start point right?)
M: Wow, so far! So you must be very fit, run marathons type?
PS: polite smile (no need to explain the concepts of 21km and 42km...)
PS: You can go ahead if you want, I'm keeping this pace.
M: This pace is fine.... (M drops a bit behind, breathing hard.)

800m from his end-point, M speeds and catches up alongside.
M: I'm finishing soon at BK.
PS: uh-huh
M: You run very often?
PS: ok (cannot sense I don't want to talk meh?)... Sorry I can't talk when I'm running. (pant a bit to exaggerate, luckily he didn't say 'no worries then I talk'!).
(BK in sight!)
M: I'm done, see you around.
PS: Bye, enjoy yourself! (Must always remain gracious.)

Happy to run off! Haha.... I tried to keep a sub-6min pace throughout. Some 5:40, some more/ less. Ran a little extra at NSRCC. On the way back, bumped into Anthony and DO near Mac. We ran together. Happy to have them around to pace me. We did abt 5:30ish pace for 2km. Experienced pacers that they were, great job! Can consider hiring them as personal pacers during races! Haha... (sure very expensive).

Ran more than 21km. But timing for 21km was about 2:00 or 2:01min. Good, got potential for sub-2h (I hope).

5 comments:

Henry Tan said...

Hi PS, good run! That stranger really, like some saying "little birds don't know what is catapult". You were good. And it was good to stay gracious in the public, but still have to be careful with stranger.

warriorsofwind said...

Better do get someone to do night run with u if u passby to any dessert place..
There are news reported before of woman runners getting raped..
Who knows what will happen if the guy can stay with the entire course but get angered by your monolithic responses.

PS said...

If it was a dessert place, I'd gladly stop to eat...

Monolithic = a huge massive structure. If I were monolithic, I'd be quite safe...

warriorsofwind said...

ha. ok... some correction to my poor English..

dessert should be "deserted"
monolithic should be "monotonous"

Sorry about it.. cheers!!

The DreamRunner said...

your conversations with that guy was funny....hehe.
Even when you bump into the 2 of us, you were so focused...and the pace was quite fast...no wonder that guy gotta drop off...hahaha