Exploration run at Chestnut Nature Park with RD

I must admit that I kind of lost the motivation to blog. I've done 3 half marathons, one 25km run and a marathon this year, I took photos and went through online albums looking for my race photos, but somehow did not get down to blog about it. I've trained harder than all of the previous years and took photos of the more interesting routes, but the photos stayed unused in my phone. In fact, I'm still stuck blogging about my Nagoya trip, and I don't think I'll ever blog about the Easter holiday trip to Bali.

The mandatory group photo (Courtesy of RD facebook page)

Anyway, I've decided to just post up photos of a exploratory run I took part in, hopefully it will help me in completing the blog post later on, and here I am! 

This is the fifth time I've joined RD in a training/exploratory run this year, and the route is a trail that's newly opened just months ago. As I've signed up for Hakusan Shiragawa Ultramarathon and planning to sign up for MSIG Action Asia and TNF later on, I'm have to add on more slopes and trails to my run. 

Map taken from Carpark A near the MRT station

The start point is just next to the new Hillview MRT station on the Downtown line, and it's just next to Dairy Farm. We gathered at Carpark A and after a short briefing, we were off. The last run I did was a 17km mid distance run two weeks ago. After two weeks of zero running, the slopes at the start left me panting hard and after a few hundreds metre, I had to stop to walk up an upslope. There were about 20+ runners and most if not all are regular runners, I was soon left behind working on trail on my own. I was just glad that the sweeper runner had not caught up with me yet. I was not so worried about getting lost as there were crew stationed at important junctions. Soon, a male runner caught up with me, and we ran together till we got a bit confused with directions. We waited for the sweeper guy to arrive with another lady, the 4 of us ran together till we reached the amenities center at Chestnut Nature Park.

After 3 km from the Start Point

I was with the slowest group so I didn't have a chance to take a break, I headed straight for the chestnut walking trail. It was quite a clear cut route but slightly dizzling for me as there were many turns to the left and then to the right, heading upslopes and then downslope. The route was clearly marked out every 100m and there were a few old people walking on the trail. Unlike the earlier part of the run, this area does not have any mountain bikes so it was quite safe. After 2km of winding path, we met the group who had made an U turn after hitting the road at the end. Instead of going back the 2km, I've made a choice of taking a short cut as I was clearly lagging behind. I ran about 100m down the road and arrived at the amenities centre again. The very nice guy I had met accompanied me as he felt that it would be unsafe to leave me alone on the trail. I was very grateful for his kind gestures although I felt I would be fine on my own.

The newly built toilets and shelter

After a toilet break and wandering around for a very short while, the group emerged from the trail and we ran back the way we came. I was still one of the last but it was quite okay as I already knew the path. I really need to put in more effort in running as I'm always the 'dropout' when running with the group. Instead of clocking almost 10km for today's run, I took a few shortcuts as I was quite slow and ended up with my Garmin reading 7km.

Back to the Start Poin

It started drizzling a little when we got back to the Start Point near Carpark A. I did not manage to do a LSD as planned but I was still glad I made the decision to wake up and join the group earlier in the morning. It definitely felt good after a good workout!

Sat Morning Run with Running Department

This morning I went for a run with Running Department, finally their exploratory run is in the North! It felt really convenient to have the run just two MRT stops away, I comfortably reached there within 30mins and did not have to worry about being late.

Although Woodlands is really near, I've not ran in the area before, except for inside the stadium itself. Actually part of the route was really near to Sembawang PCN and I could have continue the run from there, but I did not want to risk getting lost.

Snapped a pic at Woodlands Waterfront

After we gathered at the Stadium, there was a short briefing and we were off. We reached Woodlands Waterfront which was really just opposite JB after 3-4km, the view was really nice there and we stopped for a group photo.

After the rest point, I tried my best to keep up with the group, running at a pace of around 6.30min/km. It was really stretching my limits but I could handle it well at first, catching my breath with relief whenever we reached a traffic light for a brief stop. There was a very high slope after the Woodlands Waterfront area and the stretch of road was accompanied by lorries from the industrial area. I would say that it is not a very nice area to run (except for the Waterfront area) itself as there was also a lot of traffic and motorcycles zooming past the area after Woodlands checkpoint. I will not really think of exploring the route on my own as it did not look very safe running at the industrial area alone, not to mention all the exhaust fumes.

We passed Republic Poly around 7km-8km mark, I started to feel that it was straining to keep up with the pace of the faster runners. After Republic Poly, we were running along a very sandy path for quite sometime, I slowed down a lot and we finally hit a very steep slope where I practically had to stop and walk up that way. Fortunately, there was a toilet rest point just ahead and we stopped for a brief moment. We turned and went down the way we came, going down slope this time and everything. My legs were feeling like jelly by that time.

I felt much better after we had those breaks, although I'm still slower among the whole pack, there was only 1-2km more to go. I was really glad to catch the glimpse of Causeway Point and the bus interchange after we ran a bit further, the end point was near!

The final mileage on my watch showed 11.6km, it was my longest run this year and also one of the more challenging one.