This is the story of how horribly wrong a seemingly innocent race can go. Like really really really wrong. This is the story of Erin and Kunal's adventures at the first ever (and hopefully last ever) Singapore Energizer Night Trail Run.
Now you might think that it is a really stupid idea to combine a trail run with darkness. You would in fact be correct- its a really dumb, stupid, horrible, terrible idea. But, silly me, when I read trail run, and I thought about Singapore, which is not exactly known for being "rugged", I decided that by "trail" they probably meant "well manicured dirt path." So, a well manicured dirt path at night doesn't seem that bad, totally manageable.
But they were not kidding around about the whole "trail" thing. Because what they meant by "trail" was one-"helluva-rocky-road with incredibly unstable footing and many massive sink holes." I swear, this must be the ONLY rugged road on the whole island. And, in case you were wondering, by "night race", they meant really "frigging pitch black dark in the middle of the jungle". These puny little headlamps they gave us were useless. All of this combined spelled disaster.
But before we get to the misery, the night actually started out pretty well- the race was a family friendly event, and they had set up a pretty neat carnival before the race.
Dave, testing his might at the strength challenge.
Kunal doing the same. Such manly manly men.
Then the boys moved on to a less manly activity- net ball (an all female sport, for those unfamiliar).
They may have been there for like 10 minutes, but they didn't leave until they managed to get a few in the basket. The whole no backboard thing is surprisingly tricky!
Nothing like posing for a pics with the porta-potties.
To be fair, they do play a huge role in my race success, so its only fair they get proper tribute.
Me and K and the Energizer Man.
(Flash forward 2 hours, Kunal looks at me and suggests that, if we ever finish this race, and are not dying or broken when we do so, we cause physical harm to the f*^#ing Energizer man)
The sign should have read "slow down, beware of a totally miserable race route"
Its not a good sign when I am making this variety of face before the race has even started.
The starting gate...pretty much the only cool thing about the route.
We would have looked way less happy if we had known what was in store for us.....
Adjusting my little tiny totally insufficient source of light.
Totally should have used my Kilimanjaro lamp!
And we were off.
And this is the last picture from the race..because understandably K and I didn't have a camera with us to document the misery step-by-step, and Dave couldn't take pictures of us at the end because it took us 12 hours to finish and he got tired of waiting it was too difficult to see the finishers coming up to the finish line in the dark.
So why was this race SO bad? How do I even begin to describe it!
It started out alright...a bit of rough terrain, but not too bad- and the runners were in good spirits, so it was fun for the first 1/2km. But almost immediately from the starting line, the route started heading upwards, in a long, steep, painful, rugged hill. And I hate hills. But I was actually pretty proud of myself for keeping my head down and trucking along...right up until I rolled my ankle on a loose rock and thought I was going to die. So just like that, we had to slow down to a hobble before we even hit the 1K mark. Not an auspicious beginning for sure.
I hobbled along for a while, until we reached the top of the first terrible hill, and I stopped for some stretching and injury-investigation. After concluding that I had not broken anything (thank god!) I realized that I really needed to keep running or I might as well just turn around and go back to the carnival. So we ran. We even sprinted right up another brutal hill, and another, and another...until we got to the hill-from-death. No really, it was unimaginably bad.
It was so steep that it was physically impossible to get up it with out crawling and/or using the ropes (yes I said ROPES) to pull yourself up the steep muddy slope. Lucky for me, as I was using the ropes method, the girl behind me lost her balance and ripped the rope from my clutch, throwing me in to the chasm in the middle of the two rope paths. Awesome for me. So I finished my summit using the hands-and-knees approach. I was less than pleased. All I remember is looking at Kunal and saying "this. is. insane!" And it was...
Not too long after our mountain climbing experience, Kunal twisted his knee, which sent us back to the hobbling. We were totally the walking wounded, probably a pathetic sight. To be fair, we really couldn't have been running very fast anyways, it was basically one big series of massively steep hills. And the downhills, with the loose rocks, were actually worse than the up-hill. So we walked, and stumbled, and hobbled. The going was slow.
Practically every 200 meters we saw someone injured. It looked like most of them were minor scrapes from falls, but it was far from a safe race. My biggest worry the whole race was "DO NOT FALL, because you are wearing your brand new Lululemon Athletica pants and you CANNOT RIP THEM!" I would have been devastated to ruin them on my first run wearing them! I was secondarily concerned with breaking a leg, but my first priority was my new pants. I was realllly wishing I had thought to wear my old grubby pants instead!
Normally I enjoy the sound of my running. It sounds like, "clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp," very neat, very rhythmic Syncopated with my usually pretty even breathing. Its comforting.
My running this time sounded like this "clomp, clompclomp, scurry-scurry-scurry, clomp, SHIT!!!!, clompclomp, scurry-scurry, Mutherf&@#er!!!, clomp, trot, SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!, trot, clomp." The stream of expletives that flew freely from my mouth would have impressed the hardiest of truck drivers. It was NOT fun going.
After we hit the 11km sign, we decided to run for it, and magically, the road evened out significantly, so the last km was pretty smooth. And I have never been SO glad to see a finish line. Luckily, we didn't end up having a physical altercation with the Energizer man.
I love running. And I love races. And I love races in Singapore. But this was pure misery. Never before in my life have I considered quitting a race...and this race, I probably thought about throwing in the towel 10x before the first 2km!
But we survived. And honestly, the worst part that it was my last Singapore race with Kunal, my trusty running buddy. We have both improved SO much in just 6 short months, and the last races we did together went SO well, we were really hoping to rock out our last one together. But alas, it was not meant to be. But we did suffer together, and it was wonderful to have a partner in my misery. I hope we find occasion to run together again some day soon (the NY Marathon would be fun, hint-hint Kunal!)
So my advice to any runners is- never, ever, ever run a night trail race. Really dumb idea. Really dumb.
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