JP Morgan Corporate Challenge was my first running event when I start to run last year. I decide to keep it as one of my running tradition in memorizing it. The event is worth participating. It is a national event--over 10,000 runners join each year nation wide. It is a international event--12cities in America, Asia, Europe, Arica host the event each year with same distance (5.6km). It is wellorganized--road closure, mobile toilets, bag deposite, refreshments during and post run, all good.
This year is 8th annual event in S'pore, it was reported to have 13,233 registered, 10% increment from last year. And this year it is S'pore's turn to host the Championship, the best team from each city race here to claim the laureate. As before, we were crowed to Esplanade Bridge to start. The destination is F1 pit as before. The distance of the course is precisely 5.6km, according to many runner's GPS record.
To avoid being blocked by walkers, I manage to push through to crowd to the starting line. There I found the Championship runners with blue bibs lining in front of the crowd. They supposed to be starting 5min earlier than rest of us. The rest of us was divided into two waves, to avoid the congestion.
My last year timing was 32:46. Last december I'v recorded my 5km PB by 20:27, an equivalent pace of 4:05. So this time I plan to break my PB with a average pace of 4:00. The crowd got more excited than me and kicked off like an crashed damn after flag off. I tried to keep within 4:00 pace, not to over shooting. But I only manged to maintain within first 2km. After the first water point, my strides slowed down. And after the two splopes near Nicoll Highway, my pace degraded to 4:30. Some runners can maintain same strides on inclined slope but I have not been trained for. My breath became heavy after the slopes and two female runner overtook me. They finally ranked top 10 of the female runners. Only after 4miles milestone I felt revived and kicked to the finish line, my watch recorded 23:55.30. The website published the official timing soon after the race. I recorded 23:53 and ranked 103 among 6474 male finishers, and 111 among the total 11427 finishers. I ranked 1st in my company and claimed the $100 prize : )
My average pace in the race was 4:16. 1 week before race, I'd ever ran a test run according to Matt Fittsgerald, to determin my race pace. The test run is 5x1km with 2min intervals. The comparison between race split pace and interval pace are listed below:
-Split -Race pace -Interval pace
1km 4:01 4:05
2km 4:03 4:09
3km 4:09 4:37
4km 4:33 4:39
5km 4:42 4:57
I now found it rather accurate. It suggest I could not maintain 4:05 pace now, nor even 4:00. If I took note earlier, adjust my goal, maybe I could adopt a 4:10 or 4:12 pace and scored better. Any way, I got ~9min improvement to last year's score. And ran into 3% amateur runners. That is enough.
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