November 23, 2003

• I was a bit worried today for starting the Vertical Marathon with a heavy and tired leg.  Quads are hurting and the whole leg is stiff.  Still I arrived at City Hall MRT just before 7.30am and went around looking for the booth.  Followed one of the other guys and seems like it's just outside the shopping centre.  Found the Men's Open stall but they said it was not open yet, to come back later.  Walked around alone, saw Esther and Jeanette together, then talked a bit to Rebecca Peters too.  Later saw another cyclist who recognized me; Stanley who led the BOAC biking way back before I got my bike - rented one of the MTBs from them.  We sat together and chatted a bit.  He too was going for this as a first time event.  Adrian turned up later, and he too was going for the race.  KK turned up too but he was not racing.  Eventually Joyce and Irving who were riding earlier this morning arrived too - not racing either.  While the rest took off (the ladies), I got several advise from the people who had done it before.  All advised me not to go too fast, but I was like, it's a 10mins event.  How much can you burn up?

  
  

  I hooked up with the younger Jonathan (triathlete) who was not queueing up - no point waiting in line while the queue was so long, so we both just sat it out watching the queue grow shorter and shorter.  We chatted a bit about our experience with the triathlons and stuffs.  He was more of a runner and swimmer secondary, not much of a cyclist.  He's surprised I cycle almost every day but he himself runs everyday... so that's pretty unfair statement to me.  Anyway he was surprised that I am only seven months cyclists - gee, the topic keeps popping up.  Saw Mika Kume limping and heard that she had sprained her knee on the way down.

  
  

  In the end there were three of us and I took off with another guy (thought he didn't look that strong and figure if I was going up fast I don't need the competition to compete with me for space).  While in line about to start, I managed to intro myself to Alec Kuok, who replied me in my email to the Triathlon Association (and whom I mistook to be a pretty young guy - he's not, he's quite senior at 63).  Then it was our turn to take on the 1227 steps, 73 storeys with a partner - we were set off in groups of two.  I took the first corner into the stairs and he followed.  I started out hard and fast and surprisingly could not shake my partner off.  We went up about five floors before there were no more stairs and we had to run across a flat section, which was a bit confusing as I didn't know which was the right was and there were no signs or people to guide us.  Got into what I hoped was the correct staircase and continued... fortunately it was.  Reached about the eighth floor before saw someone zzzz-ing.  It was one of the marshalls.  Doh.

  
  

  The stairs up Swissotel are not continuous.  Rather they run in the same direction so you kinda get a break while moving horizontally to get to the next stairs, which gave me a breather after exhausting myself in the first ten stairs.  I finally dropped my teammate, about the 7th floor up, but I'm totally pooped now.  I continue at a walking pace up, all the way.  My breath starts feeling dry around the 20th floor and by the 30th floor I could feel my lungs really really drying.  About the 40th floor, I started to feel the start of a searing pain in the lungs, and when the stairs switched from a right-turn to left-turn, I got disoriented for a while.  I start feeling a bit faint too, like lack of oxygen, but I'm still taking two steps at a time, despite going really slow.  Mostly, even since the bottom steps, most of the strength for going up comes from pulling with the arms.  I think I will train up more body strength to pull better.

  
  

  Attitude training (the lack of)?  Or is it simply the air in the enclosed space was bad?  I don't know but when I reached the 65th floor, my whole lungs was searing quite badly and I kept thinking it's only 8 floors up, 7 floors up... things got better at the 70th floor when I could feel the aircon but try as I did, I could not push the pace up for the last three floors.  I passed by the second guy now (who is nicer and gave way to me - the earlier guy I passed just went his way and without the extra effort I couldn't pass him on the outside).

  
  

  Finally up on the 73rd floor and I could see a lot of people enjoying the view from the helipad but my lungs were burning very badly, I started coughing and all I could think of was getting down.  Returned the Champion Chip, timer which kept track of our movements whenever we passed a pad on the ground, and went down to 70th floor to take an elevator down.  Someone timed 50secs to reach from 70 to ground floor.

  
  

  I had taken 9 mins 57 secs to reach up.

  
  

  Prize giving... Adrian came in second with a 7 mins plus timing.  Esther, sadly, lost to Jeanette who came in with a nice timing of 9 mins 58 secs, and Mika came in the Women Masters with 9 mins 59 secs.  So it seems Jeanette will be going to New York to climb up the Empire State Building, while Esther got second.  I was placed 19th.

  
  

  As we were quite late already, decided to hang out with KK at Plaza Singapura and caught Looney Tunes, which was very nice and funny.  Had BK for lunch, and then shopped a while at Plaza before heading to Rendevous Hotel to meet Joyce, Esther, Hairul and Mark for high tea.  The half-price Women's Weekly specials are making me terribly fat.

  • 8:36 am
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