Army Half Marathon 2007

Today, 26 August 2007, I completed my Army half Marathon 21km race for 3 consecutive years. It can be considered an achievement for me bah. This year, I took part the race with 1 of my army friends, KY whom took part his first 21km race last year.

Same as usual, the competitive 21km race started as early as 5.30am at the Esplanade Bridge. However this year’s 21km race was slightly special because after running a short distance past the Collyer Quay Road of the CBD area, we turned right towards Cross Street and South Bridge Road of Chinatown (saw the佛牙寺again) before turning back again back to Maxwell road towards the ECP and finally past the Sheares Bridge. Then towards East Cost Park, Nicoll Highway and running back to NDP floating platform.

In addition, I only found 1 interesting runner along the race route near the Sheares Bridge this year. Haha. This time round, I saw a female runner wearing the army No.4 attire with the army combat HELMET on her head. That is not all, she even tied a silver balloon with her and even camouflaged her face with camouflaging cream!!! Very Garang lady indeed. I felt that the uniform is too hot and helmet too heavy for such a long distance race. Why torture herself!? I really don’t know what she was trying to show or tell people, since army guys can’t even take it for wearing the helmet for such a long period of time. There is no air-con inside the helmet leh. Ha.

1 more special arrangement for this year, was that the ending point was at the NDP floating platform instead of the usual Padang. So it was quite refreshing too. We finished the 21km race with an estimated timing of around 2hr 30min. Actually this was not my fastest timing, but because I tried to accompany my army friend throughout the whole race so the timing was still okay (faster than our last year’s timing of 2hr 45min). haha.

However, 1 frustrating thing happened later on that made our mood down. The stupid and lousy layout and arrangement of the bag collection point was very bad, causing a very bad long queue (worst than the Hello Kiddy queue and ToTo queue)…  We actually finished the race around 8am, did some cool down and try to get our personal bag from the bag deposit area at 8.40am, but we saw a very long and slow moving queue, so we don’t want to waste time queuing up, that’s why we went up the grandstand to rest first. At 9.15am, we went down again, the queue was still very very long…. Then, we came back again at 10am and the queue was slightly shorter, and finally we received our bag at only 10.45am… Very disappointed with the organizer…. Never organize and plan properly one… Wasted my time for a chance to take some good photos…

It was actually a great day for me, if this disappointing bag collection service have not happened which has wasted many people’s time. After I returned home, I heard from the evening news saying that a 25yr old army personnel died after completed his 21km in around 1hr 30min with his heart beat stop pumping even though medical treatment was provided for him… Sad to hear that. 


Exclusive
More on the lousy bag collection queue for 21km runners:

After I analyzed the situation, I came out with a few conditions that have caused such a long queue. Refer to the analysis diagram below that I have drawn. Too bad, my digital camera was inside my bag at that bag, if not I would have taken photos of the stupid long and messy queue. I have even given a poor feedback form on their bag deposit/collection service. Very badly organized.

Conditions that led to the long queue:

1) The bag collection counter actually removed the “number tag range” lane that caused confusion and messy queue. (The number tag range was there during the bag deposit process)

2) Four redundant booths (not much people visit also) were situated just in front of the bag collection counter that blocked the view of the bag collection counter from the runners.

3) With the “help” of the four redundant booths, the few lanes of the queue were reduced into 1 very very long Happy Kiddy/ToTo “snake” queue.

4) Another redundant partition inside the bag deposit counter caused a slow process of the movement of the bags out of the counter, since the only entrance for the army personnel to retrieve the bags was from the side of the corner.

5) Another very redundant category of 12km competitive race was added this year with bag deposit service some more. Causing a slow process for the bag collection. This competitive category should not be added at all in the first place. What for??

6) Since the no. of people taking part in 12km competitive race was lower, hence when the bag collection queue at the 12km competitive race lane was cleared, the other 21km competitive race lane was still crowded with runners waiting to collect their bags. The army personnel at the 12km competitive race lane was slagging and did not offer help to the 21km lane side, until at a later stage, when someone voiced out the problem to them…