Salomon X-Trail Run 2008

(Before & After the race)

(Running Route)

Today, KT and I took part in the 1st ever Salomon X-Trail Run held at Tampines Mountain Biking Trail. This run consists of running 10km of sand, gravel and grass and it’s the first of its kind in Singapore. It is also my 1st time visiting the mountain bike trail at Tampines. Haha

I woke up at 5+am to catch the 1 hour journey MRT train journey from my home to Tampines. Really tiring… After meeting KT at Tampines, we took a short walk to the event venue.

The head start and the atmosphere was great as it was an unusual run in the wild. Scenery was also quite pleasing at the beginning also. However after running some distance, we have to run into the forest and the route was very narrow and there is only 1 lane in the forest route, causing it to jam up the rest of the runners behind... The worst thing came next as we have to avoid many obstacles like mud pool, uneven ground and usual turning of corner. I think all the runners got their running shoes dirty due to the mud pool…

Then at 1 point, 1 marshal told us to run in a single file in the forest route also… haha. This is a competitive event leh how to keep running in single file, although I know safety comes first.

After clearing the forest and sand gravel route, we ran up the hill and also running many twists and turns, humps and even several S-curves… It was really frustrating running so many S-curve and it was like no ending one. Take a look at the enlarge view of the S-Curves.

Finally, we got to the finishing line after clearing all the obstacles and all our running shoes are very muddy…. Need to bring home to wash and clean the shoes... sianz…

Overall, the run was a unique one, but there are really many cons such as muddy ground, too many S-curves, unusual route into the forest with a single running lane, making the evacuation process very difficult should someone got injure. The organizer should know more in depth into the planning if they intend to organize the run again next year.

After the run, I travelled down to Suntec to meet up with my NTU friends whom took part the Big Walk instead on the same day. We had lunch together after their walk. Too bad I cannot join them for the Big Walk since the 2 events clashed on the same day… haha

(The Stupid S-curve route...)