Just Go On The Grass!

I took part in the Asia Masters 2010 Road Race this morning. The race was held in conjunction with the 16th Asia Masters Athletics Championships that started on the 6th of December until today.

For those of you, like myself, who don't know or have never heard of this Asia Masters thingy before, I did some digging and found out that the Asia Master Athletics event is to keep the master athletics, from 24 Asian countries which is affiliated with Asian Master Athletics (AMA), fit and healthy and a reunion of old friends. It's sort of a gathering of former athletes I would think.

Wifey was the one who found out about this race and both of us being race junkies couldn't resist taking part. Besides running is one of the best fat burner's around :D The race was bitter sweet though. While it was fun and daunting to be running with real athletes from various Asian countries, though mostly with Indian contestants, I must say the turnout was rather disappointing.

The very sparse turnout ...

Both wifey and me are more use to races with loads of participants and this one was pretty low by our count. Then there was this horrible, condescending and extremely annoying official that probably wanted to be a DJ in her youth or something. From the moment she, at first I thought it was a he, got her hands on the microphone she never stopped being a nuisance and started treating everyone like dumb-ass children. 

'Just go on the grass!', she kept on blaring

'You must have two numbers, front and back' (this was repeated 1 million times)

'You wait until I call you' she barked

Those were some of the things she kept on saying over and over and over again that it was getting on my nerves. Trust me, my explanation of her annoying DJ wannabe attitude doesn't do justice to her. If I wasn't afraid of being arrested I would have go up to her and slapped her ... LOL!

But then, a race is still a race. Both wifey and me took part in the 10K event and it was an enjoyable and challenging race overall. A couple of long hilly stretches were littered along the route which I thoroughly enjoying attacking. It was a good thing we recced the route a few days earlier so we knew what to expect and how to pace ourselves.

At the end of the day, both of us won a pretty nice finishers medal and I was so proud of wifey cos it was her first medal and she only started running for just 8 months, which is a great achievement for someone who used to hate running :D

Our finishers medal :D

Overall it was a pretty decent race with the exception of that annoying 'DJ wannabe' official that just wouldn't shut up. There were some pretty colorful characters like this Auntie in what I dubbed as the coolest running gear for the event :D

Coolest Running Gear Award :D

The race didn't go without its drama though. I 'saved' this guy from almost getting run over by a car when he fell flat on a downhill stretch into the path of an oncoming car. How the car got in the way of the race route I have no idea. Then I witness this very elderly (probably a former athlete) fall flat and faint right at the finish line, hopefully he's okay now and also noticed some contestants coming through the finish line covered in blood. I presume probably from a fall, the downhill stretches were pretty steep as well so a few may have tripped or something.

This would be our final race for the year. We already have our eyes set on a few races at the beginning of next year which is just a few weeks away. Gosh, where did the time go? It was only yesterday that it was just January and now we're almost at the end of December already. Right now, I'm looking forward to my long Christmas break :D
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