Adidas King of the Road Singapore Race Review 2012

Last Sunday 28 Oct, I took part in the adidas King of the Road, with the final leg in Singapore. The race tag is kind of refreshing with the "is all in" behind my name. KOTR is a running championship held across Southeast Asia, held in five countries across the region and organised in city areas - Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. The race distance is 16.8km.

On the Race 

KOTR is a very well organised race, adidas has very good experiences in running such big events, however i had a few points to make and hope they can change and improve on.

The race starts at 7:15 am, it is kind of late in my opinion, with the morning sun at around 8 plus am, it is going to be quite tough, it will be better if they can bring the time forward by 30 mins to 1 hr. We had to walk around 1km to the start line, well i have no complaints of that, just treat that 1km as a warm-up, plus runners can chit-chat with friends. At the start line there was a water point!! Well this is really good, I'm surprised by this welcoming sight, this is the first time i saw a water point right before the start line, runners can take a quick slip before the run. Do keep up with this!

The route itself is challenging with plenty of uphill, with 3 timing check points. adidas can look into the road block itself and make sure it is secure. At the 14km mark, 2 ladies (well i'm polite to call them ladies, kind of mid-age aunties), just cut across in front of me. They cheated!! from 6-7km and jump to 14km! Because there isn't any proper road block, it will never happen in Standard Chartered race. They are not runners, cheating themselves and the rest of runners who put in the effort. This is a disgrace! For participants who signed up for any race, please respect the distance and the route. Else don't sign up for the run in the 1st place.

Along the route, the water-points are sufficient. At around the 15km mark, 2-3 water point volunteers even gave out water by crossing to the other side of the road (when runners are really suffering in the heat), they show sometime beyond their duty. Of all my years of running, this is the 1st time i saw this, i salute the volunteers for being so helpful and kind. This make the race stand up, and they are doing it with a difference. Keep up the good work!

adidas should had runpix for this race, so runners can review their race! Just showing the timing at the 3 check point is not enough. I finished in Rank 579, i doubt i'm that fast, how accurate is this, my timing is not fantastic, my friend who is 8 mins faster than me, was in 554. As runners we would like to know the total number of runners on the field. Before the race, the DJ announced that there are 12,000 runners. Well it don't look that big, i would put it at less than 10k runners. It will be unknown, how many runners started, and how many finished the race.

Overall race experience, i would give a score of 8/10. Good work! 

Just start the race 30 mins earlier, DJ speech can improve at the start of the race, play some nicer music and have runpix, then it will be 9/10!

the blue running singlet and the finisher medal 

I had took part in a few races after last year Standard Chartered Marathon 2011, it had been quite sometime and it seems that I had forgot about this blog. Ran in the Sundown Half Marathon 2012 and the Army Half Marathon 2012, the next coming race with be a half marathon for Standard Chartered in Dec.