I journey thousands of miles to Singapore to compete in the Singapore Bay Run. And it is worth the 7-hour flight. I win hard cash - 200 Singapore dollars (along with a Timex triathlon watch and other random prizes). The big race payday almost covers the entire cost of my trip (which is not difficult since I used 20,000 award miles and teammate Fabrizio negotiates an amazing deal for us to cram a bunch of guys into the ultra-luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel).
My half-marathon time is a rather lame sounding 1:26:50. But it felt almost as fast as the 1:19 I ran in February.
The Bay Run is the biggest running event in Singapore with over 70,000 participants and it seemed like most of them were ahead of me at the 1k mark. I went out in a relaxed 4:10 pace and then picked my pace up slightly so I passed hundreds and hundreds of fellow runners through 20k.
Needless to say it was terribly hot and humid in Singapore, even at the 5:30am starting time - I was told that the humidity would
add 5-minutes to my half-marathon time. But even though the heat slowed me down, running in the pre-dawn darkness was much, much easier than the mid-day sunshine of the half-ironman events I have done.
My time was good for third place in the veterans division far behind the veteran winner from Thailand (not to mention the overall winner from Kenya). But I was happy to take the money. I am tempted to move to South-East Asia and live off race earnings.
