The Prelude

WHY ANGELS?

And so when we signed up for this AAC race, the name once again came up & refused to go away. I decided to sign ourselves up as “Angels”. Initially Ling was a little embarrassed about it but I explained that I see ourselves more like “Angelic (Bimbotic) 3 Gals” rather than “Charlie’s Angels” so we decided to go for it. It turned out we were rather embarrassed about the whole name after all and whenever we hear it being called out loud by the organizers, we would cringed in embarrassment.

Anyways, enough about the embarrassing name. To start training for this race, I had to once again unleashed my ‘Mother Hen’ whip and literally forced us to have some team training. As Ling had not run like for months, I decided to make our first training a running event. The idea was to run from my office in Tanjong Pagar to the SPE swimming pool in Bukit Timah. And so, on that fateful evening, Ling changed into her running shoes and met me at Tanjong Pagar. But before she could reach my office, she called me to tell me that her running shoes were disintegrating as she walked (that’s how long she had not run) and finally gave up on her and she was forced to sit down because it became rather embarrassing to walk with the bottom of the shoes flapping under her. I went to her aid and bought her some tape to put her shoes back in action. So imagine, 2 silly gals, right in the middle of the Tanjong Pagar working crowd, using those construction tape to go round and round her shoes and everyone was staring at us and the only thing we could do is to laugh as much as we can in order to give the impression that we are doing this for fun. And the final straw came when we were unable to cut the tape and thus I had to bite the tape off Ling’s shoes (and she’s wearing those shoes) right in front of everyone. I thought I was going to die from embarrassment. Anyway, the tape worked pretty well as we managed to survive the run to Bukit Timah though both her shoes looked like they had been “Saran-wrapped” and she’s squeaking with every step that she takes.  We made it to the pool and went for a swim and after that, her shoes totally gave way beyond repair and she had to return home in my slippers instead.

The second training was done at Bukit Timah since we got ‘news‘ that the race is going to be in the West. And Ken, who was made the ‘reserve’ for our team though he refused to wear a skirt, joined us in our training. Since all of us are mountain bikers, I just made everyone bike without cleats, doing just one lap around Bukit Timah as Rina wasn’t too familiar with the terrain. Boy, was it difficult to be cleatless after being dependant on it for some many years! We were constantly slipping off our pedals and it was quite hilarious that we were not even able to make it up some pretty easy slopes because of the lack of cleats. And to get some ‘brick’ training in, we locked up our bikes at the visitor’s centre, flirted with the security guards to take care of our Precious and off we go running up and down Bukit Timah Hill. The run was quite painful as the elevation was pretty bad but it was good training for us all.

The next scramble for training was for our ropes skills. As we later learnt that we need to pass some ropes skills test, we decided to do a refresher and checked ourselves in an indoor climbing gym just to refresh ourselves on all the carabiners and Figure of 8 stuff. And of course, since we were there, we decided to have some rock climbing fun as well. After our arms can hold us no more, we went for a long run to Sentosa and back and it was nice since the air was cool and it was night. And the yummy ‘Zui Kuih’ at Tiong Bahru market after that certainly tasted a lot better that day!

Our last training, supposedly our most intensive one, was to bike one round around the Bukit Timah loop since Rina still had reservations negotiating some of the downhills. She did a much better job this time round as she didn’t need to come down to push down any of the downhills and we all also did a much better job climbing those hills without cleats this time round. Then we took Ken’s car to MacRitchie to do the 10km off-road trail.

With a rather full camelbak on our backs, we slowly ran the 10km trail. I found it really difficult at the beginning as I wasn’t used to running with a backpack on my back and after about 5km, I came down with a really sharp pain on my lower back and Ken kindly and chivalrously offered to take the load off my back though I could see that he’s suffering as well. But thanks to him, I was at least able to finish the rest of the run though Ling came down with knee problems at the last km of the trail. With me having back problems and both Rina & Ling having knee problems, we have a good mind to change our names from “Angels” to “Aunties” which will be more apt. However, I have to admit that the trail was really lovely and one of the awesome trails that I’ve run on as the weather was really nice (slight drizzle). 

And that pretty much sums up our training program for this race. I know it’s rather embarrassing and quite ill-prepared but since all of us are busy bees, caught up with the million and one other things that we do in our lives, this is probably as much as I can whip out of everyone. But well, like what we always say, we’ll see how it goes and just go along lah!