Sundown Marathon

Written by Running Wombat
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Photos are extracted from Adidas Sundown Marathon, Singapore website

Singapore’s inaugural night race on 31 May 2008 offered both ultramarathon and marathon categories. The race started at 8.30pm for the ultramarathon and 12 midnight for the full marathon.

The race attracted more than 4,800 runners from around the Asian region despite the “unearthly” starting time at midnight. The full marathon runners would run 1 loop of the course whilst the ultramarathoners would complete 2 loops of the course.

With a comprehensive website and superb organization, the race (full marathon) went off with a bang on the dot at midnight starting from Changi. Runners would run down Changi Coastal Road that lead to East Coast Park for some 22 km of flat terrain running.
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Running near to Changi airport with planes that were taking off from the runway certainly woke many runners up with the roar of the engines. East Coast Park brought many runners relief that they were not the only “crazy” people up in the middle of the night as runners were cheered on by campers and night dwellers with multi coloured lights strung along the way. As promised, this stretch was flat and fast.

The next half of the marathon would be challenging to the runner. Not only were the runners running along quiet housing section with different terrains but runners would also be battling the natural urge of sleepiness at this time of the night (around 2 am), and the lack of sight in many areas due to poor lighting.
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Suburbs of Singapore are now connected by the “Park Connector Network” where there is now a network of linear open spaces that link up major parks and nature sites i.e. lanes are specially made for runners/cyclists/skateborders/walkers, etc. to connect from one suburb/park to the other. This will mean crossing on special constructed connectors and overhead bridges over highways in order to link one suburb/park to another. This also means that runners were running up and down several of these connectors/overhead bridges.

Bemused residents nonetheless cheered and applauded (albeit quietly) the runners on despite it being way past midnight. Drinks were dished out in the dark by helpful volunteers who were all outfitted with florescent tubes as were runners for safety purposes.

This was an interesting run: night running has its advantages - the obvious one being the heat factor that was not present but also has its limitations as there was no scenery to be admired and posed some dangers as sight was severely limited in many parts of the course.
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This is not a fast course as evidenced by the winning times for the marathon men (2 hours 40 mins) and women (3 hours 13 mins) but if you cannot sleep and are thinking of what to do on a Saturday night then this is the race for you!!

Reported by the Running Wombat (She ran in the full marathon category)

Posted by KC