Fatherhood Reflections LXV - Barca Escola

Fills me with so much pride seeing my son play football.

The Barcelona school in Singapore is bloody expensive, but IMHO quite worth it.

He's reached that level where I can see he's not going to make it as a footballer, his size makes him a suitable defender and not much more, but he has enough skill and perseverance to do enough for his age group.

So proud.

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Singapore December 2019

So this was the very first time U2 ever came to Singapore.

Because the band is so old, and their songs are so evergreen, me and a few hardcore U2-fan friends (Lasse and Eugene) decided to shell out $1,280 per ticket for the ultra ultra ultra VIP tickets. This included a pre-concert party dining experience with free-flow everything, and VIP seats.

All I can say is that I don't think I will ever pay this much ever again for a concert ticket.

Was the concert worth going?

Hell yes. U2 live was so special and so awesome to watch. Even songs that I didn't know was so memorable to marvel at, especially the giant elongated stage screen. Singing their anthems live was also an awesome experience.

Was the ultra VIP tickets worth it?

No. Nuff said. Never again. We could have had a similar experience for less cash outlay.

Nonetheless this was one concert to remember, especially the end when Bono paid tribute to Singapore.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2019 - 41km to Finish

Finally it was a detour to a slight bit of Nicoll Highway, and then the home stretch.

Had to jog past the Singapore Flyer and towards the Marina Bay Floating Platform.

It was here that the end point greet us.

Elated.

I managed to turn in a better timing even though I walked more.

I might run again next year.

Haha.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2019 - 31km to 40km

This leg was better than the last one.

You got to see the leg back to the Finish point.

We ran past the Marina Bay golf Course, past Gardens By The Bay East, across the Marina Barrage, past the GBTB domes, and onwards to Benjamin Sheares bridge, all the way up, and down the Rochor slope.

Tough, but very scenic and quite motivational like you were in the home stretch, so come on let's suck it up a little bit more.

The toughest part was simply climbing Benjamin Sheares. I saw many runners cramp up here.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2019 - 21km to 30km

This was the Gardens By The Bay route heading towards East Coast Parkway and back.

I call it the twilight zone.

It is the leg that no one wants to do, no one remembers much either, and people start dropping out like flies.

This leg truly separated the men from the boys, whether you walked it, jogged it or ran it, if you didn't drop out this leg, your chances of completion of the full marathon was probably 70-80%.

It is so bad you can see I only have milestone pictures.

Purely mental.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2019 - 11km to 20km

This next stretch was where the tiredness started getting to me.

I didn't train well enough for this marathon this year. I;m not even sure I trained properly at all. In fact I think I only clocked one practice run of more than two hours of jogging in the two months I began training by trying to run twice a week.

With that said, I began walking from around the 16km mark. This made me a tad sad.

I also got to see the infamous Bus of Shame, which was a big motivator to NOT SLOW DOWN.

Grabbed some gel for dinner as well, but they tasted like crap. Who makes cappuccino-flavoured running gels anyway?!

The back half of this leg was filled with a lot of run walk run walk.

Also the 19km mark was where the half-marathoners dropped off to another route which was super demoralizing for us marathoners. Kept asking myself why I didn't do the half-marathon instead.

Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2019 - Start to 10km

Finally catching up with my SCSM 2019 blogging.

Wanted to give a blow by blow, km by km account of the whole marathon, but I'm running out of time to log as much backlog into my blog.

So mainly posting pictures of all the km milestones that I successfully took this year.

Quick recap, I signed up for this year's marathon even though I said that I'll never do it ever again last year. It was because of the National Day promotion in August that made it so tantalizingly cheap to join at $54.

This year's marathon was super well organized and I only have positive things to say about it as a runner.

Massively crowded, upwards of 55,000 participants this year.

Flag off was at 6pm, which was 6.30pm for me by the time it was my pen's turn to flag off.

First 10km was quite a breeze.

Got to run around the city, and then towards Keppel and the West Coast Highway.

Got to see the sun set as well which was nice as it kept things much cooler than last year.