This was my second Saturday race (the first being adidas King of the Road) and the first without an official race singlet/shirt.  I was really surprised by the huge turnout of this race.  This simply proves that amount of freebies (or lack of) deter runners from joining a race.  Being a fundraiser it was justified but souvenir shirts and singlets were available too in case you want one.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab any as they ran out of small-sized shirt by the time we got to their stalls, and the small-sized singlet (which I really think looks very cool!) was a bit too loose for me.

The starting line was in front of Every Nation building which was opened early to accommodate the needs of runners for restrooms.  It was a very nice change: there’s soap and water, “real” toilets, and no queues!  It’s something that we runners don’t often enjoy and the restrooms were really clean and nice (it was actually better than most malls’ since the building was quite new).

I actually didn’t notice during registration that there was a fun run for kids and during the event there were a lot of them!  You can’t really run fast from the starting line because you may step on them!  There were also quite a few celebrities who joined the race.  All I can say is that it was really fun, it looked much like a family day out at the park: those wearing running outfits actually looked out of place!

I only ran 5K for this one in preparation for Unicef’s Walk on the Child’s Side the following day, where I’d be running 10K (got to save strength).  The route was nice, quite flat but there was a part that’s full of greens.  10K was 2-laps of the course so we didn’t miss much: it was more for fun for my running buddies.  We, coincidentally, were all wearing the singlet from adidas KOTR so in a sense we were wearing a “uniform.”

The race was very organized, I didn’t notice what time we started but I think it was on time.  Water supply was more than adequate (I guess it’s for the kids) and very generous (they don’t give you a cup or glass of water—they give you a whole bottle of water!).  On one of the last curves near the finish line there was this girl cheering on the runners, shouting on a megaphone: “come on, you can do it!” and “you can do better than that!” which I think was very nice and cute.  And there’s even more supply of liquids (sports drink and water) upon crossing the finish line, and certificates.  This was one of those “feel good” runs although it was quite difficult to take seriously (and set new PRs) with the family-day-out mood and all, unless you really want to of course.  Personally I threw my goal of setting a new 5K PR with this race the moment it got started.  I could probably say that this was the first real “fun run” I joined, and it was indeed fun.