GEWR runners eagerly listening to Hivelocity Founder, Adrian Mok’s instructions.
At the Singapore Sports Hub, Singapore’s newest and largest sporting facility, the atmosphere was vibrant and full of activity last Saturday.
It was a beautiful morning too. The sky was crisp and clear and there wasn’t a single sign of rain.
First fringe activity for the Great Eastern Women’s Run
Last Saturday, around 80 excited and eager ladies from all walks of life had gathered together at the Sports Hub to take part in the first fringe activity of the #RunToLiveGreat programme – a training run cum interval workout session – to prepare participants for this November’s Great Eastern Women’s Run (GEWR), to be organised by HiVelocity.
Running through the beautiful Sports Hub.
Tong Ming Ming was one of these ladies. Said the 23-year-old student, “The location at the Sports Hub was good, because it had just opened not long ago – and this was my first time coming here to exercise. So it was a very new environment for me and I really liked it.”
Putting the ladies through the paces
Adrian Mok, HiVelocity’s founder – together with a group of the GEWR pacers and a few assistants from sports electronics manufacturer, Polar – put the ladies through the paces during the workout session.
The workout was an exercise session that comprised of a myriad of interesting activities. These included easy running and hard sprinting, as well as exercises such as jumping jacks, high knee lifts and squats. These were all mixed in together to prevent the exercises session from becoming too boring for the first-time runners.
Yours truly (in orange) in action. (Credit: Great Eastern Women’s Run).
The Workout
The exercise session on Saturday had comprised of:
- 500m of easy walking/running to warm up
- Some light stretching exercises, starting with simple neck rotations, and then progressing to arm stretching and finally, leg stretching, ankle rotations and balancing on one leg.
- Another 500m of easy jogging/running
- About 5 to 10 minutes of exercises like jumping jacks, squats and jogging on the spot, followed.
- 1km of easy running
- A short, quick 50m sprint interval session (for the 5km and 10km runners), while the 21km runners did an additional 3km at their intended race pace
- 300m of hard effort running followed
- 2km easy running all the way back to the starting point
- About 7 to 8 types of static weights-bearing exercises using a 1kg weight, including bench press, squats and crunches were then done, to end off the session
Runners are working out and stretching their arm muscles.
There were short breaks of a few minutes in between segments of the workout to allow the runners to catch their breath.
The variety helped to break up the session
Explained GEWR Lead Pacer Chen Ming Ming, a 33-year-old legal counsellor, “The runners ran at their own pace, and included intervals and exercises in between the running. For people who don’t like monotony, this was a good way to mix things up and break up the session. As today was the first workout for many of the participants, it wasn’t supposed to be too hard for them.”
The lead pacer added, “As for the exercises themselves, they are very good for runners. The high knee lifts, for example, are good to put a spring in your legs and help you to run faster.”
Complimentary bottles of water for everyone, thanks to Tupperware.
Positive Feedback From Participants
And most of the participants liked the activity. Said Lim Ee Ling, a 37-year-old air force officer, “I thought that the programme was very well organised, in terms of gathering everyone together and getting us to interact with one another. Overall, it was a really good experience for me.”
Added 23-year-old auditor, Tong Qin Qin, “It did not feel like a workout at all, with all of us joining in together. I’m not sure if it’s because of obligation, but I do it because everyone else is doing so, and that actually motivated me to try out and learn more new things.”
Tong also admitted to previously reading online about the exercises that she had just done, but confessed that she could never motivate herself to try them out alone, before. But on Saturday, with so many other ladies, she had managed to do these – and even admitted that the exercises were actually fun.
Wow! The session is over already? How time flies!
Janet Yap, a 43-year-old trained nurse also had a fun and wonderful morning. She said, “It was just awesome being here this morning, with the rest of the other ladies. I really enjoyed every bit of the workout, from the warming up to the slow jog and talking to the other people.”
And Yap, who is taking part in the 5km category at GEWR, definitely learnt a lot from the workout session too. She said, “The GEWR race will be my first run ever, so everything we did this morning was very new to me. But now, I will definitely incorporate what I learnt today into my own workouts to train for the GEWR race.”
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