Winners of Income Eco Run 2017

The Income Eco Run is South East Asia’s premier eco run that champions environmental conservation and aims to raise awareness for runners to play their part in supporting this meaningful cause.

Click here to view the Income Eco Run 2017 photos!

Income Eco Run is South East Asia’s premiere eco run.

The race consists of 21.1km and 10km competitive categories, as well as an 800m Kids Dash for the young runners.

33 year old Kenyan James Barmasai wins the Men’s Open 21.1km

Coming in first in the Men’s Open 21.1km category was 33 year old Kenyan athlete James Kibtum Barmasai, who had completed the race in 1hour 7minutes and 21seconds. Said James, “I am very happy for my win today. I expected to win because I trained very well for it. The weather was a bit humid though and that slowed me down; my personal best time is 62minutes for the Half Marathon.”

James Barmasai wins the 21.1km Men’s Open.

Monica Watetu, also from Kenya, wins the 21.1km Women’s Open

Winning the Women’s Open 21.1km category had been another Kenyan, Monica Watetu, aged 27. She said, “I was proud to win. This is my second time running here and I did not expect to win.”

Monica Watetu wins the 21.1km Women’s Open.

Their Winning Strategies

What were the strategies of the two Kenyan athletes?

James stressed that it is very important to run your own race. He said, “I run my own race and do not care about other people. I realised that I could win after about 10km when I didn’t see anyone following me.”

These are your top three winners for the 21.1km Men’s Open.

For Monica, it had been to push through her pain no matter what. She said “I pushed through the pain today and felt that I had the win after 15km of running. Then I pushed harder and went off by myself. Some Kenyans who were stronger than me tried to catch me, but I had managed to hold them off this time.”

She added “The humidity here was a challenge though and there were many slopes. There aren’t any slopes in Kenya where I usually do my training.”

They run well over 100km a week

As professional athletes, for training, both Monica and James run well over 100km per week.

Said Monica, “Every day I do a morning run of 15km and then in the evening, I do 10 exercises, followed by a 5km run. I train six days per week, covering about 150km.”

Monica, in the centre, trains six days a week.

James on the other hand, covers about 180km weekly. He said, “I run every morning for about 1hour and 20minutes and then I do another evening run of about 50minutes to 1hour. I run six days a week. Sundays are my rest day. Thursdays are my long runs; I did 32km this week and next week I will be running 40km. I cover about 180km total in a week.”

Mok Ying Ren and Jasmine Goh are the fastest Singaporeans

Emerging as the fastest Singaporeans were Jasmine Goh, 38, in the Women’s race, and Mok Ying Ren, 28, in the Men’s race. Mok had clocked a time of 1hour 16minutes and 56seconds.

Mok had been happy with his first place in the 21.1km local category, as he had just started training again after having taken a break.

Mok Ying Ren is the fastest male Singaporean to complete the 21.1km.

As well, Jasmine had also placed third overall in the Women’s Open category, finishing her run in 1hour 28minutes. So she had picked up two trophies from her run. Jasmine has indeed come a long way since she had started running in 2011.