Last Saturday evening, the Sundown With Love ambassadors and representatives from the charity organisations that they are raising funds for, were introduced to participants – at a recent lead up training run for the OSIM Sundown Marathon.

The OSIM Sundown Marathon this year, takes place on 19 May at the F1 Pit Building. The race village will open from 6pm and it is open to the public.

Photo credit to OSIM Sundown Marathon.

Started in 2013, the Sundown With Love initiative has struck a chord with the running community, such that three more Ambassadors have recently joined the 2018 campaign.

Said Adrian Mok, 43, the Founder of HiVelocity Events, the organisers of the Sundown Marathon, “The Sundown With Love initiative stemmed from the idea of doing specific fundraising for certain organisations. Along the way, we realised though, that there were so many more runners who run for a cause. So we decided to be the platform for runners to advertise about their cause – we did not want to limit where the funds go to.”

He added, “‘Instead, our job is to help runners promote their cause so they can maximise the impact of the fundraising. The charities are chosen by the runners depending on what is close to their hearts.”

To date, more than $42,000 for a diverse range of charities have been raised through the campaign.

Photo credit to OSIM Sundown Marathon.

This year, the Sundown With Love ambassadors , who are leading the fundraising campaign, are Sng Boon Heng, Marie Choo, Ng Han Bin, Kennedy Yap, Yvonne Siew, Henry Setiono, July Rey, James Boon, Desmond Ang and Tay Cheng Hong.

All of the ambassadors are fit and active individuals; Ng Han Bin is a basketball player with the Singapore Slingers and many of the others are experienced marathoners.

They are raising funds for a few different organisations including Singapore Cancer Society, Food From The Heart, Alzheimer’s Disease Organisation, Oasis Second Chance Animal Shelter and Boys’ Town.

Said July, 35, on why she is compelled to raise funds, “Raising funds for the Singapore Cancer Society is a great opportunity to share my passion and love for running. I have been given a chance to run for a meaningful reason: To give back to the community and share my story as an inspiration for leading an active lifestyle.”

Fellow ambassador Kennedy is raising funds for Alzheimer’s Disease organisation, compelled by a personal experience with the disease.

Photo credit to OSIM Sundown Marathon.

Said Kennedy, 21, a Singapore Polytechnic student, “My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and she passed on last September, so I have a personal experience It is a sad disease because over time, my grandmother could not recognise us, didn’t know our names or what she liked and couldn’t even talk. It’s a very painful disease and not widely talked about. More should be done to ensure those with the disease can have a higher quality of life.”

The charity outreach campaign hopes to raise awareness for some of the most pressing health and social issues facing today’s society. The Sundown With Love Ambassadors have started to raise funds through Giving.Sg and will complete either a Half or a Full Marathon come race day.

And the charities themselves are grateful to be given the chance to work with Sundown With Love too. Said Tok Shao Hsien, from the Singapore Cancer Society, “I think it is reassuring to see that private races are doing good at the same time that they are organising runs. We are also grateful to OSIM Sundown Marathon for adopting us as on of the beneficiaries.”

Continued Tok, “It’s so encouraging to see more ambassadors joining the get against cancer. The funds raised will be dedicated to the programmes and services for the beneficiaries.”

Besides launching the Sundown With Love charity campaign for 2018, Mok also shared more about what runners can expect at Sundown Marathon 2018, which is going to go back to the basics.

Said Mok, “We are going back to make sure that everything runs smoothly so we have no new innovations for this year.”

He added, “We learnt our lesson from last year; our mistakes were due to a combination of a few things. We wanted to print the bib out on the spot and that did not work well. On hindsight, we had not tested the system and the whole outdoor environment, when it rained, took a toll on the whole system too. So we will be moving this indoors and we hope everything will fall into place this year.”

Mok also shared that the race route will be similar to the 2016 edition of Sundown Marathon. He said, “Last year, we did the route in the reverse direction. Every year we try and test out different ways of doing things, but this year will be a cumulation of our best practises, of what had worked the best for us in the past.”

However Mok does not see OSIM Sundown Marathon as ever returning back to the old Changi route from the early days. He said, “There has been a lot of changes to the Sundown Marathon since the Changi days. Changi is too far away for many runners and having personally seen the evolution of Sundown Marathon from Changi to the city, I think that the city is the way to go.”

He continued, “Another reason why we picked the city is because we have a lot of overseas runners so we want to represent the best of Singapore, which is the city skyline. Though a lot of races do this route, what sets us apart is that it is at night. When you run through the city in the middle of the night, the sensation is really different. I created Sundown because when I was training for an ultra, a lot of my runs were done through the night and the sensation is so different.”

However for runners who are unused to the night time humidity, Mok strongly advises runners to do their training at nights.

Said Mok, “Do not underestimate the night. It can be quite humid, so pacing yourself is important. And doing runs at night is good too – that is why we have moved our lead up runs to the evenings so that runners can practise at night.”

Last Saturday’s lead up run, which has featured distances of 14km for the Half Marathon runners and 27km for the Full Marathon runners, was conducted at an evening time slot of 6pm. Previous years had featured the lead up runs in the mornings. This change had been made to tie in more with the flag off times for Sundown Marathon, whilst still keeping the time slot reasonable and accessible.

Explained Mok, “The lead up training is important – a lot of people aspire to run the marathon. Up to half marathon, you can survive without training, but not for a full. I would rather people to put in the effort to train for the marathon by progressively increasing their distance so that the marathon will become a challenge for them, rather than being their first and last one ever.”

He added, “So in that way, the lead up runs make it more accessible for less experienced or beginner runners to prepare themselves in the right way – we also have aid stations and medics to take care of runner safety so that they do not need to worry about these.”