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Marina 21K is an inaugural race consisting of a half marathon and 10km run, in a packed calender of road races in Singapore. To set itself apart from the competition, Marina 21K’s race route took participants through the Bay East at Gardens by the Bay of Singapore, as well as passed through Tanjong Rhu and Kallang River Basin. Never too far from the water, this race was touted to open up participants’ senses by drawing them into the captivating scenery of the Singapore Marina Bay skyline.

The event site was rather inaccessible, somewhere in Tanjong Rhu area.

The scenery at the start point was indeed captivating, and was a welcome change to the usual start point set in the city center.

For the 1st km, runners were treated to the above scenery of the Marina Bay skyline, after that, my race experience started going downhill. If last week’s Tri-Factor Run was a disaster as a result of insufficient route marker and lack of race marshals at critical junction, leading to some runners eventually taking the wrong route, this Marina 21K was not any better.

The flag-off time of 10km run was a good 2hrs ahead of the 21km run, and this created a human-traffic jam at the clearly insufficient baggage deposit counters when 10km finisher and incoming 21km runners converged, which I believed many 21km runners were caught in the queue and were eventually late for the flag-off.

The route (sans the first km) was clearly not meant for a road race, much less a half marathon. In many stretches, runners had to run on grass patches, poorly-lit and uneven footpath and cutting across pedestrian path in the Tanjong Rhu residential area. The lack of distance-marker was really a sore point for me.

I’ve never been so critical of races I had taken part in, but the organization of Marina 21K bordered on being amateurish and my race-experience was at a low never felt before. With that said, I was glad to complete the race in 1 hr 48mins (gun time).