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Early Sunday morning I was at the F1 Pit Building for the TIMEX TRI-FACTOR Run 2011. I was registered for the 21km run, which was flagged off at 6am.

The race course was not as flat as the Sundown Half Marathon, it was a tough course with several up slopes, and many twist and turns along the route.

To make matter worse, the 21km route was poorly marked (I only saw one distance marker), and some runners missed a turn and ran extra distances before realizing their mistake! I felt sorry for them, especially those going all out to better their PBs, their race was ruined by confusion of the route.

I finished the 21km run in 1 hr 46 mins (gun time) and here’s me in my finisher’s pose:

Here’s a closer look at the finisher medal

Recently I went on a business trip to India, and it being my first trip to this vast country, what set a lasting impression would definitely be the “there is method in the chaos” traffic conditions with its non-stop honking by the seemingly thousands of vehicles competing for positions on the road.

Besides encountering some close calls on the road, I had a mini “Indiana Jones” moment when the domestic flight which I took from Bangalore to Chennai was a ATR twin-engine turbopro aircraft! The chances of taking a propeller driven aircraft in civilian air travel in my home country, Singapore is close to zero. What’s more, I got a window seat next to the big fan, from which the video was filmed! Is that cool or what?

School’s out and the holidays are in! It’s time for the family to take a break and we took this mid-year school break to go Sunway Lagoon for a short family vacation.

The Sunway Lagoon Theme Park is a famous theme park located at the Petaling Jaya area of Kuala Lumpur including various interesting water rides. There is also two hotels located at this place for the convenience of tourists who want to enjoy this place, they are namely Sunway Resort & Spa and Pyramid Tower Hotel. For this trip, we were booked into the Pyramid Tower Hotel.

There is also a huge shopping centre next to the theme park called Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall. It is so huge that there is even an ice-skating ring in one of the section of the shopping mall.

But the highlight of the trip and the main attraction must be the Sunway Lagoon theme park. This 80 acres theme park consists of 5 different themed parks in 1 amazing destination. We had tickets to three of the parks – Water Park, Amusement Park and Wildlife Park.

There are over 30 different wet and dry rides in the Water park and Amusement Park. Here are some photos:

This theme park housed one of the world’s largest man-made surf beach as well as the world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge. Walking on the 428m suspension bridge enables you to see the entire park, offers a breathtaking view of the whole Lagoon from a dizzying heigh , but it also made my legs very wobbly!

The Sunway Surf Beach is a man-made beach made out of over 6,000 tonnes of sand. On top of that, there are more than 146 palm trees and Balinesehuts. You will be able to build sand castles, relax under the palm trees or have a game of beach volleyball with family and friends.

If you are not a beach person and don’t like sand getting into your swim wear, hop over to a smaller wave pool which also has a water playground and a lazy river.

We entered the theme park from the time it opened at 10am and practically enjoyed ourselves until closing hours at 6pm, we spent a good 8hours in the park, and we had the feeling that it was not enough! It was a very fun but tiring day for the whole family. Sunway Lagoon is excellent fun for both kids and adults, I can’t believe it took me so long to visit this amazing destination!

The official results of the Sundown Marathon 2011 was released, and here’s a look at my Runpix race result statistic.

My time of 1hr 42m, placed me in 42nd place in a field of 3500 men’s finishers. I did not manage to better my PB, but all in all, I can’t complain considering I took part in the Passion Run 25km race just a week earlier!

The certification of appreciation was also available for download and here’s my copy.

The fourth edition of the Sundown Marathon took place on the evening of 28 May. It was the first time I managed to sign up for this race, and it was a Sundown half marathon for me. This popular race event (race slots are sold out very fast) consisted of 10km, 21km and 42.195km categories. The full marathon started at 10pm, hence its tagline – “Sleep Can Wait Beat The Sunrise”.

The Sundown half marathon route was relatively straight forward with minimal turns, and the course was very flat. A major distance of the route was the same as last weekend’s PAssion Run 2011, thus it was fairly deja vu for me.

The flag-off time for half marathon was 8pm, but I arrived an hour and a half early to take in the sights of the runners’ village.

Although it was a night run, runners still had to endure a very humid run. I finished the race in 1hr 42mins. Here’s me posing with the finisher medal after the race.

Here’s a close up shot of the 21km Finisher medal