This was my dreaded day! I was originally going to start at at dawn to hit the first 16km of no verge, truck heavy road with daylight but woke up at 3AM knowing I was not going back to sleep. Caught a taxi back to Sungei Buloh, the taxi driver being fascinated about what I was up to.
Starting at 5AM with headtorch and red rear safety light, I had only gone a short distance when I ran into a pack of stray dogs. They were quite aggressive and some shouting and a slow, confident walk through got me out, but definitely made my heart pound harder. Luckily from then on till 16km was very pleasant with very light traffic so I could run on the road through Singapore's only rural area going at a solid 6:00/km. It was mostly dedicated cyclists coming through doing their 60-80km loops before work, all giving a slightly stunned Good Morning! at this barefoot runner. (Most of today was roads hardly run, I could find nothing on Strava HeatMaps and had use the cycling routes.)
I have always heard of the nice running paths at Nanyang Technical University so hit it at 16km. It was a 6km loop around some rolling hills. The grounds were OKish but the nice surprise was a blue soft jogging track laid out for 3km. Initially I was pretty tickled by it, but was happy to see the last of it and get back to solid, honest sidewalk. ( I found I was working harder on the track- maybe the sponginess was absorbing my energy?)
And that was the last of the day's nice running. I was going into uncharted running territory- Tuas, the industrial area of Singapore surrounding the world's 2nd largest port after Shanghai, plus big oil refineries and other heavy industry.
At 24k I filled up myself and my bottles with water carrying another 2 bottles in my hand. I did not know when I could fill up next because most workers ate in company canteens not available to me.
As I went deeper into Tuas, the pavements became rougher, sharp gravel everywhere, lots of chemical smells, extremely grimy and continuous trucks. Everything I would run away from!
Twice I had to make route adjustments as I ran out of space to run alongside the road. Eventually I reached 38km but still was not at the end of Tuas Point but I had run out of run-able verge and desire to keep this up.
I backtracked out until reaching a major road that I thought should have a sidewalk, but ended up doing 5km running through grass with with broken rubbble and culverts every 7 meters. My plan was to hit 50km or 7 hours and stop for the day. As I got closer to my target, I saw I was drawing near one of Singapore's trash incinerators. I was not stopping here!
But in the distance I saw the first bright colours in a long time. Yes, a service station! Perfect place to stop. I pulled in 49.8km and headed to the car wash. I asked the elderly gentlemen if I could use some water and pointed to my feet.
They burst out laughing! My feet were filthy from industrial grime! I think this is the most disgusting they have ever been.
I was so glad to this day was over! I was hurting badly and for the first time felt some proper damage to my feet. The dorsiflexion tendons on top of my left foot were twanging with every step and my foot was swelling up.
But the run was nearly over and I gotten through the worst day!
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