k r i s a n d r o

The running event of the year, the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2009, has been open for registration since the 16th July and early birds who register during this period till the 5th of August will get to enjoy discounts for the registration fees!

Wow~! 3 variations of the word ‘register’ in the sentence above and it doesn’t take a genius to guess the purpose of this post is to convince YOU to register!

Take the chance to register for a race so that you’ll find a valid excuse to put on your running shoes and get out there to sweat it out!

Well, if you are not as crazy as the few of us going for the full marathon, there are other categories to consider like the half-marathon, 10km, team races or even the 750m kids dash if you are 13 years of age and below.

Here is the breakdown of the fees involved.

And do consider registering yourself as a charity runner by joining their “Run for a Cause” (RFAC) program whereby you can help raise funds through a pledge card or an online donation portal to either of the 3 identified charities or all of them. The 3 charities are:

1. Bukit Ho Swee Family Service Centre

- a community-based focal point of family resources that promotes and strengthens the well-being of families in distress.

2. Lions Befrienders

- reaches out to lonely senior citizens with limited or no family support, to help dignifying and enhance the quality of their golden years.

3. Rainbow Centre Yishun Park School

- is a place where children with autism and multiple disabilities are respected and provided with specialised curriculum and services to develop their full potential.

Not that it is important if your motive is to help raise funds but the top 500 RFAC participants who raised more than $300 will be waived for their registration fees and be given a limited edition RFAC shirt.

I have yet to decide which charity to aid but I do hope that you guys will at least help to donate in the event that you do not wish to take part in the running.

See you on the 6th of December 2009!

I have been wanting to take part in a full marathon since 2003-2004 and if I wrote it on a piece of paper as a thing-to-do, the paper will probably be yellow with the faded words barely recognizable.

In order to motivate myself, I gathered people over at plurk to find people who will be crazy enough to train for the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2009. Besides the advantage of staying fit while training for such a gruelling run, I decided that the group should adopt a charity as well to give a greater cause. So the group “FortyTwoPointOneNineFive” was formed.

“We are a group of people who wants to complete a full marathon (42.195 km) at least once in our lives. Instead of procrastinating like we have always been doing, we decided to form a running group to challenge the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2009!

We will most likely have a group effort to raise funds for charity as well to make this even more meaningful. Stayed tuned for more info!

Join us as we push each other to train for the gruelling run!”

Since most of us are very active online, I think it will be quite interesting to find ways to raise money and awareness for the adopted charity. If you are interested in joining us to train for the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2009, do join us on facebook and also on our group at mapmyrun.com (A great way to log your runs and monitor your progress!) Since we live all over the island, we are using mapmyrun to log and monitor each other and will only meet for runs bi-weekly or monthly.

As you can see, we haven't really started and I am 2nd on the list with only 2.36km clocked. WAHAHAHAHA!