Bordeaux, France - The Wine Capital of the World

11 October 2014

Between Paris and Bordeaux for the city to visit in France, I will pick Bordeaux anytime.

Paris is expensive, noisy and overcrowded, with half of it's population seemingly made up of tourists. I never got to appreciate what's the hype of Paris being one of the most romantic place in the world.

If you want to serenade a girl with good wine and food, romantic riverside walks with many kissable/huggable moments and country side drives with beautiful towns to explore, Bordeaux is definitely the place to be.

A Kiss The Girl moment at the reflecting pool at the Place de la Bourse

 It is also a great place to run with so many options.

I took the easiest option for me to run along the River Garrone which offers kilometers of undisturbed run with a spectacular view of the city.

I set off from one of the busiest road in Bordeaux along the Cours Victor Hugo and at 730am in the morning, traffic is very light with few other pedestrians along the way. One of the biggest issue I have encountered while running in cities, especially those is Asia, is poorly maintained pedestrians pavement with ankle breaking potholes. Here at Bordeaux, the pavement is so smooth and well-paved, that even well maintained Singapore foot paths have to take a second seat.

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Farewell Run on the Decommissioned East Coast Parkway Expressway #Throwback

Early Morning at ECP

Introduction
1 year ago, the new Marina Coastal Expressway (MCE) took over East Coast Parkway (ECP) on the work of routing the traffic around the downtown area. There was a small stretch of time when there are absolutely no vehicles on the decommissioned expressway and there were no barricade barring the public from entering the disused expressway. I decided to post this run 1 year after the closure of ECP to prevent the word from getting out and attracting hordes of runners to do a farewell run on ECP. There are all those heavy vehicles and construction materials lying around which could pose as a risk for irresponsible and careless runners.

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Why Companies Should NOT Spam Collaboration Invites to Bloggers

 As most of my readers will know by now, I run 2 blogs:

SG Unfit Runners - A running blog where I share with my readers some of the cool short distance runs around Singapore and the World.

Xeolyenomics - An economics & gaming blog where I share with my readers some of the experiences I went through, as a money manager and as a game designer.

I have a fulfilling professional practice and business and have absolutely no need for sponsorships for my blogs. Neither do my unfit runners friends. They are successful professionals in their own industries.

However, as the readership for our blog grows, we started to receive media invites. This invite from Lazada tickled me so much that I decided to share with my readers, on why companies should not spam collaboration invites without doing sufficient research.

Wow, an invite from Lazada. Let's see what they can offer!

 

Wow, they rejected me because I have no readership (ranked 0/10), which is fine. However, why did they contact me in the first place?  The way this lady worded the reply is like lecturing a young kid and I should not have wrote in asking for sponsorship in the first place since I have nobody reading my blogs and will generate zero ROI for them...

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5 Possible Motivations for Marathon Cheating and the Solutions

Running a marathon is often listed as one of the bucket list among many of my friends. Marathon is always associated as a revered sport, associated with strength, determination and perseverance. If you are a guy and you told people that you have completed a marathon, your social status immediately rockets and beautiful girls will flock to you and want you to share your experience. If you are a girl and you told people that you have completed a marathon, men will queue up to want to marry you.

The recent blog article by runningsucks.blogspot.sg created an uproar in various Singapore's social media circles, and the topic of cheating in a running event became a hot topic among the runners. The saga started by a passionate runner/blogger who was taking pictures of Singapore Marathon and noticed quite a number of runners wearing the slow runner's bib clearing the marathon within 4 hours (An extremely good timing by marathon standards). He checked the bib number against the official timing and found that some of the runners skipped some of the check-points, effectively reducing a 42km marathon to 25km. The blogger posted pictures and names of some of the suspected cheaters. The Singapore Marathon organizers later clarified that some of the slower runners were asked to turn back at the 13km mark as they have to reopen the roads closed by the event. The runners who were asked to turn back were still promised the coveted race medal and finisher T-shirt.

The big question now is that Singapore Marathon, being one of the Gold Label road race awarded by International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), along with the most prestigious marathons in the world such as the Boston Marathon, is setting the right standard by forcing runners to take a shorter route and still awarding them the finisher rewards despite not completing the marathon. Is that the standard the organizers should set for a Gold Label marathon event? Should a qualifying timing be set just like the Boston marathon?

While the debate rages on in the running community, I took some time to take a look at some of the marathon cheating cases around the world and the motivation behind and possible solutions to deter marathon cheatings.  

"I only want the T-shirt and Medal!" 
(2013 Singapore Marathon, Singapore)

Picture from Straits Times

 Mr Tam Chua Puh created an uproar at the Singapore Stanchart Marathon when he emerged as the winner of the local category of Stanchart Marathon. He ran 6km, took some time to drink some coffee (I made that up, but what else to do while waiting for the race to end on an early Sunday morning?), and made a heroic dash to the end point. The tightly knit competitive Singapore marathon community was confused as to who this new-comer was and how he managed to beat the top marathon athletes in Singapore. The organizers took a few hours to verify the records before they disqualified Mr Tam. Mr Tam later made an apology and said:

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Why Has Singapore Become a Pay-To-Run Nation?

Singaporeans must be really training hard to combat the potential rise of the transportation cost in Singapore.

With the price of ERP, COE, train fare, taxi fare, bus fare going up, the pragmatic Singaporeans are finding a potentially new way to save on their travel expenses, support a cause, get a nice running Tee and keeping fit at the same time.

They have been signing up for running events in doves.

Looking at the running calender, there seems to be a run every weekend and the traffic police in Singapore is getting very proficient in setting up road blocks and redirecting traffic as more and more of these running events pops up.

I often wonder why are there so many running events for an activity that is essentially free and why Singaporeans are so crazy about signing up for running events.

Perhaps it is due to social media that drives Singaporeans to sign up for these expensive running event. In fact, the more expensive it is, the faster the tickets are being snapped up.

Why social media makes a difference?

When I go on my normal run around Bedok Reservoir during my evening runs, take a selfie and post my run route on my facebook/instagram, I get 2 likes.. top...

No likes! Not even for my FCbarcelona Buff scarf

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