Cross Country Day - ACS Barker Road

Tired father and Happy Son

Friday 12th March 2010 was the annual ACS Barker Road Cross Country Run for the secondary boys of Anglo-Chinese School.Initiated by the principal Mr. Peter Tan 1 year ago, this is the second year of its existence and I decided to do the father-son thing by running with my son Andrew. So at 8.30 am sharp on a Friday morning, I was at the start line of the 4.2 km 'sprint' race for the lower division boys ('C'). There were about 100 runners from various 'houses' and Andrew was representing the LSG or Lee Seng Gee (an old boy and Philantropist from the early days of the school). At the starter's gun, the boys surged ahead into a 100 m sprint leaving me and the principal plus 2 other adult teachers taking up the rear.


Andrew after his fine run

There was a roar and about 10 boys had fallen in the enthusiasm and there was a mess of bodies just 20m after the start.
We helped them back to their feet and it was then finding my son up in the distance. I was maintaining a fast pace, never really training for this short type of runs. (Yes 5km is short in my humble opinion). I picked up the pace and started oevrtaking some of the boys. The principal was a very fast runner, and was maintaining a lead of 100m ahead of me.

At around the 2 km mark, I came up to Andrew, who was walking and urged him to continue and not slacken his pace. He pulled a funny face to me and then started to run again. I was supposed to be running alongside Andrew but in my aniexty had run at a crazy speed, just trying to catch the principal. Luckily there were many teachers and assistants urging the boys to Run, Run Run.


The school tents at East Coast Park

Round the lake we ran and it was back to the start point. I finished in a decent time of 20 mins 20 seconds or about 5 minutes and 5 seconds per km. I was around the middle of the pack, around 40, but my proudest achievement was that Andrew finished at around 55th place and had earned valuable points for his 'house'.

I hope to continue running with Andrew for years to come as this is one sport both father and son can bond with.