Introduction to Virtual Racing

It was a little tongue-in-cheek when I registered John for a Father's Day Virtual Race.  I couldn't go past the finisher medal that doubled over as a can opener and the Superdad eCertificate.

Unbeknownst to John, his 5km training session captured on Strava was all that I needed to submit. Once verified by the organisers, known as 42race, the medal was delivered to my front door 5 days later.  Just in time for Father's Day.

Highly amused, Trini and I presented John with his medal and certificate.  Once I explained how he earned it, we had a good laugh about it. It was a great way to do something that was unique without the exorbitant expense often associated with specific celebrations.

Discovering virtual racing by accident (inbox spam) has opened a new way of racing, that greatly reduces our costs and diminishes early rises (we are the worst morning people).

Instead of individual registrations, taxi expenses for race pack collections, double and sometimes triple quantity finisher medals if all three of us participate, taxis to/from racing venues, multiple race tees that often don't fit and mornings that start too early, we register one person, share the medal/race pack and have it all delivered to our front door.

Virtual racing allows us to pick the running location anywhere in the world and preferred running time within a set date frame, providing loads of flexibility and allowing us to run at night when it's much cooler in this tropical environment.

Whilst I get the idea of 'racing atmosphere', I find that I perform better when on my own as opposed to being one in 5000 other racers.  I don't need to dodge other participants especially the walkers or selfie takers.

It doesn't replace regular racing as there are very specific ones I enjoy each year like the Sundown Marathon as a night race, Performance Series for its different locations throughout Singapore and the Great Eastern Women's Run because it's for girls only.  However, I do like the alternative option of virtual racing, particularly as I seek out interesting concepts like the Victory of Districts virtual race which doubled as a celebration of Singapore's 51st birthday (blog coming).

Whilst there's very little information on the organisers, I can't fault their service thus far.  Loading the data to their website is easy and efficient, the finisher medals and race tees are good quality, their e-certificates are creative and deliveries are prompt.

So here's to adding another element to our racing experience.