Besides running, Evergreen Secondary School's cross-country athletes will have something different to look forward to this week.
On Saturday morning, 34 of them will climb, jump and crawl to overcome obstacles and even cross open water when they take part in an adventure race in Sentosa.
The race is one of the 20 sports and 10 para sports competitions organised as part of GetActive! Singapore, an islandwide sporting bash held from July 29 to Aug 9 to celebrate National Day.
More than 12,000 participants have signed up and they will be competing across three categories: youth, corporate and masters.
Evergreen's physical education teacher Sean Chua said: "We wanted to make training a lot more fun for them, since this is a low-key period for them after their competitions. So we can afford to do something different from just running.
"We've done a bit of CrossFit training and other exercises previously, like going for vertical workouts climbing the HDB blocks. I think the adventure race has components that are relevant to what they have been trained in."
Joining their students in roughing it out are eight teachers from the Woodlands-based school, including Chua, who will be participating in the corporate event.
Running alongside the sports competitions are an assortment of more than 50 fitness and wellness activities open to the public.
They are supported by the Active Enabler Programme, an initiative to support ground-up community projects through grants and endorsements. This year, the programme supported 291 events, up from 240 applications last year.
The public activities will be held over the next two weekends across nine Sports Festival locations, including the Padang, Our Tampines Hub and Toa Payoh HDB Hub.
One is a Superheroes' mass walk at the Singapore Sports Hub on Aug 5, when more than 100 people are expected to turn up in superhero costumes. Ex-national sprinter C. Kunalan will perform the flag-off.
Renee Tan, the managing director of the event's organiser Rendeur (Sportfitx), said: "We want to pay tribute to our past local sporting heroes."
Local humour website SGAG will be organising a captain's ball "trollnament" for about 300 people at the Padang on Aug 6. Besides a ball, other items like a giant stability ball will be used too.In celebration of NS50, national servicemen, their families and friends will get free entry into ActiveSG swimming complexes and gyms on Aug 5 and 6.
• More information is available at www.myactivesg.com/getactivesingapore
