I signed up for the New Balance Real Run.



It's this morning. I've had about 1.5 hours of sleep. I have a slight cough. I should quit the run. I didn't. I thought I'll run abit and see how my body can take it. Reckless me.

Well, luckily nothing bad happens. I was feeling some problem after 1 km. The leg feels like lead. After about 2km, I decided to call it a day, and I started walking, looking for a road marshal to ask about dropping out. As the marshals are not in sight at that time, and it's pretty boring to walk, I jogged again. This time, there's a pain shooting up from the sole of my ankle on every steps. It doesn't always happens, but when it happens, it's pretty uncomfortable.

When I finally found the marshal, he told me he got no instructions on how to handle drop outs and that I have to walk to the finishing line. It's abt 8km away...

Since I am still able, I obliged. But I can't help thinking what if I continued and fainted? Walking 8km is not easy if one is sick. Anyway, again, it's very boring to walk the whole of 8km, so I alternated between jogging and walking. As I was joking, I was cursing the organizers for forcing me to complete a run that I wanna give up halfway.

Last year, there's 3 stretches of beach. This year there's only 2. Last year, there's 3km of beach run, this year it's only 1.6km. As I had been walking quite a fair bit in the starting 4.5km, I have energy left to jog on the beach. I do not know if it's cos I jogged, but 2 stretches of beach seems shorter than last yr as well. But the route pretty fits my memory of last year. Oh well...

During the beach run, I started enjoying the run more. I can't help but wonder if my problems I've had at the start of the run is due to my psychological state. I was prepared to not complete the race. I had intended on quitting it. Maybe that made me more conscious to the little nitty gritty of the run to find a reason to quit. As I start to enjoy the run, all my problems seems to be gone.

Along the way, there are alotta people overtaking me. Some of them, I feel against losing to them so that I'll up my pace and try to overtake them. I thought I should run my own race and not be concerned by other people, but the competitive streak in me that pushes me forward. There is this man in the veteran category that I was secretly fighting with. I always try to overtake him when he overtook me. And along the route, there's a part where there will be cars crossing. Marshals were directing the traffic. I slyly accelerate to cross the road before the marshals stop the runners behind me, including the veteran runner, to let the cars pass.

After that, I can't find another runner that runs at a pace similar to mine. So there's no 1 to overtake. And I started becoming slack. I realized I need that uncle.

I managed to complete the race at about 1 hr 24 min. A bad time. Last yr I completed in 1 hr 15 min. It was also a bad time...

After the run, I tried to find Beoh, the friend who came with me, to no avail. He's not at the place that he say he'll be at. And he did not bring his phone. So I sms his wife to tell her I am leaving. Just as I was about to go, I heard my name being announced. Someone had picked up my wallet. Shit. Almost lost my wallet and I am not aware of it at all. Maybe Losing wallets is contagious... Lucky I got back mine.