I did it. My first ever 10km run. And I didn’t even train for it (even though I said I would. The intentions were there. Well, they were six months ago.)
I didn’t keel over, I didn’t embarrass myself and I finished in 1 hour 25 minutes. I reckon I could have gone faster if I didn’t show up late and miss the starting gun completely. It doesn’t affect my time because it’s all microchipped, but it does mean I found myself amidst hundreds of high schoolers who looked as if they’d been forced into participating. Some were carrying handphones and most refused to run so I spent the first 6km working my way around people.
I ran the first 5km at a steady pace and was feeling quite pleased with myself because I’d expected my stamina to give out by that point. Then I saw the marker and realised I’d only done 5km! I thought it would be more! I think I walked at least 2 of the last 5km. But I finished running. And I must admit, that rush you get when you cross the finishing line is really something.
G says that’s the paradox of running. You hate it when you’re doing it, but when you finish you want to go again because you want to better your performance. He did the full marathon. Y and C did the half marathon. J (pictured here with me) did the 10km. He did really well – so he had to drive us all back to KL because he was the least sore of the guys.
Doing it with the boys was great fun. Gathering back at the hotel room, comparing notes, watching each other collapse in pain and frustration, yelling at G to go take a shower because he was stinking up the entire room… But,
Y and I have decided we’ll never do the Singapore marathon again. It’s silly to pay Sing dollars and drive all that way just to run. We’ll probably do a couple more runs in KL when we feel like it. I think the rest will too. Especially now that we have a time to beat. And I know I can do it without really training.
For my ongoing list of 100 things I want to do, go here.
But it’s fun to do runs overseas. Cmon, you would pay USD to run Boston or NY. You would… right?
start training for the KL version next year…
i would not run 42.1km. i don’t think i even come close to qualifying.