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| Sweaty, stinking but happy |
2 days ago I ran in the Standard Chartered 10k race. I can
still feel the stiffness in my legs (which apparently can last the whole week),
but it’s all worth it. Just thinking about the 1 hour 3 minutes and 11 seconds
on Sunday makes me smile.
Like many others, I’m not a natural runner. I’m not a
runner, period. But perhaps I can be, after this? Rob’s been asking me if I
enjoyed it on Sunday, I can’t really say whether I did or didn’t. To me, doing
something physically challenging does not fall into the category of
“enjoyment”, but there’s a sense of achievement when it’s over, especially when
I’ve put in my best.
‘My best’, however, is not an easy concept for me, as I’ve grown up as one of those super driven Asian kids who don’t know when to stop, when to say
it’s enough, let’s celebrate and have a piece of cake. I.e. I always think I haven’t
done my best. Thanks to the help of friends and my amazing counselor, I’ve
improved, albeit slightly, on this. But with regards to the 10k, I think I can
say I really did my best – did all the stretching properly, trained (okay maybe
not as much as I should have), drank all the right energy gel things (worked
wonders) along with the one Imodium pill (absolutely essential), and I even
sneaked past as many people as I could to get to the front of the start line.
But what I’m most chuffed about, is not that I did my best,
but that I did it. Normally plagued by an enormous amount of self-doubt, I am
amazed I actually signed up, trained, and finished it (and in good time!). I
don’t know about you, but my internal narrative usually goes like this when I’m
running:
You can’t do it
Your legs are tired,
you need to stop
You haven’t eaten
enough, stop
You never finish
things properly in your life anyway, just stop now
You are not like other
people who can persevere and press on
It’s almost literally a voice that I hear, and much too
often in the past (I attempted to ‘get fit’ many times in the last 10 years) I
would accept what I heard, and stop.
Though not aware of it at that time, whenever I heard this
voice, I became more ashamed, and defeated in my spirit. Which is not
surprisingly as I actually listened to the silly voice!
No doubt largely* a result of being married to Rob (who’s not
perfect but who’s definitely into not giving up easily), I found myself running
and running during the race, past many who were for some reason stopping
periodically and sometimes to take a photo with each of the ‘X km” signs, and
chanting “come on, don’t give up, come on” to myself and, towards the end of
the race, to the girls around me who had started to give up.
Except for the 2 water
breaks when I stopped to drink and pour water over my sweltering head (a first!), I didn’t stop at all. I was vaguely trying to see if I could make
it in less than an hour and 10 mins, a challenge issued by Derek, my lovely
brother-in-law, and when I passed the 5k mark with less than 35 mins, I thought
I might have a fighting chance!
In the past few years as I first got to know people like
Rob, and his ‘crazy’ friends e.g. Al Humphreys, Dave Elliott, Leon McCarron,
who seem totally unfazed by physical/mental challenges or discomfort (my
threshold of which is very low – I can go without a shower for 3 days
max), and who in fact seem strangely attracted to such things, I wasn’t sure
what to do with them. I decided that they belonged to a genre of species from
me, but somehow we are all human beings coexisting with each other.
After this race I don’t think I’m about to attempt a
round-the-world bike trip, or walk the length of Hong Kong (though not a bad
idea actually), but I think I’ve inched a bit closer to being a bit braver, and
a bit more alive.
*I think it helped too that I was raising funds for Viva, the charity we work for, as I felt accountable! I'm very grateful for all the support family and friends have given with their sponsorship.
