run for a reason

this was the 4th time i participated in the standard chartered marathon and the 2nd time i was running a full marathon, 42.195km. on 4 december 2011, before 5am, tens and thousands of people gathered at the starting point at orchard road. a rare scene to see so many people gather at one common place at such an early hour. i could see people warming up, gearing up their earphones or taking photos while waiting for the race to start. at 5am, the gun sound went off and everyone started running.

i started running too, the beginning of a long run. i finished my run at 7 hours and 10 minutes last year and was hopping to improve my timing this year. however, it was not long that i felt the need to visit the toilet. the thought was seriously distracting my run that i  had to stop at the toilet station along hill street. although it took a while, i felt relieved and was finally able to focus on the run.

as i was running, there were a lot of cheer boards put up along the way to encourage the runners. i saw one particular board which wrote “run for a reason”, the theme for this year. did i have a reason to run? it suddenly dawned on me that i actually did not have a good enough reason to run this year. for the past 3 times, i was running for my ex company. the company was an active participant of the standard chartered marathon and to encourage employees to run, it pledged to donate $100 to a adopted charitable organization for every kilometre completed by anyone in the run. run for a good cause, i thought. if my little effort to run could raise funds for the less fortunate, why not? it was also about challenging myself in running as i had never run a marathon. i started with 10km in the 1st year, increasing to half marathon, 21km in the subsequent year and finally completed my 1st full marathon last year. these were good enough to push me to do my best in completing the run. since i left the company this year and tried all 3 different categories of run, i realized i was lost for a reason. what was the rush to run?

after i crossed the 21km mark, i slowed down and decided to walk. i thought maybe walking would be a more suitable exercise for me in future. there was a part of the route where the sun was scorching hot with no drinks station at sight. i was feeling frustrated, causing me to walk faster and faster, wanting to finish this part as soon as possible. sometimes, frustration or anger could spur me in a positive direction.

i guessed what really kept me going was the intention to complete what i started. i did not like to leave things incomplete. although there were agonies of pain on both legs and wanting to give up, i came to a point of understanding that the only thing i could do was to keep going. as long as i kept going, i would reach the end point eventually. no point crying over the situation i got myself in. i kept walking and walking. i finally crossed the finishing point after 7 hours and 45 minutes. not the best timing but at least i managed to complete it. i did not feel much of an excitement but more of a flat feeling, a “been there, done that” feeling. it was a race with the mental mind more than the physical body. i concluded that this was quite enough of running for the past 4 years.

when i shared about my marathon run with zee, she commented that i was able to complete something without much purpose. in the past, i needed to have a purpose/point of doing something, otherwise, i would not want to move or move unwillingly. now i could do something without much purpose. this sounded like a different form of achievement. often, there were times where we needed to do something, just because we needed to do, without much reason. this would be useful in future.

a marathon run seems to be a minute reflection of the longest marathon we are running now, our lives. how we react in the marathon could be how we react in our lives. what are we all running for in our lives? everyone has a different reason to run and a different destination to reach. when someone runs ahead of us, we might start to doubt our abilities and get distracted. are we focusing on our run? i constantly ask myself what i am running for and where i am running towards. unlike a marathon, there is no clear destination and it definitely takes a lifetime to run. the only thing for sure is, i run my own race.

keep running and run for a reason.

1st time running a full marathon with yeo yeo