See Jane Run

Readers,

I have let myself go for the past couple of months. After my knee stopped hurting, I found more excuses not to go running. Well, it kept raining among other things. One thing I've learnt. If I'm not motivated to keep fit, I will come up with any excuse not to exercise. I do believe I'm at my least fittest at this very moment. Growing old and gaining weight are my worst nightmares come true. But today I think I've started to feel motivated to run again.

This morning, me and hubs went for a organised run. He upped his game and did the 10km. I stuck to my 3km walk/run.

This is the t-shirt we had to wear. I didn't like my t-shirt because the neck is high and I think I ordered 1 size too big.

We left home at 5:45am. It was very dark and we hailed a taxi in the middle of the road because at that hour, we're king of the roads!

Hubs' flag-off was 1 hour earlier than mine. So I had to hang around. See the guy in orange in above pic? He came over to shake my hand and make small talk. Now, when total strangers make small talk with me, they will be confronted with a look on my face that says:

Why are you talking to me? Why are you talking to me? Why are you talking to me?

Mr Foo: Help! This lady can't do small talk.

Anyway, guy in orange saw the look on my face and introduced himself as Cedric Foo, the Member of Parliament of the constituency that the run was organised by. He asked me a few questions and soon moved on to other runners. I guess my face kept asking the question: Why are you talking to me? I'm a terrible person to make small talk with.

The wait for my flag-off was quite long, so I decided to sit down somewhere to take a quick snooze because I had not received sufficient sleep. Later, I was awakened when a person extended his hands to me and once again I had to shake someone's hands. It was Cedric Foo again. Man, he loves to shake hands. Anyway, he saw my "Why are you shaking my hands again" look on my face and immediately avoided any conversation with me.

So finally it was flag-off time. At first I didn't want to be in the front of the pack because I preferred to be a follower. Then I discovered that most of the runners wanted to walk. And I wasn't gonna walk 3km. So I leapt to the front and in front of me were 2 women, a couple and a small boy. After 50m, the couple who had been running like crazy stopped running because they were amateurs. They ran out of stamina. So it was just the 2 women, the boy and I.

To be honest, the signage for my run wasn't very good. At the end of the canal, an usher told me to loop back. So the boy and I headed back. I saw that the 2 women missed the instructions and they went to the 5km route. Ha ha!

So it was just me and the boy. The boy ran like lightning. He walked most of the time though. But every time I came close to him, he would sprint off. Once he had some distance between us, he would stop running and just walk, all the while keeping a close watch on me. The problem for the boy was that he was just a kid and since the signage was poor, he had no idea if he was going the right way. So he would keep looking at me to make sure I was following him. It's like I was his compass. Whenever we came to an usher, he would let me do the asking for directions.

This went on and on. Me chasing him and never able to catch him. The last leg of the race was quite confusing because some of the ushers were quite blur. Also we couldn't see the Finish line at all. The boy made a mistake of asking an usher who gave him the wrong information. She told him to turn back. But I was sure the usher was wrong because for the last leg, all runners will run the same route. The boy hesitated and that's when I saw my chance to outrun him. I sneaked past him very quietly. But the boy trusted me as his compass more and he turned to look for him. When he saw me running past him, he shot past me! Demmit! Hubs waiting for me at the finish captured our final leg.

In this pic above, the boy just discovered I was trying to sneak past him and he very easily regained his lead. Bastard!

This is the final 25m before the finish. See how I'm trying to catch up with him. He has legs like a cheetah. I'm wearing my glasses so I'm completely unrecognizable. I was doing a peace sign at hubs but it looked like I was giving him the finger.

After the race, each runner gets a 100 plus drink and a Del Monte banana. So of course I need to show pics of us holding the banana. NUH (the hospital) had some participation in the run so I'm thinking the bananas must be their idea.

Also we get this measuring tape that will tell us how fat we are. This is outrageous. We must never find out to the cm, how fat we really are.

This week I hope I continue to keep fit. Otherwise I threaten to use the measuring tape on myself!