Conquered 42.195km

Hi guys! I am still alive just for your information. Barely had enough sleep the night before the important race. Had piano exam in the morning, went to grab my race pack at Expo afterwards and explored the place a little bit before heading back to Holland Village to meet km's camp mates for dinner. Even though I was full from a late lunch (almost 5pm) with all the sushi spam, I told myself I had to eat more carbo. So, I was quite glad that they are okay with Hatched for dinner. Coincidentally saw some of my poly mates. It's a small world after all.

Woke up at 2.30AM and this km was still at winebar with his friends. But eventually he came to pick me up and sent me to the starting point. I don't think I will take a cab down so I felt really lucky that he managed to get hold of the car and offered to send me there. 

My only source of energy that morning - Heated choc milk

Met up with Meishi to deposit our bags and walked to the starting line.

It's a xmas tree at the back. Trying to get the xmas mood along Orchard road. Photo ripped from meishi's ig.

More xmas mood! Photo ripped from meishi's ig.

This was taken while waiting for the flag off. Tbh, the xmas lights along Orchard is really quite nice!

Getting ready to go - still full of smiles.

The race flagged off at 5am in the morning but I only manage to start the race after 10 minutes or so. It was quite terrible for the start because...

I needed to pee... very badly... 

Every time I see a volunteer, immediately I'll ask for the nearest toilet. Portable or not, smelly or not, dirty or not I don't care!! I just needed to release myself. Then I reached this point where there's this foresty place on my right. The male runners started running into the foresty area and peed! I swear I almost did the same thing! I was really that urgent.

After all I'm a girl so I pressed on and kept searching for the next portable toilet. Finally there is one somewhere after 5km, but before my tenth kilometres. But you know what? There were only 3 cubicles and the queue was !@£^^$£**¢#€^&(&*!@!@#$% long!! I had a good long 10 minutes toilet break thanks! It was also the time when I told Meishi to go ahead with her run first. (She completed the race 27 minutes before me!! ZAI!)

The first 10km was a breeze but the tenth to 15th was covered with some mental struggle. My usual run is only 4km, sometimes 8km and 10km will be the max. Anything more than that will give me a mindset that it is enough, I shouldn't be running so much, it's bad for the knees. But it was still manageable.

Met my mark at 18km and that was when I started to feel like this is an impossible mission. Maybe possible, but why am I torturing myself like this... I felt like dying and stopped at every water point.

20km was here and how much I wished I took part in the half marathon instead and I will just have another 1km to go. I looked at the time when I reached 21km.

7.30AM.

My timing for half marathon improved. 2 years ago when I joined the half marathon without any prior training, I completed the race in 2.59H. Almost 3 hours! (The fastest full marathon runner finished the marathon about the same as I complete the half)

So I was quite glad about the improvement it spurred me on a little bit.

After a while, every 1KM is a chore. My knee started to feel the pinch. I wasn't out of breath or felt any form of tiredness. It's just my knee. Every stride which I took is like some needles poking into my knee. After that, I think because I was wearing an old pair of netball shoes, my fourth toe from each foot started aching too. (Now it's leaving my flesh and I foresee the nails coming off soon)

It's so painful and so sore I practically sprint to the stations with deep heat and spammed the muscle relief cream everywhere. I never relied on such stuffs but I was sooooo desperate to get rid of the pain. I even ate 2 packets of energy gel. It felt like a survival course altogether.

20km to 30km was a bitch. I thought I was going to break my legs or something. I think I walked more than I ran. Grabbed a banana like a monkey

It was huge! But anw, I ran 42.195 with that ziplock bag in my hands (To kope free gifts along the way)

and along marina's golf course where I get to have a perfect scenery of Sg and a row of new bimmers to look at, together with the bimmer's volunteers cheering me on, I almost cried because I was so touched.

30km onwards felt like a dream. I never ran so long in my life before and here I am trying to do something new and torture myself in a new way. As sick as it may seem, I was slowly adapting and getting used to the pain and started jogging slowly when most of the runners were already walking. I tried to only stop at the water points.

I realised that Singapore is really a very very very beautiful country. Love this place sooooo much! Anyway, the last 12 km or so was covered with my subconscious state so I didn't really know how did I manage to do it. It was amazing and unbelievable at the same time. And it felt really good when people looked at me with this utter respect in their eyes when I had the finisher's tee on.

I think I did well (under 6 hours!) and thank you to all my friends and family who gave me that moral support all the time before and even during the race. I didn't know I have a pair of legs after the race. Really appreciate the greatest invention ever - the lift. I thought my legs will only recover in a week's time or so, but it's getting better already! I can walk the stairs without any unbearable muscle ache or stitching pain!

I am a survival of the full marathon yay! (despite looking terrible and desperately shagged after the entire race)

I'm not the reindeer. I'm behind him. Still looking all calm.

Acting one calm.

The gek-sai face near the finishing line.

Last one before ending the race. 

I only managed to grab an hour's nap before preparing to go out again to attend a wedding dinner of km's good friend from work. I was so worn out, limping and had to force myself to put on makeup, look radiant and walk on wedges. But it was an experience and I totally enjoyed the company (and food of course!) 

Even had round 2 of drinking at Neverland II (used to be dragonfly). I'm not a fan of Thai clubs after visiting V4 (with km and his friends) and Neverland II (with my colleagues). V4 was really quite messy imo. N2 was better with good quality singers. Km was singing along with them in Thai omg sometimes I suspect he's a lost child from Thailand. The performance was quite entertaining and I enjoyed myself. But I could not take it any longer and fell asleep a few times while I was still in the club.