I am a 21km finisher..26th Aug

Praise and Thank God that i have finished the 21km tdy..man..think this is by far the hardest race i ran in a sense..i ran despite my knees do not allow me to go ant faster..

think based on my own timing, my time was 2:15 which was prob 7 mins faster from my 2:22 in yr 2006 ahm (army half marathon)..perhaps 1km faster than last yr wen i din train at all..think i'm pretty pleased with myself thou i reali feel that it was a little wasted in a sense..

let me recount my thinking process since the start of the race..

think it's good that dear and i reached there earlier..i was at esplanade abt 4am..slept like only 3 hrs..wen i woke up, man, my calves were aching from the 14+5km run on fri..haha..

not complaining but think the 14km did boost my confidence to finish 21km..

oki..tdy started well coz was qt front at the starting line..very good very good..thank God for "uncle" aka dear's advice..haha..

5.30am..the sound went off..21km started..everyone was running, can hear the "beep beep" sound from the time recording mats..

was running..hmmmm.. think on the expressway, felt bit distracted coz seems like everyone from the back were running ahead of me..i felt lousy like being overtaken..but i told myslef..those peopel were those people..perhaps they have trained well for the race..wateva it is, i am doing ok coz i maintain a constant pace, good enuf for myslef..gotta tel myself that i am doing fine..in my heart was also thinking "see who last longer" coz so many pp pia like the dist is so short..haha..

anyway felt that the route this yr like very good..at least at the expressway the weren't any bottleneck..ha..perhaps, past 2 yrs i was in the wave way way behind so experienced "human jam" during race..

anyway, was keeping a constant pace till i reached East coast park..saw from opposite so many people running back to the finishing line..was checking timing, wondered if i would see dear..think the desire to want to see dear serves as a good distraction..haha..coz i could feel myself running faster and faster while trying to see him..think mayb at 8 or 9km was thinking perhaps i missed dear le coz cant see him..den told myself, "if can see him den goos lo if not den it's ok"..think that thot kinda ease me from possible disappointment and den to my greatest delight.i saw dear running..hahaha..he saw me too..think he was looking out for me too..can see..haha..so nice..i clapped a few times as signs of encouragement for him..haha..heard him respond to me too..haha..happy..

man..after this motivation, kinda move to motivate myself to reach turning point soon..man..spped dropped a little coz no one to look forward to in a sense..ha..well..prob a few more clicks to turning pt..

finally turned le..told myslef, this is "NOW" running for me..at 12km plus, kinda psycho myself that 8km more..very fast..finish it..so i was thinking in my mind and heart, looking at my timing and finally decided "i can finish it in 2hrs".. this was the constant thot for me for abt 2 to 3 km..den looking at my timing, knowing that i couldn't hit my 2 hr target, gotta quickly adjust my expectations and and set a new target say, 2:05..i kept running..

in my mind my thots were "push my treshold, push my treshold" this thot allowed me to last till prob 19km..

think wen i reached 19km, it was already 2hrs..man..i stopped to walk for 10 steps den decided, juz 2 more km..finished it..i have come so far..finish strong..man..

much as i would like to run fast, i couldn't coz my knees got reali stiff..my speed dropped instead of increasing..felt so sad coz so many pp were catching up from behind and overtook me coz left 2kn more..

act was thinking mayb can finished 2km in 10 mins, kinda force myself to go faster..man..that worked for 1 km..left 1 km..reali struggled..couldn't go faster, speed was slow..

saw dear, so nice that he came back to look for me and pace me..bcoz of him, i reali pushed myself more to finish it..500m more was killing but i go all the way..so happy wen i saw the time..2:16..but i stopped my own time at abt 2:15 so gotta see the official timing wen it got released..

think i am pleased that by God' grace i have finished a beta timing than last yr..but felt wasted coz if i could run faster, how nice to have completed 21km in 2 hrs..

i have fought the good fight
i have finished the race
i have kept the faith

God, thank you for enabling me to finish the race coz my body comes from You..