Today marks one of my achievements: finishing a 21km run for the first time. I signed up for this back in May for $25 and now it has kind of paid off.

I was supposed to wake up at around 4 am this morning and I set the alarm on my phone to sound at 4 am. It seems like I woke up and turned the alarm off though I don’t have any recollection of every doing that. As usual, I woke up automatically at around 5.40 am (I seem to have the syndrome of waking up automatically at 5 am in the morning these days) and realized that I am late. I changed, grabbed what was necessary and took a cab down to the starting point to meet Gerald and Jia Xu for the run.

Cab fare was ridiculous with its 50% midnight surcharge.

The crowd was numerous. I estimated that I took 7 minutes from where I was to WALK to the starting line to start the run. The first half of the run was relatively easy. Benjamin Shears bridge wasn’t all that bad. The slope wasn’t as deadly as I had thought. The sights were fine. Nothing fanciful as the organisers claim (quote the Marina Barrage).

The water points were rather interestingly manned with all the various formations taking charge. At around 16 km I started to falter. I could sense dehydration setting in with passing vertigo and the lack of sweating. And damn, I could feel both of my thighs start to cramp at around 100m to the end point.

I finished the whole run in about 2 hours 11 minutes including the time I took to “GET” to the start line.