When I run, I feel His pleasure..

I ran my 2nd event this year, the Newton Active Run 2009 at Seng Kang. I still remembered what I said in my previous post; this year has proven to be right on track. =] It is really very satisfying when you train so hard and see the improvements. I felt such joy today.

I left house at 6am (the race starts at 7.30am) fearing that I might get lost on the way to Seng Kang, and if so have back-up time to reach there on time. I indeed got lost! I missed a turning and ended up in a totally different place. I called Mummy for directions and finally managed to reach there in one piece. I parked about 1 LRT station away from the race site and did a warm-up run to the start point. There, I immediately saw Joshua. We later saw Sunny, Mok and Zebin at the start point prior to the race. It was clear who the winner was going to be, at least that was what I thought.

My aim for this event was to clock my personal best for the 10km distance. I wanted to hit below 42mins. Whilst chatting away with my camp medic (back in Sungei Gedong) and now school mate Benedict, I came to a realisation:

Me: Wah, damn sians man.
Benedict: Why? You nervous?
Me: Ok lah, just feel abit sian lors.
Benedict: Hahas, why sians?
Me: It is always like this, at the start point you think why are you here in the first place; during the run you think to yourself, why am I torturing myself? But in the end after the race you will want to do more races.
Benedict: Hahas, yah man.

The air gun went off and we ran. I hit 3mins 40secs for my 1st km, it was way too fast to sustain for me. Subsequently, I dropped the pace to about 4mins/km. At the 6km mark I was already feeling really jaded. I thought to myself: There is just 10 x 400m intervals left. Hahas..So I kept pushing and at the 2km mark I gave all I had. Throughout the run, whenever I felt really tired or shitty, I remembered what Eric Liddell said: "When I run, I feel His pleasure". I did not want to have any regrets after the run, so I kept the pace and focused. My eyes were on Him.



When I crossed the finishing line, the clocked showed 40mins 11secs. I was elated! I had done my personal best and it was even better than what I intended to do! Praise the Lord! =] After speaking to Josh, we figured out that maybe the timer was started 20secs later because when he ended the race, the timings on his watch and that of the timer were different. Josh and I started together. I did not manage to get my time on the watch because even though I started the watch, I abandoned looking at it for the last 2km. I did not want to get distracted or have my emotions stirred by a tiny device. Therefore, if Josh is right, my timing will be 40mins 31secs =]

I hope that the Singapore Biathlon 2009 next week will see all our training with NUS Aquathlon pay off. We must do well. =]