Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends.-John 15:13
How very true. It's really a learnable experience, now that I think of it. Even though this isn't the real willRun event - the actual day is 1st August - at least I put myself into the field and tested the waters. It is tough, I'll admit. It is tough, even with regular training.
Wan Teng and Tricia couldn't run, so we had an extra 20km to make up for - and today was the only day available before the actual run to do so. Also, a couple few of us went ahead to challenge themselves - as much as I did. The results were amazing - Dominic ran 17km, Linus ran 19km, Julia ran 15km, and many others ran beyond the 10km milestone! As for me, heheh... Nothing to boast about - I only just managed to touch the 10km milestone before reporting the distance ran to contribute to the additional 20km that our class had to run.
Before the run, I was actually reluctant to run - why make yourself suffer so much, and having the fruits of your run distance go to someone else who cannot? I told myself - is such altruism going to be appreciated anyway? People run and people cheer - when the results are gotten everyone forgets all that trouble taken to run for someone - and you waste your own time for the benefit of someone else.
But then again, if everyone did that - why, there'd be no more real heroes' stories in the papers anymore, such altruists would completely disappear from the face of the earth! "Aiyah heck lah, might as well just go for it..." And there I was, down there in that red track, amongst confusion, feeling contradictory from within, and I was thinking, why on earth did I agree to running 6km? Time didn't side with me - I didn't have enough time to reflect on it before the run began and everyone went berserk running circles around the school.
As I was running, certain thoughts came to mind. As expected, the "Are you crazy?" that came got ignored - I kept running. After a little while - "Why are you doing this?" A personal challenge was what I was preparing myself for. Being able to take on such an arduous task and still manage homework well requires great finesse and skill with time management. Also, it made me think of why others could run so much without stopping beyond 10km.
Past the 6km that I promised to run, I was starting to go out of breath, and dropped 2 rubber bands which I later had to run back to pick them up. It was intense - really. It's really a personal battle down there - either get your own ego defeated by your own slack mentality, or surpass it and run all the way. Come to think of it, so many low income families struggle with their expenses trying to make ends meet, their daily financial burden becomes something close to what we're running today. Now, if they could overcome that and still manage to survive and thrive day by day with a job, why not make their lives easier a bit by running for them? After all, willRun IS for fundraising for charity anyway.
The secret to running this far, I found, is the thought that you're still fresh and ready to run. This, being kept in your head and continually provoking yourself from within, "Is that all that is to your own lousy flesh and meat? Is that all your body is able to take?" Couple that with all the competition along the way - people being overtaken and overtaking each other, and you get a winning formula that makes you run.
On the actual run, I'm going to push myself to run better. I won't have 10km - it's fast becoming child's play when you think of running further than that. Dream big.
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