Sgrunners 

It was 3.50am in the morning, and I woke up from my 2.5 hours of sleep feeling weird. I didn’t have any headaches or anything, but just didn’t feel exactly fine. Since I was supposed to meet my friends to share a cab, I quickly packed my stuff, changed into my running attire and got outta my house. Feeling weird still.

At 5.20am, I was already at the starting point. Technically speaking, it should be 100m behind the starting point, since there was a horde of army boys packed in front of me. The atmosphere wasn’t right. No music, no nothing, just ocassional words from the emcee to tell everyone to get ready. And then, the horn sounded and off everyone walked. Walked, because too jammed to even jog.

After walking for 4 minutes, I finally crossed the starting point and I could finally run. As usual, I’d my earphones on, but this time round, I  listen to radio from my handphone tucked inside my running tights because I’ve forgotten to bring my arm pouch. The weird feeling is still lingering in the air.

I think I only ran about 2 km when I first encountered something really weird. In front of me at the roadside, I saw a huge object. Upon running closer to it, I realised that it was an elephant! A baby elephant. There was even a mahout sitting on it! Geez, I was like, OMG.. am I seeing things? It wouldn’t be of any surprise if I saw an elephant in the streets of Grungthep, but.. on the roads of Singapore?! I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, but I’m not gonna punch myself like how every other person does to make sure he or she is not dreaming.

Instead, I ran next to a girl in hope to confirm the sighting. "Eh.. ah..,excuse me, did you, er, see an elephant at the left side when we ran about a minute ago?" I stuttered breathlessly in my half-awake voice. "Yah, I saw that." was her nonchalant reply. It soon made me realised that the situation was even weirder than I thought, as none of the people running past the elephant seemed to be affected by it at all.

Whatever, I thought to myself. I continued on, praying not to see any weird stuff anymore. Fat hope. Ahead of me, I suddenly noticed a huge group of runners wearing like some kind of uniform, because all had the same words printed on the back of their running tees. Upon closer observation under the dim street lights, I noticed that their tees were pink in colour and the words at the back read "Now you cannot catch me!". Weird, because they were running slow, and I overtook them not long after.

Luckily, no more weird encounters for the next few kilometres. The sky was finally brightening up, and things became a little more normal. I ran past some pirates, but they looked friendly and even cheered all the runners on. I ran past some cheerleaders as well, but they were not yet ready to perform their stunts. It was fortunate that nothing that I saw for the remaining part of the race was as weird as the elephant and pink platoon sightings. Phew.

I crossed the finishing point in about 2 hour and 15 minutes gun time, which means my chip time is probably 2 hr 10 min. Not bad, I thought, considering I’d not been training consistently and also, slept only 2.5 hrs before the run. Yay, collected my medal, and it looked cool. On one side, it shows the CBD skyline just like the noticeboard of 2 Grace’s.

Took some pictures with sgrunners, before leaving for lunch with another group of friends. The weirdness went away upon completion of the race.

I’ve finally done my first half-marathon.

My deepest condolences to the family of Cpt Ho. It is sad that this had happened.