Marathon

Got up at 5:30 in the morning after going to bed at 1:00 last night, I felt as if I was doing nothing but trying to kill myself. Sure, it is the very best way to finish off me, because I don’t want to suffer much when I’m dying, just die in bed peacefully before I get up from a sound sleep. But this was just the beginning. One and a half hours later, I would have to run a 10km marathon in East Coast Park.

The whole thing was quite coincident. I decided to go just last night because Xiaodong did not feel well and asked me if I wanted to run for him. To be frank, I would say I was very unsure about myself and didn’t know whether I could finish the race or not since I have never run such long distance before. All these happened from last night to this morning were just from a sudden impulse which almost set me up.

The bus to East Coast Park left at 6am and arrived there forty minutes later. I was impressed by the enthusiasm of those participants (since I was to run for Xiaodong, I hadn’t yet regarded myself as a participant, only from that time on till the end of the race to use the name Xuan Xiaodong). Exits of the highway was almost jammed on such early Sunday morning, not to mention the situation in the parking lot, cars were all piling up there. Dawn was just breaking, but the big crowd were already there waiting for the race to begin.

After a few warming-up exercises, the race began. During the first 3km, I was quite conservative. Firstly, it was because the majority of the runners were running slowly. Secondly, it was because I had not had any concept of how long 10km was when running. However, even though I was conservative and was not running fast, I still managed to overtake at least about 60% of the runners ahead. Because of this, I started to feel encouraged and subsequently accelerated my pace for the next 5km. This is the most fantastic 5km in the whole race. Before it, I was among a big crowd of runners, but as I sped up, I found that people around got fewer and fewer. Meanwhile, I got more chances looking around for the sceneries long the way and enjoying my own pace.

My last 2km was the most shameful part throughout the race. I stopped and walked for a few hundred metres. It was not because I was tired or exhausted, but because I feared that if I was really to finish the 10km race running, I would not be able to finish the afternoon’s schedule. I felt so regretful for this inexpedient decision even though I managed to spurt quite fast as I approached the line.

Sometimes we do things like this; conservative when we are green, invigorated after knowing it, afraid when the goal is almost achieved.