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It took some time after the initial strains and exhaustion upon completing the 42.195km that gladness started to set in. There came a point my emotions were high till I almost welled up... no kidding. Haha... Who would have imagined that a person who's obese through his adolscence, sedentary and all... would eventually pick up jogging and complete a marathon thereafter? All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us yeah! ;)

Stayed over at my in-law's place the night before; woke up at about 4am and had breakfast comprising a sandwich, a granola bar and a berocca drink. It's really different this time round compared to the half marathon I did four years ago in 2005 - it was rather haphazard then without much preparations before or during the race. There's quite a bit of planning this time round. Was a bit concerned of the need to go poo poo in the middle of the race if I don't do so before... but thankfully the need didn't come. Haha...

And this year it's like a family affair with Dad (in-law), Dear dear and Charlene taking part as well! I was really inspired to seriously consider running a full one after seeing Dad complete his very first marathon at the age of 50 last year. :)

Dad drove us there - we parked at SMU and walked over to the Esplanade where we (Dad and I) joined in the throngs of blue (I'm one of the odd ones clad in orange running vest haha) towards the starting point. It probably took us fifteen minutes or so after the official start time before we actually reached the starting line.

Images from my 2005 half marathon started flashing back somehow as I started the race... and I kept telling myself not to end up in the state of walking long distances like what I did then. The plan of taking short planned breaks in between worked out pretty well, though it was a little hard to keep to the scheduled breaks towards the end because I usually ended up needing them earlier than expected... :X

One huge revelation for me is that I've been under-running; I've been using the Nike+iPod for the past year to gauge my runs and timings... brought it along to the race to track my timings. The device gave a further distance reading than the actual distance covered; it read about 4km when I had only ran past the 3km signboard. Was quite demoralising at the start upon this realisation... then I decided to focus on the actual distances and use the device to track timing. Who knows... the device stopped recording halfway through and automatically paused itself once in a while. :( So on top of inaccurate distance, it stopped giving me accurate timing as well... bleah. I think it would have been quite amusing noticing this person looking at his device and pressing it every once in a while while running... hahah.

The plan was to take scheduled walk-breaks 6-5-5-4-4-4-3-3-3-3-2... I think I only followed the first half. Haha... There wasn't any drink station at the 11km mark though, so in the end it turned out to be more like 6-6-5-5-then anyhow whack already. Kept on drinking, kept on eating the power gels... still can't really stand the salty taste of what are supposed to be sweet flavours??

The huge difference this time round is that I didn't run out of breath... it's more of the legs not having the matching strength I guess. And so... running resolution for 2010 would be to lose a decent amount of weight (so I don't have that much to carry while running) and to train up the legs. I've probably hit 5hrs or so this time round... will only know the actual timing two days later. Shall aim for 4:30hrs or so for next year ba. :)

Dad bettered his timing from last year... Dear and Charlene finished their 10km rather comfortably. We're all finishers! :D One of the reasons why I picked up long distance running is because of its parallelism to life, how life is just like a long distance marathon... where at times you'd need to pace yourself, take a rest, rehydrate... encourage others on... and most importantly, knowing that you'll cross the finishing line. I probably can go on to do more marathons to come... but the one marathon that I hope I can persevere in finishing well would be the marathon of life, that at the end of the day I would be able to say that "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Which finishing line are you heading to?

Life without Jesus is like running a marathon blindfolded. The route is unmarked and you have no idea where the finish line is.

Life with Jesus is like running the same marathon.
But you have a buddy who can see and is constantly giving you water, nutrition and directions... and all the while telling you what a great job you are doing and how wonderful the party afterward will be! - Tracy K

Life without Jesus is like running on a treadmill going nowhere and bored silly. Life with Jesus is like running the marathon in the Olympics and winning the gold. - Julie G

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders/ and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith - Hebrews 12:1,2