Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2008

All right, this is some piece of really outdated news, but two weeks ago, I survived 42K.

Barely.

My legs started to give after the 32K mark and it was an uphill battle thereafter. Ultimately, it took me 4h:51m:58s. Way off my target of 4h:40m. I guess once in a while we need a kind of reminder that we're not so tough after all.

Well, I did say that anything sub-5 hours and I'd be happy. I was happy. Just less so.

Will I do it again next year? Not sure. I wasn't too crazy about the queue for race packs -- standing in line for almost three hours was a bit much for me. It seems like we could've done with fewer runners, despite the proud proclamation from the organizer's chairman. The race-day logistics could've been better as well.

Then there was what was effectively 4-month commitment of running 3-4 times a week. I don't know, it just seems to me like a whole lot of pain and time and sacrifice. Full marathon is no joke, that much I can tell you.

Then again, if 42K were easy, my grandma would run every year.

Anyway, I may stick with half for next year onwards. Upon reaching the 21K mark, I actually clocked about the same time as my last morning run, all while conserving energy. So that was pretty encouraging. As the people here would say: see how lor.

Thanks for all the wishes. I must say it was pretty touching finding 70-plus messages on your Facebook wall. True that Facebook makes sure everyone knows it's your birthday today. But it still takes some thoughtfulness to spare some time and jot down a short message. Guys, you made my day. Thank you.

I'm gonna close this blog. Partly because MT has been giving me problems lately -- it keeps dying, leaving a bunch of "core" junk behind and filling up my disk quota fast. I tried upgrading to MT4, but the issue remained. I couldn't even publish all archives at once. Maybe I've written too much for my own good.

Partly because -- and this is by no means a slight to other bloggers -- I may have outgrown blogs. Yeah, I know, sad to say.

By "closing" I mean I won't be updating this blog anymore. I will also disable new comments. But I won't put up a dramatic goodbye page or anything like that. Getting too old for this sort of stuff, aren't we?

I may start another blog in the future, who knows. But for now, it's goodbye. It was really fun while it lasted. And it lasted four years. Four eventful years. Pretty impressive, considering I didn't even think it'd go beyond a year when I started.

Thank you, MT. Thank you, Visitors. You guys have been fantastic.

Updated Dec 22, 08 22:11 WIB
Apparently, MT isn't going down without fighting. It does not allow me to bulk-publish at all now. To disable new comments, I have to go into one entry at a time and re-publish it. If not for the fond memories we share...

Anyway. As I was going through the entries, a few caught my eyes now and then. So I started re-reading them and I must say... boy, was I good! *grins*

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