A "Fool" Print

I had missed this morning Easter service. To make up for my absence, I arranged to meet up with Mun Hoe in the late afternoon to attend his church (City Harvest) service. Hmm. That left a couple of hours for me to do some short run…

I have not been doing many long runs lately, mainly due to reason of the pain at my calves and knees. I have been quite mindful of the condition of my legs (esp. at the lower calves) and reduced my pace every time the stitch resurfaced. After a typical rainy weather for the past few days, the island had finally received a hot, sunny afternoon. For this afternoon short run (Tiong Bahru -> Botanic Garden -> Holland Rd -> Queenstown -> Tiong Bahru), I intended to keep a slow pace at 6min/km. When I started off with my run, the agony at my lower calves came back again. It was difficult for me to keep a constant pace as the pain kept disturbing my advancement whenever my foot touched the ground. Similar to my ITB which came as sudden as it likes, dark clouds begun to form in the sky and thunders roared. While I was running along the Holland Road, rain started to pour. Well, I couldn’t able to stop for fear of being late to meet with Mun Hoe. In the end, I managed to do a well decent speed to complete 14km at 1hr 35mins.

The City Harvest was totally unlike the Church of mine. The building at its Jurong West was elegantly built, which occurred nine storeys (four in the basement and five on top of it). When I stepped into the hall that could cater for about 2000 members, the seats were fully occupied. After a few ushering here and there, we (Mun Hoe, Gin and me) managed to get hold of the seats directly in front of the stage. I was impressed by the drama put up by City Harvest Drama group. The music, acting, singing, sound system and the costumes were nowhere inferior to any drama put up by the professionals. I could see that the members of the church have devoted a lot of hard work to make this show a success. It was entertaining and meaningful as the drama told us the origin of Easter Day.

After the service, I met up with Cedric to have a dinner at Jurong Point and bought a bottle of Glucosamine in the hope that it could ease my pain. Although the supplement is more targeting to neutralize joint problem, but now I could try for anything to help me to recover from my ITB since my KL Marathon is coming up. Besides, I read reports that many runners have found that it is effective to assist them to recover from ITB.

At late evening, my Sis and Brother-in-law fetched me from Jurong Point together with their children for cycling at Chinese Garden Park. It is always enjoying to see my two little nephew and niece playing around, with their laugher and shouting surrounding us. :) We have a supper at McDonald before I reached home at 11.30pm. It was a nice, fulfilling day for me to enjoy this Easter holiday…

There were only four of us (Deva, Tan, Mak and me) turned out for today’s run. Apart from the usual runners whom ran at Macritchie Park, there were polices and soldiers flocking into the venue. It was reported that someone had caught sight of Mas Selamat at the surrounding area. Nevertheless, activities at the park were still as usual as if the news of the escaped convict had no impact to our daily life.

We started our run at 7.05am and ran together as a group. In the first 7km, I was running slightly behind of Deva with Tan and Mak falling behind 300m away. My calves were feeling tighter and the pain at my knees was developing. I would sense my old injury is coming back to me. For the past few weeks, I still could feel stitches at my knees while sleeping. Deva had a stitch at his stomach and his pace was slowing down while we were coming near to our U-turn point. This provided me a moment of relieve from my pain as both of us slowed down our pace.

After making the U-turn towards Upper Thomson Road, my pace with Deva had came even closer with each overtaking each other. While we were running through the Old Upper Thomson Road, we heard someone screamed from the woods. Would it be Mas Selamat? Nevertheless, nothing could deter us from continuing with our run.

After making a rest at the Pierce Reservoir’s toilet point, Tan had picked up his pace. I attempted to follow him but the pain at my calves and knees proved a great challenge for me to overcome. Once we out to the main road, I couldn’t spot sight of Tan. He was far away from me dashing towards the end-point. By now, Deva and Mak were way behind us. With the pain developing, I had a moment of tendency to walk for the rest of the journey. Still, I continued and completed the loop around 1hr 30mins.

I met KC at the park while resting and chatting with the others. Before I left with Tan for a free ride to Velocity, I spotted a helicopter hovering above us. It looks like this time round the tip is real.

In the afternoon, I met up with Tania for lunch at Earle Sweden. She has dropped by to Singapore after attending a conference at Thailand before heading back to Jakarta in the evening. Veronica was there too. She had just returned from Seattle. There were about six of us in total (Elaine, Tania, Veronica, her husband, 2 other current MBA students). Rosalind was late as she still suffered from the jet lag. She just flew back from Seattle after attending the Microsoft’s conference at Microsoft University. She looked haggard, probably due to lack of sleep. :p Before Tania boarded Veronica’s car to the airport, she wished me well for my career. How sweet is she. :-) I gave a pat on her head as a return of my encouragement to her.

Subsequently, I had an agonizing and harrowing experience of leg massage by Jan at Chinatown. PS has become infamous in the shop as Frankie was telling me of her running experience. After finishing the massage, I could hardly walk by my own. Hopefully, my legs would recover before the KL marathon.