When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’ —- Erma Bombeck
A #bigkidmoment feature by Nora. Nora, had over the past 12 weeks trained with run4life, and last Sunday, completed her very first marathon in a very respectable time of 6hr:8 minutes. A friend once said with reference to endurance sports.
‘First complete, then compete’ —- Teo Ser Luck
This is Nora’s story in her own words. Congrats!
First kilometre done, damn, I was doing it again. I never seemed able to control my pace. There were so many runners, apparently some 10,117 of us had willingly paid Stanchart, arrived at Dataran Merdeka at 3am and were making our way to our designated pens. It’s quite a party out here. Some faces were apprehensive but I told myself, today, I am going to have fun. Loosen up woman, you are not going to do this any other way!
The prize
The 5h30 pacers were singing not far behind me. They were singing Di Tanjung Katong to entertain the SG runners as we ran through Kampung Baru area. Then they sang one or two lines of Bengawan Solo. I was keeping up with them for a while of course, how would I otherwise heard them?
Days before the event I had studied the race route – I knew by heart where the kms are – by the time I reached the area of KLCC towards Pavillion, I began to be suspicious of my Garmin. I was not only clocking 5 mins per km, I was improving to 3 mins per km, yet I wasn’t panting. For one second I thought I was a Wonder Woman but I didn’t stay in that dreamy state for long and quick to conclude it was my watch that has gone crazy, not me. At a later stage I found out some other runners were experiencing the same trouble with GPS.
I kept running and my pace was better than during training. However, if my Garmin had not gone awry, it would have been better, but then again c’est la vie, deal with it, don’t make a drama. I have came out here to run the marathon. My eyes were firmly fixed on this objective.
Nora’s loot
When the fajr prayer time came, I was near Taman Titiwangsa, some Moslem stopped to pray at the nearby Petronas station. I continued my run towards DUKE highway, soon after I collected my finisher tee band and continued to run towards the 21 km marker. The distance between 21-30 seemed to go on forever. My son had earlier shared that the challenge really began after 21km. On my own, during my weekly training, I found the same as well. The only thing which was different during the real event was, there were water stations at each 1.6km interval. This was super helpful.
Remembering well what my coach told me, sip the water, don’t gulp it, I followed this. I was efficient at it and I never really stop. At some stations, there were wet sponges, after the second one, I decided to keep the sponge with me, wetting it with drinking water at the following ones. I never have really thought that such a humble sponge can do wonders. Here are what I did with it – I stuck them on the back of my tee to cool my aching stiff neck, or, I wiped my face with it, or wet my lips which at times gone dry. The last thing I did with it was when I used the toilet for the very last time – slow runners like me never have the pleasure of using the toilet tissue, they are all used up!
Nora’s LSD – Train with me
Going up the hills after having run 30km proved to be very challenging. I used the crawly part to chat with other runners just to stop me from attacking other walkers (I am a GoT fan, these ain’t white walkers) and to silence the bad voices in my head who were ever so keen and determined to tell me that I am an insane person.
At the Finish. Still looking fresh after 42km and assaulting the hills of Bukit Tunku
With Sally who came in at 5hr 44mins
After 4 hours of running, the gentle slopes of Bukit Tunku were almost like K2 and later I found that even the speed bump after 40km felt like the Everest. Yeah, I am a drama queen – but go on, check with others who ran the race, you will surely hear same story.
Throughout the run I kept recalling what my coach had shared with me – finish strong Nora. As the small hill near St Regis ended, I started running. I want to finish this. The 6h30 pacers were not anywhere near me so I better run to keep them far from me. After a km or so, the finish line became visible and just like I have replayed the blockbuster movie again and again in my head – I crossed the finish line at official time of 6h8m.
It was a jubilation, I have not had this feeling ever! It would have been better if I came in sub 6. I think I might have gone sub 6, but you know all those loo breaks, make up touch ups added that extra 8 minutes.
My #bigkidmoments takeaways are :
- do all you can to silence those voices
- you can do anything when you genuinely want to do it
- reach for the stars -you only live once. Create those magical moments
So I did my first full marathon – have you?
—- Nora
I wager Nora will run another marathon.