A year later and three minutes slower



Today was the second annual Singapore Shufflers 5k Handicap, where we arranged ourselves in ascending order of speed, and then ran around Bedok Reservoir. My speed had been judged on the basis of how fast I ran last year, which was a little cruel, because I did a 5k time of 19:36, and the best I’ve done so far this year (the one time I ran a 5k) was four minutes slower. In short, pretty much everyone overtook me before I got to the finish line. My plan for next year is to comprehensively sandbag it – run a series of 35 minute 5ks for the rest of 2018, and secretly practice alone at Bedok until I have at least a ten minute advantage over everyone else. What can go wrong with such a wheeze?

Speaking of wheezing, my throat is tight and uncomfortable to breathe through, and my nose is bunged up with snot. From checking the last few years of my blog, I realise this is the time of the year when I get a cold and feel dreadful for a few days. My wife was nice enough to take the kids out this morning and leave me to fester at home. I lay on my bed, devoid of energy, and assumed it was due to atmospheric conditions (there was an impending thunderstorm). However, even after the weather broke, I remained broken. So I guess I’m a bit sick. Oh well.

In the afternoon I met up with the rest of my family and they were unerringly cute. We went to the Art Science museum and they scampered around Futureworld for a couple of hours, before I abandoned them for my run (which I only made in the nick of time, due to taxi complexities). Then., after drinking a celebratory beer at only being 3 minutes slower than when I ran the same course last year, I got another car and went home, in order to give the girls a bath and then fall asleep in their bedroom. So I suppose that was quite a restful day off.


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