My Sports Odyssey
I think I was born with a competitive gene but it was not awakened until one fateful day in 1978. It was the school sports day and I was primary six. Up to that point in time, I had never won a medal for any event in the previous years. It was the final and most important race of the sports day – the 100 metre race. I could never erase that memory of the last few seconds when two of my girl classmates turned their heads just before they crossed the finish line and shouted, “ You cannot catch us, tortoise!” I was never the same after that.
I have been active in sports nearly all my life but for very different reasons. When I entered secondary school, the most compelling image was that of the school sportsmen wearing their sports blazers and invited for the schools annual sports awards dinner. I recall asking to see what one of the senior boys received during the dinner. It was a package with a commendation medallion, a pair of school emblem patches that could be sewn onto a specially printed running T-shirt and shorts. I promised myself I would do whatever I could to receive those treasures.
Most schools are populated by a mix of jocks and nerds. I knew I was a nerd badly wanting to be in the company of the jocks. Those who represented our school in various sports were treated with respect like heroes. They strutted around the school oozing self-confidence. They were hugely popular and everyone laughed at their jokes. Sadly, that included me. I searched hard and settled on cross-country running as my ticket to that teenage stratosphere. Although we trained our guts out (eg. three times a week with weekday work-outs like one-mile times six and long runs of 20 -25 kilometers during weekends), I never made it to the first team. I had to console myself that even though I did not get to run in the actual inter-school races, at least I got to wear the much envied official school running gear.
I became a triple-jumper by default. When I was a first-year student at a junior college, I had learned that there were only two participants in the triple jump event. That meant that if I signed up for the event, I was guaranteed a medal. To my own surprise, I won and was thus selected to represent our college for the national schools championship together with the other real athletes. That led to my first encounter with defeat and understanding of how it felt. Personally, I was new to the event of triple jump and was entirely overawed by the electrifying atmosphere of participating in the National Stadium. Each triple jumper was granted three qualifying jumps and from those jumps, the best six competitors were then chosen to go into the final round with another three attempts each. I disqualified on two of the three jumps by over-stepping the take-off board and the only qualified jump was way below even my training mark. That year, our college track and field team was trounced and we finished that national championship with dismay and shame.
The year-end school vacation was used to rebuild our athletic team. Our coach organized a week-long camp during which we were given fiery pep talks every night. All the athletes sat in focus groups to analyze where we had gone wrong and brainstormed how we could win the national championships. Every training session was accompanied by the blasting of the song “Eye of the Tiger” by the rock group Survivor [ the theme song for Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky 3 that topped the billboard 100 for six weeks ]. Although it feels so tacky now, it was hair-raisingly inspiring for that bunch of 17 year-olds. Each night of the camp, we sat in the lecture hall munching pop corns and watching video clips of Olympic athletes training. We went to sleep dreaming of the glory of winning.
The first six months of 1984 were hell for us. We trained a minimum of four hours everyday except Sunday. I had even returned to my college grounds on Sundays secretly to put in one more workout because I had so badly wanted to win a medal at the national championship in July that year. There were countless days when I had waddled like a duck because of the excessive squats the coach made us do in the gym [ each of us was supposed to do three sets of twelve squats with a bar-bell loaded with 80 kg ]. I had also lost count of the number of lectures that I had slept through due to sheer fatigue of over-training. The only consolation was that I was among fiercely committed athletes who were all suffering the same exhaustion from our collective commitment to win as a team.
As you might expect, I did well enough for a silver medal for the triple jump. But the sweetest victory was the fact that our college track and field team emerged champion, beating the last year’s champion by a mere two points. I remembered crying shamelessly on the final day of the championship as I had experienced for the first time in my life, the ecstasy of victory following the agony of defeat. By then, my competitive gene was in full throttle.
I enlisted for national service fully prepared for the physical demand of basic military training (BMT) at Pulau Tekong. I out-ran every recruit in that batch save one – Ivan Seet. He was the rugyby captain from my same college and was equally competitive, if not worse. We ran neck-to-neck during every training run and every standard obstacle course (SOC). Sometime, he would finish ahead but I would compensate the next run by beating him. The three month course ended with an award for the recruit who would be labeled “Best PT”, meaning best in physical training. It was a prestigious award and it could only go to one of us. To make the rivalry worse, Ivan was the favourite pick of one of the corporals (Corporal Lim) and I was the choice recruit of another corporal (Corporal Ong) who hated the one who favoured Ivan.
Corporal Ong was a typical “Ah Beng”, one who was proud of his distinctive brand of Singlish and his low educational status. He took me aside the night before the final IPPT (Individual Physical Performance Test) and gave me his version of a pep talk.
“Ey, Recruit Tan, you can win this Best PT, leh. Recruit Seet can run fast but he is fatter than you. So that mean hah, you got better chance than him. That’s why I bet 50 bucks on you to win. You better donch make me lose face, ok?” (apologies to those who adhere to grammatical English)
It turned out that Ivan and I ran in two different groups because of the large numbers of recruits involved in the IPPT. Although we had both finished first in our runs, his timing for the 2.4 km was a few seconds better than mine. I was devastated. I was not looking forward to face my section commander, Corporal Ong. To my astonishment, he was not at all angry.
“Ey, Recruit Tan, you damn suay leh. If you and Recruit Seet ran together, then you got chance to beat him. Now like this, you lose is not very fair. But never mind lah, I know you try your best. This kind of lose, is very ok one.”
I learned from one who was less educated the wisdom of competition – as long as one puts in his best effort, it is no shame not to have won. Sportsmanship 101!
The next milestone came when I was posted to the 9th Division of the Singapore Army as a officer-in-command (OC). During my first in-camp training (ICT), the brigade commander, Lieutenant-Colonel (LTC) Wong M.T. stood at the start-line as we gathered for our IPPT 2.4 km run and told me in his booming voice, “Poh Kiang, officers must lead by example and so I expect you to come in first for the 2.4 km run.” Just like that – a matter-of-fact statement but boy, did it work on my psyche. Whatever I did, I was not going to let him down. The running route in the old Portsdown Camp required us to complete three laps within the perimeter of the camp. And there he was, LTC Wong standing at the finish line screaming at me as I ran past him each lap. I nearly collapsed when I crossed the finish line but it was worth it. I completed the run under nine minutes and it felt good coming in first before the entire pack of reservists.
That “prove to your men” mentality defined me for the next decade as I served the Army first as an OC and later as a battalion CO (commanding officer). I trained hard the whole calendar year so that when the ICT came around, I was able to put up this performance as the one who “leads by example”.
I think I was 38 years old when it happened. It was the last 600 metres of the IPPT 2.4 km run and I was trailing another guy by about 30 metres. I was not about to let him finish ahead of me and so I stepped up the pace and closed in on him. Sensing that I was narrowing the gap, he did likewise and extended his lead to about 50 metres. At that point, I was thinking that if I pushed myself any further, I might end up as a casualty. I figured it would not look good on my orbituary that I died so as to beat someone on a IPPT run. When we completed the run, I walked over to congratulate him. He was ten years younger, I discovered to my delight. I felt better losing to a younger man). However, that marked a new chapter in my journey whereby I had to accept that finishing first in the IPPT 2.4 km was history - a significant lesson in humility.
In that same year, I started to experience sharp knee pain. What began as intermittent pain after a training run quickly progressed to constant pain. It deteriorated to a point where I had difficulty climbing up the multi-storey HDB carpark.When I mentioned this symptom to a couple of close friends, they were actually gleeful and welcomed me to the “middle age glucosamine club”! All the preceding years of interval and speed workouts were taking a toll on my knee joints. It was with much reluctance and bereavement that I came to a decision that I had to change my expectation and my running style. It was easier said than done since I was still chasing the annual goal of getting the $400 incentive for the gold award for the Army IPPT. Essentially, I had little or no idea how to run slowly.
Help came in the form of a good friend who picked up running in his mid-40s. BFG, as he is known on his blog, had wanted to shed some weight for for a better BMI. He was never a serious runner in the past and when he had started running in 2005, he was merely doing 5 km runs on the treadmill. However, since he was challenged to attempt the half marathon (Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon – SCSM 2006) by a friend, he has hitherto completed three half-marathons and three full marathons! Taking on the mettle of a renowned Runner’s World columnist, John “The Penguin” Bingham, BFG has taught me another philosophy that is new to me. It is about running for its own pleasure – not for prizes, not for speed, not for recognition. Bingham defines a penguine as a runner who is consumed by the pleasure of movement. My good friend, BFG says it well when he articulates this philosophy as “not fast, not sleek; merely dedicated”.
And so the paradox of life begins – even though I have been running for three decades, I am now leaving my comfort zone and learning anew how to run slow and far. It coincides with the changing needs of a person in his 40s when the need for achievement and public recognition is slowly being replaced by the need for lasting legacy. Running slowly turns out to be harder than I had thought. Even though I have managed to adopt a new running style that comfortably allows me to increase my mileage from 20 km per week to about 40 km per week, I still fight the constant urge to improve on my timing whatever distance I choose to run.
I have adopted a few new measures towards developing patience for distance running and the parallel challenge of finishing well in life. The most important of which is a new mindset. This is where Confucius has a useful maxim: It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. To help myself abandon old paradigms, I have set new goals to as to shift my focus. Instead of competing with others on how fast I run, I am now challenging myself to run longer than I have ever been able to. I am going to learn to achieve it patiently and slowly – I shall enter a 15 km race in 2008, run the half marathon in 2009 and finally go the whole way by running the SCSM 2010.
My eight-year daughter asked me innocently, “Why do you run so much?” I did not give her an immediate answer as the question had led me to wrestle with my motives for a long while. Other than standard reasons of maintaining health and fitness, I can attest to the benefit of being able to use the time on long runs to pray, reflect on deeper issues, think creatively. After ruminating on her question for nearly three months, I am almost certain that I would say to my daughter that I run because I have to. I am at a stage of my character formation where the values of patience and endurance need to be honed. And it is my belief that learning to slow down and run long contributes toward that personal development.
My wife and I had coffee with my sister recently and she shared that there are three sure signs of a man in mid-life stage: quitting his job to start a business, buying a sports car and training to run a marathon. While I am not contemplating on a business start-up or a fast and flashy car, I have met enough men in their 40s trying out marathons and triathlons to agree heartily that I am in that mid-life phase as well!
My journey continues and the road ahead looks exciting. My knees hardly hurt and my NIKE+SPORTBAND forces me to slow down according to the objectively recorded pace. I am sporting a nice tan from all my lunch time runs and my extra adipose deposits around the waste are less obvious. My wife has taken running seriously in the last three years and she is looking to go sub-60 minutes in the 10 km races she has signed up. My two daughters spend as much time outdoor cycling, roller-blading, swimming as indoor electronic occupations.
According to 2006 data from the World Health Organisation, a Singaporean man has a life expectancy of 78 years. It would be my dream that I will be running my final marathon in my 78th year and drop dead after I cross the finish line. I shall have it printed on my running bib next to my assigned number – DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), he has finished his race.
PK aka Fast2Slow
BFG note: May we all run to our 78th year! I would be happy to be able to still run in my 60s. Yes, DNR!
imaRunner is a series about ordinary people and their not-so-ordinary running achievements.
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