Sundown Marathon

So the big day came and went. I've officially completed my first ever full marathon. It wasn't easy. To put a finer point to it, it was agonizing and my timing bad. I attribute it to the lack of training. Not that I haven't been training diligently in the last two months. I have, but it wasn't long enough. Long in the distance sense. Problem was, I've been subjecting my legs and my knees to 15 to 20km of running all these while, so when I made them do more, they protested and gave me a hard time. As a result, the last 15km of the race was punishing. The pain got so bad that I had to stop completely after every kilometre for stretching. It didn't help that this was when we got to the heartland route in Tampines, the most uninspiring part of the race which made it doubly excruciating for me.

And one thing I really dislike about marathons is that things get really messy at the water stops. Empty cups and bottles get thrown all over the place. That plus the banana skins lying on the pavements was just disaster waiting to happen.

Anyway, the adrenaline did kick in towards the end, so the pain subsided and I managed to catch up eventually to reach the finishing line in 5 hours 50 minutes. As much as it sounds like a bad excuse, I know I could have been more well-prepared. I'm not sure when I'll run another marathon again, but if there is ever going to be a second one, it will definitely be a lot better than this.