The moment that challenges me the most...

Dear bloggie,

Imagine...

Urself gasping for breath,
U feel a tingling cramping sensation on ur left shoulder,
U are surrounded by the darkness of the early morning only guided by the dimly lit street lights,
Ur vision is a constant blur due to the fogs & water in ur glasses,
It takes ur complete effort to take a just step for each step sends shockwaves to the ball of ur aching feet,
Ur are drenched wet from head to toe, inside and outside,
U feel like ur weight + a ton due to the resistance of the wind, heavy rainfall and water soaked into ur clothes,
U are exposed with no protection what so ever to the bombarding of heavy raindrop from the heaven skies,
U know u had barely finished 1/2 way through...
Ur spirit starts to dampen, ur willpower starts to erode, and doubt starts to haunt ur mind....

U start to ponder....
"WTF am I doing here? I should be in my bed with a thick blanket and sock on my cold feet"

This is how I felt during about 13K mark in my 1/2 marathon run last Sunday. For ur information, it started to rain when I reached the 10K mark and by 11-12K+, it started to rain heavy. When I say heavy here, I mean really heavy. The rainfall where if u sit in ur car, u can heard loud sounds of raindrops bombarding the roof of ur car. Imagine urself outside ur car dressed in just a vest, a short sport pants, socks and shoes. To be honest, tis is the first time since I started running in these events, I thought about quitting a race. Each step at that moment were like the hardest steps I ever took in my life.

Some of u are probably lost, so let me start tis rather tall tale (for me la) from the start...

I was awoken from my sleepless slumber by the sound of beeping alarm. My body automatically arose and I see my room mate, Daniel also arose from his slumber. He exclaim "It's 2.30am de". My mind was still 1/2 asleep but those words were enuff to send it into a frantic panic mode. OMG!!! We had overslept!!! Daniel and I quicky got ourself dress into our war gears and rush outta the room. Our poor hostess (Sori, dunno spelling for her name) was sitting 1/2 asleep at the dinning table. I felt a slight pangs of guilt back then, but that guilt was replaced quickly by the panic to get to where we are supposed to be right now. Our hostess drove us to our destination, in the car all sorts of thought of arriving late played on my mind. Enduring a journey more than 300K+, arriving 1 day earlier, sacrificing 1 day of vacation... only to be late...!?

Anyway, more panic ensues as we almost arrive at our destination, there was a road block. It seem this is as far as our hostess could drive us. Daniel and I had to make the rest of the journey to our destination on foot. We started of walking, there were also a few others like us that was heading to the same destination walked the same road. The road seem to stretch forever, as when we heard the loud sound of countdown, Daniel and I started to shift a gear up and started jogging. I was undecided at that point to shift another gear up or remain the stable jogging pace as I fear going to fast now would cost me dearly later. We remained at rather slow jogging pace. I sighed a silent sigh of relief when we finally arrive at our destination and there were still many people dressed in bright yellow vest walking around. We weren't late. We stop jogging and started walked (nice warm up I have to admit) among those of our same brethren, that just like us are heading to the same destination. We were JIT (Just In Time)...

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,

I feel the adrenaline +1
3...

My heart pumping faster
2...

This is it
1!!!

It's finally has began... Like bees being provoked from something threatening their hives, huges waves of peoples in yellow vests swarm pass the destination to embark on their own fight and journey for their holy grail...

Daniel and I kicked off with an easy walk as it was hard to jog or run in this swarm of peoples. After 3-4 minutes of walking, we finally reached our destination, the end of our early morning little adventure... Yet, as I step my foot onto and crossed the destination, a journey has ended but a new one has just began... The destination has became the start point for this new journey, and at the same time it is also the final destination of this journey (Very ironic, noes?)... Looking forward to the route in front of me, I feel the excitement, electricity & [insert watever positive energy u can think of here] of being at this event. I was running in the Penang 1/2 Marathon 2010...

(Incase if ur wondering, our destination was the starting line for the Penang Marathon 2010...)

[To be continued...]