A Humbling Experience

It's been a pretty low weekend for me, with my 2nd 1/2 marathon race not going well at all after finishing my first 1/2 marathon of the year with good a 1:17 3 weeks ago. But as I said before, rather than looking at my achievements in my athletic life, I'd rather look at the failures and see what there is to be learned from it, as it is only after putting yourself through some tough situations, you then learn so much more.

In a nutshell, the race started off pretty well and I was tacking along with the top women and a few top non elite men until 10ks into the run when my stomach gave way. All I could think of then was to find a toilet nearby (couldnt find any!) and to get to the finish line as fast as possible. My mile pace dropped from about 5:50-6min/mile to 30s slower per mile as my whole body was suffering at that point from the stomach ache and the effort. In my athletic life never have I had so many people (women, old guys etc etc) overtake me during a running race. As each person passed on thoughts of throwing the towel came in but as I carried on, you realise that sometimes youve never truly achieved anything until youve been put through and lived through some humbling situations in life and to be honest, I truly learned the meaning of humbleness and humility yesterday as I struggled to get to the finish of the 1/2 marathon in 1hr 24mins when expecting a time 6-7 mins faster. As I struggled to take each step while looking forward to evey aid station as another beacon of hope, the story of rutger beke and his exploits in Kona 2007 came to mind (Link).

In my mind there was still miles to go. Yet, I was already tired, sore, depleted, with a stomach ache and suffering from the cold winds. I am dehydrated and suffering. When things get tough, when we are down, when we struggle to just get by - how do we respond? Using this race as a metaphor for our daily activities, we first just keep going. We put one foot in front of the other, keep going in the right direction, don’t give up and just keep on going. We don’t stop, we don’t give in. We simply move forward.

Of course, we look forward to the aid stations. Aid stations during the run become beacons of hope. They are incremental goals that we need psychologically in order to conquer the larger task. They keep us going. What are your daily aid stations? What keeps you going?

Just like rutger beke and the other pros do, we tough it out! I look forward to running the cap 10k at the end of march and doing well in the Galveston 1/2 ironman come April. This race hasnt been my best results wise but it teached me not to give up - always finish and how as humans, anything can change in the blink of an eye. Humbleness and humility was also the order of the day as now I've now learned the true meaning of those 2 words.

On the brightside, Im sure no one will improve as many places as me next year if I do the same race again! Or any other 1/2 marathon! =) Couldnt possibly have any other day (athletically speaking) as bad as yesterday again...I hope..On the other hand I hope to have days that are as spiritually enlightening as yesterday was everyday of my life!

To think of it. Endurance sports has been the source of most of the frustrations, achievements, happiness and sadness of my adult life so far and Im sure there's more to come!

Keep moving forward,

Yuen