Blog

This past weekend, my friends and I had the incredible opportunity to support our fellow runners participating in the 2024 Comrades Marathon. We assisted 41 runners from various clubs, ensuring their race nutrition was prepared and handed over 30km into the race. Most of these runners train with us under Michelle’s guidance, and a few close friends also entrusted us with their race needs. Organising this effort required extensive planning and hard work. I never anticipated an easy task; I knew it would be challenging and exhausting. Watching the Comrades from my living room is a far cry from being out there on the ground. Watching the finish line live was intense and emotional—I often found myself in tears—but while working at our station, we had no time for emotions as we focused on our responsibilities. ...

Recently, a reader of mine, who has become a friend over the past two years, completed her first marathon. One of the first questions she ever asked me was on how to rekindle self-love. The completion of her inaugural marathon made me think back to this question. I felt the need to revisit my answer, and I wondered if, during her marathon training, my friend discovered an answer of her own to her original question. ...

Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen two inspiring stories on my social media feed of individuals who underwent bariatric surgery and became avid runners. I don’t know a diplomatic way to say this so I will say it straight up: These stories always make me feel so jealous. But upon deeper reflection, I realise it’s not just jealousy I sense; there’s also a profound admiration for their determination and the support they received through their journey. ...

This past week, a post in a weight loss group I follow struck a chord: “I so desperately want to join but am afraid I’ll fail again.” This post makes it seem like there are only two options: either you’re following a program or you’re not (and there’s a leap of faith to take between the two options). But it’s not that simple. There’s more nuance to it. Yet, many hold onto this binary belief, which, in my opinion, is the main reason why most diets fail. ...

Last Wednesday, as usual, I was out for an early morning run. On my way back to my car, I passed by a homeless person. It was evident that he had spent the night nearby, as he was busy preparing for the day ahead, applying deodorant spray to his upper body. Observing this scene, I couldn’t help but notice the disparity between his circumstances and the small act of self-care he engaged in. Despite his lack of access to basic amenities like regular bathing, his decision to apply deodorant spoke volumes about his resilience and sense of dignity. To an outsider like myself, his situation might have seemed hopeless. However, he still cared and retained some hope. ...

In recent months, I’ve been pushing myself hard, especially in my 5km time trials. And it’s paying off—I can now run them about 4 minutes faster than I could at the start of the year. When I’m honest about it, I have to admit that, in general, working hard sucks. It’s tough to always be up by 4:30 so I can hit the road early enough to be at my desk in time for my workday to start. It’s hard to keep at it consistently. When I then add extra pressure on myself to push even harder during a time trial, it’s exhausting and leaves me tired for days. Yet I can’t stop smiling when things work out as planned. The benefits must outweigh the tiredness, as it’s not just about feeling happy. ...

At a recent business update session, as a motivational talk, we discussed limiting beliefs, which made me think of something I wrote in ‘My First Marathon Training’: “There are two things I believe about myself and running: I don’t have it in me to run the second half of a long run faster than the first. I cannot run much faster than I currently do.” Originally, I considered the above two beliefs as just me being realistic (which is also important to be from time to time). But after our business update session, I can now see they were limiting beliefs, as I’ve since proven both wrong and for a long time, I was scared to, for example, start a long run cautiously to finish it stronger. That is the problem with limiting beliefs. They prevent us from trying. ...

“I am not where I want to be yet, but I feel empowered and supported to get there.” These were my words to my coach when I thanked her two weeks ago for coaching me this past year. It is not like I pondered for long on what to say to her. The words just sort of slipped out - since then, these words have been milling around in my mind. ...

Recently, I had the honour of pacing a fellow runner on her 5 km time trial. Pacing someone is a stressful task to undertake. I was mainly worried about disappointing her by not having her reach her target. Beforehand, I worked out a pacing strategy for us, taking into account the elevation gain of the route we were going to run. This pacing strategy should’ve comfortably gotten us to 40 minutes, maybe even a bit faster if we could finish strong. ...

A weekend ago, one of my MCM friends joined me for a RunZone club run - which is, of course, a much larger attended session than a session of our small regular training group. We run at a similar pace, and during our run, we talked about how refreshing it was to not be at the back of the pack but surrounded by so many other runners also running at our pace. ...