Even Though It Hurts

Two Saturdays before the half¹, I fell about halfway through the last long run of the training cycle. I was running along the pavement just after Trevose Crescent, around the Raffles Town Club area, when I tripped on some uneven pavement and didn’t regain my balance in time. I sustained external injuries to both knees and my left elbow, and there was a weird feeling in my left knee. I didn’t think too much about it at the time because I’ve fallen while out running before, and the worst pain is usually during the first shower after the fall, and to the external injury. Anything that felt weird internally usually resolved itself pretty quickly. 

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¹ I feel like I should refer to it as the “Singapore Half-Marathon 2019” because I think that’s what the organisers intend, what with the WMM bid and all, but it’s just been so many years of “Eh are you doing stan chart this year?” and “Ya, but half only”, I can’t refer to it any other way.

So I ran home, which took another hour or so, to finish that run (it was meant to be 2 hours long). I didn’t have much choice really because I needed to be home to get the boys to their Saturday morning let Husband sleep in activity, and I didn’t bring my ezlink card or my phone². 

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² Though I did see Riana from Coached out running on the way back, I recognised her from social media and the video Coached released (a meet your teammates kind of thing), but how weird would it have been to have stopped her mid-run with bleeding knees? In retrospect, perhaps I should have, but I put it down to Singaporean paiseh-ness.

***

One to two hours later, it became clear that something wasn’t quite right. There wasn’t any swelling or bruising, but every time I stood up and put weight on my left foot, my left knee was horribly painful, like I would gasp in pain kind of painful. I had to hobble the first few steps before the pain eased up, and I came to dread sitting down (because I’d have to get up).  

Needless to say, I Freaked. Out. Wouldn’t you?!  We had a birthday party to attend later that Saturday, and Sunday was the school concert, so I had a lot to distract me³, but if you’ve been my real life friend for a significant enough period of time, you will know I magically still had the ability (and energy) to freak out⁴.

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³ Andrew’s class did an “Under the Sea” item (the Chinese version), and he was a red starfish. Daniel’s class did “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”; by virtue of age alone, the cute factor wasn’t as high, but I feel that I need to give a shout-out to both boys, because I am trying to be fair that way. 

⁴ Probably why I don’t have that many real life friends. I am thankful for those who stuck around, all four of you. Five if you count Husband. 

I Googled “knee injury” incessantly for the next few days, and kept praying that I would wake up one day sooner rather than later, with my left knee magically feeling better, and I could get on with tapering as planned… But surprise, surprise! obviously that didn’t happen. By the Wednesday after my left knee was still giving me problems every time I stood up, and I was freaked out enough to get in touch with two doctor friends (Kok and Mark), and made an appointment to see an osteopath. Because I had some slight swelling behind my knee, and Google said it was a Baker’s Cyst (the osteopath had his doubts), and Google also said osteopathy was helpful. I probably rely on Google too much.    

The osteopath was really nice – after doing some tests he said he couldn’t find anything wrong with my hamstring, and I think he did some tests to rule out a meniscus tear, so he said based on what I described, the not quite right feeling, it was probably a ligament sprain or tear (you can imagine the effect this had on me). He couldn’t make a formal diagnosis, but suggested I consider an MRI, if only because the half was so soon. He did also say that even if I had torn a ligament, I could probably still run because I would be running in a straight line. Being a paddler (he seems to have represented NZ at competitions), he was really understanding about my wanting to run despite this injury, and he didn’t discourage me from doing so. He encouraged a wait and see approach, and told me it was ok to try spinning and some easy running (I will be eternally grateful for him). Mark, being an orthopaedic doctor, did try to dissuade me from running, but I told him I was going to wait and see because I’m stubborn AF. 

Anyway, I sucked it up, plugged in to Les Mills On Demand⁵, and spinned. Spun. Did spin class. Went spinning, by myself. (Which is the correct way to say it?)

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⁵ Not the cheapest, and a bit silly because Les Mills classes are part of the Fitness First membership,  but it proved to be a good decision to subscribe. It also helped when I had ITB issues earlier this training cycle.

I continued to spend Too Much Time at work Googling knee injuries and just generally freaking out. My No. 1 Supporter, (Jon, for avoidance of doubt) said that the greatest injury was to my BRAIN, and given his experience with sports injuries, he was sure I would be fine by the time the half rolled around. “No, you have not got an ACL tear.  I have seen people who’ve torn their ACL, and I am very certain you have not torn your ACL.” He also said he thought I had been on the brink of overtraining, which is why the fall affected my left knee so badly (“The way you fell, it’s almost impossible to have sustained such a bad injury”), and that it was just as well I had an enforced break from running. 

***

I was grumpy and cantankerous and a pain to be around, but on the bright side, it finally gave me the ba*ls to do what I have always longed to but been just ever so slightly humchee to do. One week after the fall (so 3 days after I saw the osteopath and consulted doctor friends), we were at dinner at La Pizzaiola (Sime Darby Centre), and were seated at a table next to a family of five – father, mother, two teenaged girls and one teenaged boy. The oldest of the kids couldn’t have been more than 16 or 17.

The very first thing Daniel did after the first round of food and drink came was to knock over his glass of lime juice⁶ right after we had told him to be careful around it. Somehow being at a dining table turns children into bulls in china shops. 

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⁶ This is atas, freshly squeezed lime juice, and is wonderful. So this was a tremendous waste, both of the lime juice and money.

Jon was uptight because I had been on the friggin’ edge the entire day (missing running terribly, Googling knee injury recovery time, fretting about whether it was a sprain? A tear? If it was a tear, what did I tear? Messaging the long-suffering R miles away in Dubai but still willingly subjecting herself to my s**t because that’s what friends are for, worrying about how much fitness I was going to lose, OMG, etc.), and as the lime juice trickled off the table (Daniel did not get any on him, can you believe that?!), he said quite loudly and irritably, “GET OUT”.

As Jon swept Daniel out of the restaurant, one of the teenaged girls said, very audibly, “Why did he have to say ‘get out’? You can say, like, ‘Can you follow me outside, please?’”. 

I turned around and rolled my eyes at her. Without any fear!!!

To her parents’ credit, I heard them sheepishly mumble something like “You don’t understand, you don’t have children….”

Later that night, to make me feel better (and despite how annoyed he must have been at my level of unwarranted cantankerousness), Jon told me about the year he won at national schools after sustaining a hamstring injury two weeks from the competition (“I just did what I had to do to maintain my fitness, like push-ups” *mimics rapid succession of push-ups in the air* – this earned him an eyeroll, because not everyone can do push-ups in rapid succession like a 14 year old national schools pole vaulter, least of all ME), and the story of Steve Hooker at the 2009 World Athletics Championships (this is super inspiring, give it a read). I am hardly (and am unlikely to ever be) an athlete at Jonathan Lau’s level, much less Steve Hooker’s, but I have to say I was inspired and cheered up enough to actually take up Jon’s suggestion of giving pool running and swimming a go the next day⁷.

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⁷ I was waiting for Jon and the boys to pick me up for church outside Clementi 321 when this guy started chatting me up – he was from India and was here studying, and he was just really weird. When I finally managed to get away, right after refusing point blank to give him my number, HE FOLLOWED ME AND ASKED ME FOR MY NUMBER AGAIN. I just said no and walked away. The worst part was despite the number of people around, I felt no one would have helped because in their Sunday morning stupor, they wouldn’t have realised if anything was wrong.  

***

I recovered sufficiently to do the last two runs of the taper plus another spin class, and really, in the week before the half, I felt God reassuring me that I would complete this half and that my knee wouldn’t give way and I would have to give up running FOREVER and I would never find another sport as fulfilling and----- 

It wasn’t about PR-ing this time. Of course, one always hopes that one’s best effort on a given day will result in a PR, but I knew it would be difficult and a lot would depend on the weather, despite the whole “first time it’s an evening race!!!” thing. It may be cooler in the evening, but it also has the potential to be really humid, more so than the ungodly hour of 5.30am. 

It was that I’d put in a whole lot of training, committing to doing my weekday long run after work for about 6 weeks (this was dreadful, mentally) and all but giving up dessert and sweet things for about 5 weeks⁸. I’d also eaten the same thing for lunch for almost a month⁹– probably more – because it just worked for me calorie and nutrient wise and was easy to digest. I had promised myself that after I finished the half I would go on a major baking spree, starting with this apple pie that caught my eye a couple of months ago, and I knew it wouldn’t feel right if I went ahead with the baking spree without completing the half¹⁰. 

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⁸Redman sells Bob’s Better Bars – I stocked up on the PB & Chocolate on Wednesdays. $2.50 a bar before the Wednesday 10% discount. And I did allow myself some dark chocolate and a few bites of Jon’s grandmother’s birthday cake. 

⁹Rosemary chicken sandwich, no lettuce, add avocado, on rye bap or spinach bap or beetroot bap or sourdough or if they were out of all the aforesaid breads, country white. The counter staff at Cedele Metropolis now start shouting out my order, down to the type of bread, the moment they see me walking up. 

¹⁰I question whether this shows that my relationship with food has regressed?

Most of all, it was just about having some closure to this training cycle. I knew that I shouldn’t sacrifice long term knee health, especially since I’d already got runs planned for the first half of next year, but as I told my boss (yes, this wore me down to the point where she noticed and asked me why I seemed so tired and I told her I was tired from being grumpy because I was worried about not being able to run the half on Saturday), I’m just one of those shen2 jing1 bing4 people who will insist on wanting to do this kind of thing despite being, essentially, injured¹¹.

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¹¹Actually what I said was, I was one of those “irritating” people who would do this kind of thing, because it IS irritating. But she didn’t hear me because I mumbled it sheepishly so I went with shen2 jing1 bing4 instead when I repeated myself.  

***

I rushed through the race expo on Friday, stopping only to chit chat with Ben for a bit at the Coached booth, and was almost at the exit when I spotted a booth selling Bauerfeind knee guards. There was a cheerful young chap with neatly combed hair, and a bald uncle type with a tag on a lanyard that read PHYSIO. After listening to me rush through why I thought I needed to buy this very expensive kneeguard ($145), bald uncle type casually said I probably had a cartilage problem (my already frayed nerves almost snapped at this point) and informed me with a smirk on his face that I probably shouldn’t try to PR on Saturday. 

I had prayed – this sounds silly, but bear with me – that God would lead me to things that would help me get through Saturday – and impulsive as it was ($145?!?! On a kneeguard I didn’t even Google because I was in a rush to meet D for lunch?!?!) and as annoying as I found smirky uncle, I got fitted for one by cheerful young chap, handed over my card, and rushed off with the box containing the kneeguard sticking out of my resuable shopping bag where I had earlier stuffed the race pack. 

***

The half itself was, to be honest, quite horrible at parts. Despite the cooler evening air, it wasn’t pleasant running weather because of the humidity. I knew I didn’t have enough experience and training to tough it out at a PR or even close to PR pace, so I focused on just putting in a sustained, consistent effort. I ran a positive split, which I expected – as I came off the West Coast Highway (about the 16km mark) my core was hurting, I was slowing down despite putting in the same effort as I did at the start, and I wanted to give up so badly and run/walk the rest of the way. But I knew I would be disappointed with myself if I didn’t at least hang on to the end, and my training with Coached this past year and a bit helped me to keep on keeping on. I didn’t even get a rush of motivation when I spotted Jon and the boys at the side of the road near his office – the best and nicest surprise of the night. 

It was a HUGE relief to finally finish, and I was really happy with my time (and the kneeguard!!!) because I knew I’d given it my all (even more than at Gold Coast earlier this year). Walking to get my bag was a literal PAIN, as was the walk to the nearest MRT station after that (I’d also sustained a huge blister on my right foot from dumping water over my head, which soaked my socks and shoes), but I was happy and relieved and above all thankful that I got to run at all. And my left knee felt okay! And I knew Jon would say I TOLD YOU SO but I didn’t care!

Maybe I will never run well in Singapore – and I don’t have the time or money to fly around the world to races with cooler weather¹²– but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working hard and trying. 

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¹²There is a whole conversation to be had about running and privilege, bla bla bla; I think of this way too much already so nope not going there here. Haha. 

***

To apple pie, chocolate cookies with mint chips, chocolate chip cookies, maybe cheesecake again, a tea pound cake?, and most definitely BANANA CREAM PIE! I wish you a blessed December. Also, Jon has declared that he never wants to hear the word KNEE again. You know what to do the next time you see him. And D, I know you’re reading this – thanks for eating Cedele-esque food for lunch on Friday. It's been ten years since we did pupilage together, and as you predicted right after you issued the challenge, I failed to not not mention the K-word for the whole of Saturday before flag-off spectacularly. 

But Time Makes You Bolder

Even children get older

I’m gettin’ older, too

***

I had so many things I wanted to write about the night after the half-marathon: I lay in an uncomfortable, saggy bed in our serviced apartment, staring out of the window into an unfamiliar darkness – listening to the ocean, the boys’ even breathing; Daniel occasionally placing a warm hand on my arm, words streaming into sentences in my consciousness, a slightly damp pillow. I never did get to put down those words, even in my journal. I regret it a little now, as I type this on my comfortable bed back in Singapore, because I don’t think I will be able to recreate the magic of a story that is the side-effect of a low blood sugar level and which makes for wonderful, late-night reading, but we’ll see how this goes. 

***   

I hadn’t actually wanted to go up to Gold Coast to do the half-marathon this year – give it another year or two, I told Jon, I think I need more training (before we go to the expense of hauling the family overseas so I can try to shoot for a lifetime PB in the half-marathon). Jon was up for going this year, though, reasoning that our relative youth would balance out the effects of a longer training period. I’m not sure I agree with that, because I do think I still have a faster time in me (which just means we’ll go up to Gold Coast again??), but it sounded like fun – until I made arrangements for my mother and brother to come up so both of us could run, and I was struck by how similar circumstances were to the last half-marathon we’d done overseas in December 2013. Was this a sign? Had I jinxed things by wanting to do this race? Silly, I know, especially since I believed so strongly when I found out I was pregnant with Daniel that God was assuring us that Jon would be healed – and yet.   

Jon was supposed to go for his 5-year PET scan sometime in January, but because he was travelling so much for work, he ended up having to reschedule it and only got it done the week before we flew off. He had to fly again before we left for Gold Coast, so we still don’t know the results of the scan. He didn’t receive any calls when we were away though, and NCC has scheduled him for a follow-up in August. I think it'll be okay. 

***

Well I’ve been ‘fraid of changing

‘Cause I’ve built my life around you

I’ve spent hours and hours in my own head the past nine months, and I’ve found plenty of things to be ashamed of. Frustration, covetousness, envy, insecurity. Anger, worry, selfishness. But I’ve also found peace, patience, hope, and courage; found that God is faithful in His promise to sanctify. 

I can’t quite remember what I was like before we were told Jon’s tumour was malignant. More immature, I think; more self-centered, more prone to taking things for granted. I don’t think the people we were back then would have made the choices we have in respect of our careers, where we stay, how we want to bring up the boys. Nevertheless there are times I feel envious when I see or hear of what my peers are doing career-wise, investment-wise. Sometimes I even feel like I’m not “mum” enough because I don’t want to have more than two children (what does that even mean?). And on really bad days, when my level of job satisfaction reaches all new lows and I can almost taste the bitterness in the air around my desk at work, I think of private practice fondly. (D: your rose-tinted glasses are blinding you.) The high pay, always being on-call and “needed”, being so busy you don’t think or worry about anything else but work, the feeling of relief and satisfaction after the rush of pulling an all-nighter for a big hearing –

If I hadn’t felt the fear of losing Jon back then, almost 6 years ago now, I don’t think I would be as willing as I am now to make the constant choice to put aside the base desires of my heart and focus on what God affirms is good and right in His sight. The choices we have made have enabled us to have the emotional capacity to be honest with ourselves and who we are turning out to be, to reflect objectively on whether we have faced the trials in our lives with courage and faith, whether the choices we have made in response to those trials have led us closer to or further from God. Although a part of me will always wish we hadn’t had to go through everything we did, I am, today, inexplicably thankful for it all. I can only hope and pray that whatever happens in the future, I will continue to be.

***

I’m glad I took the plunge and decided to commit 100% to training with Coached, because finally, after all those years of striving – I will say it again, having kids really messes with your head – I have realised anew that it has always been about the running, and doing a lot of low-intensity high volume training suits me. 

It wasn’t easy slowing down in the beginning to keep my heart rate in the stipulated zone, being overtaken by aunties and uncles at the park connector (I’m still being overtaken all the time), but as the weeks went by and I got more efficient and more confident in the training, there was nothing that compared to getting out there before everyone else in the family was awake, especially because that was the only time of day it was cool in Singapore (this calls for a LOL. LOL!!! Have you seen the real feel temperature and humidity level at 6.30am?). 

I’m back to feeling that I like training more than races, something I thought I would never feel again. I still want to bring my PB down, but I feel somewhat different about it now. Less strive-y, more willing to be patient, keep my head down and put in the work. Maybe it’s because we finally got to run the half in Gold Coast – if Jon hadn't had the tumour we’d probably have put off trying for a baby until after the 2014 edition – and at the right time. I don’t think I would have appreciated how much work goes into a PB if I’d run it 5 years ago. 

My mum helped out a lot this training cycle so I could fit all my workouts in because Jon was travelling so much for work, staying later on the two weekdays she usually comes over to hang out with the boys, cooking simple, healthy dinners and also inviting me over for dinner on other days. (So. Much. Chicken. Soup.) I owe a lot of this PB to her, and to her investment in my commitment to this training cycle (I hope she also knows that there are more to come, haha). 

I had a few moments of Imposter Syndrome on the flight to Gold Coast OMG so many fast people on this flight, I’m not even doing the full marathon, what was I thinking, my mileage and pace is probably pitiful compared to what some of these people regularly do for fun, but she told me to remember that what was important was that I had committed to this, had been consistent in training, and that was what mattered (it is). 

There were times I wondered (again) about getting a helper, but I’ve said before that I don’t think I’m willing to give up the family closeness we’ve worked so hard for just for running, and I’m still not and will probably never be. Maybe I’m idealising the situation, but when the boys request without fail to speak to Jon before they go to bed, bickering over who gets to spend 15 minutes asking him to show his surroundings (Are you on the airline? Are you in the hotel? Are you in office?), when Andrew cries I want papa right before he falls asleep, I feel like it’s been worth my while, protecting Jon’s place in their hearts.

*** 

A blog post about a runcation would not be complete without recommendations, so for what it’s worth, here are some of my thoughts on Gold Coast and Brisbane. 

When we go up again (note that I didn’t say If), and if we bring the boys, I’ll probably stay at Surfers’ Paradise (again) or maybe Southport (which is closer to the race start), then after the race move to a serviced apartment in Coolangatta. Coolangatta is a suburb in Gold Coast about 30++km from Surfers’ Paradise, and is really near the airport (it’s also probably the reason, I realised, that the short form for the Gold Coast Airport is OOL. I kept thinking of oolong tea). This time round, we drove up to Brisbane the day after the race and stayed for about 3 days, then drove back to Gold Coast (we booked a serviced apartment in Coolangatta for the last night) because it was cheaper to fly back from OOL direct to Singapore. We ended up liking Coolangatta Beach so much that we extended our stay by a day. On our last full day, I went for a run with my brother – there’s a track that that runs along the coast that’s perfect for long runs, though we only did an out and back of about 7-8km – and then we joined everyone else at the beach.  

The boys splashed around at the edge of the ocean, got sand all over their clothes, dug holes, tirelessly ran back and forth filling pails with ocean water and emptying them, and were mighty pleased with the sandcastles they built by packing pails with wet sand and overturning them. After a bath and lunch which included an acai bowl with a huge dollop of peanut butter, Jon took them to the playground. After pizza for dinner, I packed them off to bed without a bath or brushing their teeth. An absolutely glorious day for a small boy, don’t you think?  

My body was protesting against angmoh food and meat by then, so I had yogurt, fruit and blanched broccolini for dinner (weird, I know). The two best brands of yogurt I tried were five a.m. (vanilla bean, passionfruit, mango, no added sugar) and Skyr (plain, strained Greek yogurt). Vaalia pouches were on offer at Cole’s and Woolworths, 4 for AUD 6, the kids liked the strawberry flavour, and the adults, the tropical one.  

We cooked quite a bit this trip, especially in the lead up to the race. Besides my mother's excellent meatballs, Pinky’s at Nobby Beach, Gold Coast, deserves special mention. The hash browns were something else, shredded potato and cheese pressed into bars and fried until crispy and brown on the outside. The banana bread was good, too. Served in thick, hefty slices, it wasn’t too sweet and had a slightly burnt crust (I greedily broke off all the edges before anyone else could get to them). 

I enjoyed our time in Brisbane too – I like cities as a general rule, particularly the view of the CBD at night (Brisbane’s didn’t disappoint), and Jon and I got to go on a date. We took the ferry, had dinner at George’s Paragon Seafood Restaurant, and walked back to the serviced apartment via a riverside path. George’s is Google’s highest rated restaurant in the Eagle Street Pier area. We didn’t think the food was that nice, and I was expecting better for the price we paid for my blackberry caipiroska, but it had a kitschy, epitome-of-class-for-provincial-tourists feel that I appreciated. 

We all felt the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary was rather overpriced, though the boys enjoyed the train ride, and we took another 1001 pictures of them feeding kangaroos. Jon found The Fat Controller at the Thomas show at The Workshops Rail Museum “creepy”, and the boys were far more interested in the play area (lots of train track parts to put together, but not enough Thomases to go around) than any of the exhibits. 

Here are some pictures, because everyone likes blog posts with pictures:

Daniel with the Pinky's banana bread

Riding the mini-train at The Workshops Rail Museum. It cost an extra AUD 3 per person, and didn't go very far. Okay, these trains usually can't go very far anyway, but it really did not go very far and made quite a few circles, probably to make people feel they were getting their money's worth

Train ride simulator at The Workshops Rail Museum. The boys enjoyed this too (the seats don't move)

The 1001st picture of my children feeding kangaroos at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary 

Act afraid! my mother said. But doesn't look like anyone got the memo (Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary) 

I love Cole's. When is NTUC bringing in double-seater trolleys? 

Handsome Husband with oolong fruit tea from Lü Cha, Brisbane. Worth a try, I can imagine it would be wonderful in summer

Field behind Sirromet Winery, where wild wallabies were observed and chased with great shrieks of delight (Kangaroo! They shouted, as the wallabies quickly bounded away)

  

Lastly, if you thought Jon was wearing army gear, I can confirm that he was