It Burns...In An Orange Way

The Runner In Red

It was the first free run for me. No registration fee was required (but which means no finishers’ medal for me). It was free, so why not? Donned in my newly purchased Addidas red running shirts, my Addidas Clima cool shorts and my new fiery red Addizero, I arrived at The E-Curve at about 6.40 a.m. on a Sunday morning on 25th July 2010. I got my free bib from Sarge Dann (my bootcamp instructor, who was also running on that day and therefore invariably gave me tension) and started doing the warm up and stretching exercise. The women’s flag off time was at 7.15 a.m whilst the men’s was 10 minutes later. Armored with my new running attire and powered with my specially handpicked songs categorized under ‘Power Run’ playlist on my iPod, I felt more confident than my two previous runs. With Bon Jovi’s ‘Have A Nice Day’ blasting away at my ears, I started off running at a comfortable pace. I was checking on my RunKeeper’s record in my iPhone and was quite pleased with my pace and time for the first 3 km. The disaster started at the 4th km. The new shorts that I bought began to chaff against the skins on my inner thighs. At first, I tried to ignore the ‘discomfort’ by pulling the shorts lower. After many attempts at pulling and readjusting, the burning sensation on my inner thighs became excruciatingly painful that I had to stop running and walked instead. At one point, Sarge Dann ran past me and spotted me walking. In his usual commanding demeanour, he turned his head and shouted ‘Lilian, don’t walk, RUN!!! Of course this happened in like 3 seconds as Sarge Dann literally ‘galloped’ and darted past I like a gush of wind. I did try to sprint and walk, sprint and walk doing my usual stunts. However, I guessed the pain was very obvious from my distorted face to the extent that a kind lady actually stopped and asked me if I were all right. Well, sympathy was exactly the right dose to provoke my kiasuness. I gritted my teeth, held on my fist and ran, and ran, and ran. When I reached the finish line (in 1 hour 13 minutes), all I wanted to do was to apply Vaseline on my inner thighs. My RunKeeper recorded a distance of 11.93 km (despite the run was supposedly a 11 km run) at an average speed of 9.59 km/hr and a total of 1043 calories was burnt (in actual fact, portions of my skin were burnt too).

The aftermath was the actual climax of this run. I went home with severe friction burns on both my inner thighs – literally ‘burnt’/hangus. I dreaded the shower for 2 hours hoping the skin would somehow cured by itself miraculously. When I went into the shower and when the water reached my skin, a streak of foul words and curses escaped my mouth! I was so tired that I slept until the afternoon. I woke up only to eat my lunch and then dozed off again. When I went out that night to watch Inception with Pinky and Grace, I had to walk like a crab with my two legs 1 foot apart from each other.

The Orange Run – Medal-less.

The sight of me walking as if I had just been gang raped 10 times in a shopping mall – Priceless.

A Big Hooyah To The Original Bootcampers