Contributed by reader Tan Soo Eng

I thought I would not run another marathon again after completing my first two marathons last year. I completed my first marathon in San Francisco in August, and went on to do a second one in December in Singapore.

I overdid it.

My right knee has never felt the same again. It was clearly a case of overuse.

Luckily, I didn't stop running altogether. Every Sunday, I still find myself dragging my tired body out of bed at 6am, hopping into my friend's car for a ride to East Coast Park. However, instead of following a training schedule, the runs are 6km this week, 8km next week, 10km the week after, then repeat from 6km.

It is more about having done "some exercise" in the week, and I stopped experiencing the highs of a hard run. Nursing my injured knee, stress from work and lack of a marathon goal are my excuses.

Then the adidas Sundown Marathon came. Two of my friends ran in it: one in the full marathon and another in the 10k event. I ran the 10k event. The thing is, I did not even want to run in the first place.

Somehow as the day drew near, I found myself curious to know how I would do without having trained for it. So I decided to go for it.

That's when I remembered – running feels good! Really running, getting into the rhythm, chasing the person in front of me, feeling my lungs burn makes me feel alive.

It was a very hot and humid evening, and my top was soaked, but I couldn't shake off my excitement. I wanted to jump up and down and run another 5km, but I kept that to myself. Instead, I turned around to congratulate a few runners who finished with me. Of course, I also checked with them on their finishing time: 1 hr 10 minutes. Not great - but it was exactly where I was before I started marathon training two years ago.

It brought back a lot of memories of my journey towards my first marathon run. There were many ups and downs – and it was great I slowly discovered the need for warm up, isotonics, carbo on the run, post run recovery, keeping a running log.

I had clocked a 53min 10k only about a year ago. Perhaps, I was a little disappointed by my time at Sundown. However, I knew it was a start to a new round of training again.

I signed myself up for the Army half marathon so I have something to train for. Of course, there is a training plan - 10 week preparation plan based on my last marathon time based on Runner's World Smart Coach.

My knee? It still hurts, but I'm doing everything I can to keep running!