By Les Tan/Red Sports

I went for a Nike training run this evening at Marina Bay Promenade. I’m still smiling because I haven’t run yet. (Photo by Raena Cheong/Nike)

 

“Can you still run 10km?” asked the Wife.

I can always trust the Wife to get to the point.

You see, when I started Red Sports back in 2007, I could complete an Olympic distance triathlon — 1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run — comfortably. (But very slowly. Serious triathletes always love to ask me which was my fastest discipline. I always tell them: “Slow, slow, and damn slow.”)

The irony is that after five and a half years of sitting on my backside editing at my laptop to keep Red Sports going, my fitness levels has hit ‘E’ on the fuel gauge.

Not only that, my jeans were getting tight. You know, the-button-is-causing-me-internal-injuries kind of tight. I refuse to buy bigger jeans because I hate shopping, so I thought to myself: “You got to move it.”

So I decided I was going to go for the Nike We Run SG 10K. Long enough, but not too long. A nice stretch target. So I’ve been hitting the road and trails — the green corridor is lovely — and enjoying the outdoors again.

Of course, what I do, cannot seriously be considered running. It is more like a waddle. With shrunken quadriceps, hamstrings and calf muscles on my left leg because of two operations (anterior cruciate ligament tear and metatarsal stress fracture), the Wife said to me the other day: “You run funny.”

Soh Rui Yong, the man who won the 2012 Army Half Marathon, worked out a theory of running evolution with me:

Waddle —> Shuffle —> Jog —> Run —> Fly

Rui Yong flies. I waddle.

If you think I’m joking, just so you know, my 5km timing is 34 minutes. When I break 30min for the 5km, I get promoted to Shuffle status.

One should always have targets, however modest, won’t you agree?

So if you see a guy in a RED tee waddling on the street, say hi.

N.B. This post is part of a sponsored collaboration with Nike Singapore for the We Run SG 10K event.