But while I was copywriting an annual report for an oil company, I stumbled upon a series of quotes that inspired me. One quote in particular, stayed with me, and I ruminated about it over days, in the empty hours between busy periods at work. It simply said: "The greatest of journeys can be planned on the back of an envelope."
It got me wondering if it was time to put into action all those things I've always wanted to do, but never got down to. Another of my favourite quotes also came into mind, one that I got teased about, but I shall just write it here nonetheless - "anything worth striving for is worth measuring." Because if you can't even be bothered to put pen to paper to track how far you're going, you don't really want to do something.
So I bit the bullet. And here is one of the things I have always wanted to do, that I finally did -Climb the Swisshotel.
Before I did it. there were plenty of naysayers. I got a lot of stick from my own family, who said that I was crazy, that I'd be better off using the time to prepare for my finance papers, that I'd never make it to the top of the tower because I was too fat to run. (that one really rankled, because I've rediscovered a fondness for pastries and dessert and it was starting to show) And none of my friends wanted to do it either, because they didn't see the point of it. Pay money to torture yourself? I'd rather enjoy, they said.
But one thing I've learnt through this entire experience is, it is your life to lead, and your decisions alone will determine the kind of life you live.
It wasn't easy preparing for the race though. I tried training after work, which was okay at first, till work got a little too crazy and started ending at 8pm every day, by which time there was just enough time for me to get home, cram in a bit of studying, and go to sleep. So it became training sessions at 7am in the mornings, before most people got up for work.
And it was really tough getting up every morning. Some mornings, I hated myself. I asked myself why I put myself through all this. And the only answer I had was because I knew I had to do it. Some days I ran up a whole HDB block three times, others I swam, or hit the gym. Really, sometimes it is a lot easier when you stop asking yourself stuff and just do it.
But as the best of plans always do, they tend to go awry. I got hit with an extra caseload of stuff at work just a week before the race, which saw me going home at 10pm most days, a bit earlier if I was lucky, which effectively put an end to all training. And perhaps due to the long hours, I also got a little sick.
So on Sunday morning, the day of the marathon, I was carrying a slight cold, and wondering if I was going to make it. But somewhere inside me was also the rush that I was finally about to do something I'd always dreamed of.
The run itself took a long time to start. There were waves of participants to flag off, and my category didn't start till 10am, a full 3 hours after I'd collected my race pack. And throughout the wait I looked around at all the faces of the different people from all walks of life who had come to put themselves through this. They were normal people, just like you and me. The only difference was, they had decided that on this morning, they were going to run up the hotel, and they would not stop till they were on the helipad atop those 73 floors. I told myself I wouldn't stop either.
The race itself seems unreal, now that I've finished it. I sprinted up the first 10 floors, and by the 20th I realised that maybe this was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought. And at that point, there were still 53 more floors to go. Every 10 floors, I had just one thought on my mind. And that thought was simply to quit and just take the lift down to the first floor. The urge to quit was like an itch that wouldn't go away, and it only intensified with each floor I climbed. At one point I literally felt like the voice in my head was screaming.
By the 40th floor, I couldn't breathe because the stairwell was stuffy and I'd been running at full speed. And to give a sense of scale, 40 floors is running up the average HDB flat maybe 3-4 times. And after another 10 floors, my legs and my brain were literally sending mixed messages. In my mind I would be telling my legs to climb, but somehow lifting them felt like moving blocks of lead. And sometimes, I could feel myself willing my legs to move, only to see them remain stationary. But at that point that was no way out but up. I saw many other tired guys around me, all pushing themselves a step at a time, some of them panting heavily, others leaning hard on the railings. Some of them even puked. And there were others who stopped and sat on the stairs, prompting the race marshals to ask if they were okay.
I realised that this was the part of the race that no one saw. Every one sees the happy faces at the start line, and the relieved ones at the finish, but no one sees the pain and suffering of the runners in between. And in this stairwell, stuffy, hot and seemingly neverending, I was coming face to face with pure unbridled suffering, that of my own, and the hundreds of others who had decided to run this punishing course with me. In a way, it was like a metaphor for life itself, for any journey worth undertaking. You sign up to do something, you do it, suffering like shit along the way, and at the end, it's a massive relief and you feel like you've accomplished something. Sometimes nobody notices, but hell it feels massive ticking that thing off your bucket list.
Indeed, reaching the top was a relief, but it was nothing like I'd expected. I'd always imagined myself running past the finishing line with a big smile and arms raised, but the actual event itself was very different. All I could think of was "this is almost over", and all I could feel was pain. But the amazing thing was, the pain disappeared when I saw the finishing line itself. Somehow my legs started listening to me again, which was amazing considering they'd not been doing so for the better part of 10 minutes, and I sprinted past the finishing line into the ridiculously strong sunlight atop the helipad.
One of the female marshals put a medal on my neck, and I ran towards the edge of the helipad thinking "What a wonderful view" before making a quick getaway back down into the shade. You might be wondering why the hell I ran all the way up there just to get right out of the place, but I can tell you, after a run like that, the last thing you really want is to be under sunlight so strong you can hardly open your eyes. The sunlight made me feel so faint I thought I was going to do so right on that rooftop, and if I had done that it would probably have made the papers and I would never have heard the end of it from my family. So all I could think was, even if I'm going to faint here today I'm not going to faint up here where the whole world can see me. I will run into some dark corner of the swisshotel and faint. It was amazing that even in a time like that I could still think of saving face.
And so that was it. The whole run took just 18 minutes, a little slower than I'd wanted, but finishing it was what really mattered. And the funny part was, after I did the run, my family members couldn't stop telling other people about it. Well, at least it wasn't about how their son ended up passing out on the rooftop.
"This medal certifies you as a veritable pain lover. Some people love lasagna, others love prata, you fucking ran up 73 floors. Congratulations. You're batshit insane, and you have a chunk of metal to prove it. Booyah."Now, for #2.