Keep left, You're being Overtaken

Nigel and I went for a couple of runs over the last few weekends – namely the Army Half-Marathon and the POSB Kids Run. We went for the 5km and 10km runs respectively and relatively speaking, we both did well.

This is the last I saw of Nigel during the run.

In my mind, I had this vision where we would be running side by side the entire distance and then crossing the finish line together as a father-son team. This was purely in my mind and I think I even told him when we started the first run, “stick together, don’t get lost”.

When the horn blared, we started off together, somewhat. You know how it is when there is a mass of people, most of them walking and looking for Pokémon, you have to jump left and right, weave between others, similar to how motorcycles dangerously navigate the highways. He started pulling ahead somewhat and kept turning around to see if I was still behind. Each time he turned, there was a risk of him crashing into someone and it also put pressure on me to keep up, which I wasn’t prepared to do while my engine was still warming up.

So I told him to go ahead and we would meet at the end – which turned out to be a great idea for me given the fact that I was still alive at the end. I think his idea was to race to the end as quickly as possible so he could play with his phone without me tell him to keep it – and yes, the phone was a practical necessity for me to be able to locate him among the crowd.

During my slow and leisurely run (I made it a point to keep running and not to walk), I had time to reflect on the first few times I took him for runs (he must have been 6 or 7 years old) and how I (can't capital an already capital I) had to keep turning around to ask him to catch up and stop lagging behind – what has happened?, I asked myself.

When we did the 10km run the following week, the vision on my mind was completely different. As we were walking to the starting line at 6.15am, the sky still pitch-black, I told him to go ahead and we would meet at the end. He came in 16 minutes ahead of me, completing the race in 59 minutes. As for me, I’m just happy to finish it without walking (except once when I stopped to take a picture of the 9km marker).

So there you go, I’ve lost the crown as the best runner in the family. He hasn’t started tempting me with ice-cream and 100 plus yet – but in the years ahead, it could likely happen.