I never thought myself as being sportive or a sport person for quite a long time. When I was young, I was generally more introverted and probably also because of that, I don’t have a lot of self-confidence. I loved reading books and meddling with science and was never quite into sporting activities.
In secondary school, I never chose to join the NPCC, NCC or scouts or any club for that matter. However, I loved water and swimming was sometime that I wanted to learn. So it was good chance that I went to Outram Secondary School during my secondary schools days. Actually, I chose it because my sister was there, but also because its one of those few “non-elitist” schools that spotted a swimming pool.
One of the school rules was that we must select one sports and one non-sports club to join and for that I joined the harmonica band and life saving society. I guess it was in the life saving society that introduced some sporting activities to my rather bookwormish life and surprising I enjoyed those over night camps, swimming in the seas, roughing out in Ubin and kayaking in the reservoirs. However, those days did not trigger me to do more sports proactively, although I must have been proud to have been a life guard and a strong swimmer.
After leaving secondary school, I did my Electronics diploma at the French-Singapore Institute (FSI). It was unlike the other polytechnics with their activities and club houses. FSI was entirely work-like institute and so I spent most of my times either studying or socialising with friends.
It was during my last year in FSI that I started jogging regularly. This was also in prep for my army enlistment. I must say that the army developed my confidence in my own sporting ability. For one, I could run faster than quite a few of my army mates, even though I don’t have train as hard as they did. I had little issues roughing it out in the jungles and the terrains during my 3 months in basic training and 3 more months in SAFINCOS. I joined 2 SIR bravo coy after my SAFINCOS training and by good chance again, was put up as an admin NCO, because I was the only one who could type. So the rest of my army was not the intense field trainings that a lot of my army mates did.
I continued simply jogging by myself after the army and after I joined my first company at Ayer Rajah. I did okay I guess, but I always thought it was somewhat aimless.
I was somewhere in 1995 that a friend of mine introduced me to join the SAFRA running club at Bukit Merah. I actually heard of its formation from the newsletter but was hesitant as I never thought myself was a runner, but since my friend whom I knew was a very casual jogger asked me, I thought it could not be that bad. Funny thing is that, he joined the club for about a few times and dropped out since and I have been with the club since.
I guess it was through the running club that I truly gained confidence in my own sporting abilities. Through my training, I knew I could outrun a lot of fitter looking guys and I know how much pain and difficulties I could take up and those gave boost to my self-confidence. It also happened to be a time of my own coming out as a gay person and so the confidence actually re-enforced each other.
I started organizing simple Ubin cycling trips for my friends and in SiGNeL and also joined my friends and the running club for hiking trips, which I enjoyed tremendously.
However, I wasn’t until 1999 when I completed my first marathon at 29 years old and also started AdLUs, that I truly felt accomplished as a sports person. It was then that I recognize myself as a runner and a person who loves sports.
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