I just took my IPPT earlier this evening, and I've come home, had a hot shower, had the customary hokkien mee (which I always get after an exercise. Talk about negative calories... ;p) and am now slacking in front of the computer. It's been a while since I've had the luxury of "stoning" so I thought I'd make full use of this opportunity to do some reflections (the metaphorical one, and not the Physics one...)

Well, all my life (thus far anyway), I've never really worried about NAPFA when I was in school, nor about IPPT during my NS days. But today, when I arrived at Bedok FCC (Fitness & Conditioning Centre), I swear I could feel butterflies in my stomach, heart in my mouth, racing heartbeat, and the list goes on.

And having not taken my IPPT since 2005 (which was when I ORD-ed), I hadn't realised how high-tech the IPPT had become! Everything was electronic and we had this number tag which had a RFID chip which we placed at every station before we started. It made everything so straightforward and so much faster.

The only downside of this system is that, when I was at the sit-up station, the "machine" didn't count all of my sit-ups, especially towards the end! (I swear both my shoulder blades were already flat on the mat, and my elbows touched my knees...) But never mind lah, 4 points is good enough. I didn't manage to get a good enough distance for my standing broad jump either - 225cm, which was 6 cm short of the supposed "gold" standard.

Then came the 2.4km finale run. It was CAT 1 initially (short for saying that there's a high possibility of lightning strikes in the area, and if you're outdoors during this time, good luck to you), so we had to wait for the status to be cleared before we could proceed. Thankfully it cleared by about 6.05pm and we proceeded with the run.

After a short briefing, we were IMMEDIATELY set-off to run round the track, and at that time, I was thinking in my head, HEY I'M NOT MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY PREPARED YET! But too late, I had to go with the flow, so I started running.

And this is the part where I feel my fitness has really dropped so much. I've never really had trouble running long distances, having done regular swimming when I was a kid, and a X-Country runner in secondary school. And I managed to build up a wee-bit of fitness last year when my colleagues and I did a weekly run on Mondays. But since the school term closed last year, we've sort of stopped this routine. The last time I ran the 2.4km run was sometime in Oct/Nov last year, and I managed to clock a 9:45 (exactly), but 4 to 5 months on, my time became 11:33. This was pathetic by Kenny's standard. I used to laugh at those idiots who ran 11:33, and now I've become one of those idiots. Haha. I guess what goes around comes around. ;p

Anyhow, I was glad I completed the 2.4km run, because at some pointSSSSSSS during the run (notice how MANY pointsssss there were...), I really felt like giving up (breathlessness, muscle fatigue, sleepiness, chest pains, onset of stitch, smell of cigarette smoke from across the fence choking up my airways, shoes that were coming apart, and 101 other excuses), but somehow I managed to convince my mind to keep running.

And I'm glad that I've cleared my IPPT this time round, and managed a silver (woohoo, $200!)

Looks like I really need to whip myself into shape. Anyone wants to be my personal trainer? ;p