About two or three times a week, I get home from work, shed my t-shirt and jeans in lieu of a dry fit top and shorts, lace up my black Hoka One One’s and spend the next 30 to 45 minutes running.
It doesn’t matter that I’m dead tired from the day’s affairs, the slight brush of the breeze against my face is all the motivation I need — at least until my lungs start to feel like they’re about to explode and my troublesome knees start to ache.
The truth is, I hate running. Or to be more accurate, I have a love-hate relationship with it.
I love the idea of it. Maintaining fitness, relieving stress, losing weight — all this sounds, in principle, like good things to put effort into.
On the other hand, once I’m actually doing it and I find myself sweating profusely as I lurch from step to step, heart pounding out of my chest, I never fail to ask: “why the f*ck are you doing this to yourself?”
Furthermore, there’s nothing “fun” about running; it is without a doubt among the most mundane of all physical activities. It involves taking the prosaic act of walking and making it harder.
Is it not strange that out of the finite amount of my waking hours that are not spent at work, I choose to spend up to 90 minutes a week in this torturous activity?
Imagine my surprise when I read that more than 44,000 people took part in the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon two weekends ago, the highest in the event’s history.
That’s 44,000 people who paid at least S$99 (and as much as S$165) to run 42.195km — a distance that according to Marathon Handbook takes the average runner four hours, 29 minutes and 53 seconds to traverse.
Running since the dawn of time
Human beings have been running since the dawn of time, or at least that’s what proponents of the endurance-running hypothesis posit.
In this theory, human evolution has been linked to the species’ ability to run long distances.
Humans, while easily beaten by most animals in sprints, are surprisingly good at beating their prey when it comes to endurance running — and thus the art of “running your prey to death” (otherwise known as persistence hunting) was born.
According to scientists Dennis Bramble and Daniel Lieberman, several characteristics of our body remain as evidence of this prehistoric past, including the nuchal ligament — located in your neck and has the task of stopping your head from bouncing around while you run — and the Achilles tendon, which act like springs and store energy for your next stride.
But having a long history of running doesn’t necessarily explain our present desire for the activity.
After all, in Singapore at least, food options are typically located so nearby that most of us needn’t walk more than a kilometre to get a feed.
Furthermore, there are countless of practices that our ancestors partook in that we’ve since eschewed — like for instance living in caves and walking around naked.
Of course, you could argue that running has lots of health benefits.
The New York Times reported that runners tend to have a lower chance of suffering cardiovascular disease or cancer, as compared to non-runners.
This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone.
There are also benefits for your mental health as well.
According to John Hopkins Medicine, that post-run feeling of euphoria is the result of the release of endocannabinoids into your bloodstream and subsequently your brain — a substance that is naturally produced by the body but also similar to biochemicals found in cannabis.
In the long term, running can positively affect the hippocampus, which is associated with functions like memory and learning.
But these are all gains you can make from exercise in general, of which there are many varieties that are far more enjoyable than running.
For some reason, placing a ball in front of your feet and introducing the objective of kicking it through a rectangular frame adds 100 fun points to the activity of running.
National athlete Soh Rui Yong claimed the top spot in the National Championship Marathon men’s category. Image from Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon
The average marathoner
Hell bent on understanding why someone would pay S$99 to run 42.195km — without any soccer balls included! — I spoke to a participant in 2023’s Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon.
This year’s edition of the race saw local athlete Soh Rui Yong cross the finish line in first place with a time of 2hr 40min 34s. That winning effort earned him a nifty S$10,000.
For an elite athlete like Soh, I can begin to imagine the allure of putting your body through pain for glory.
Bryan, 30, who declined to give his last name, is not an elite athlete.
Instead, he’s a dentist, who happens to enjoy running marathons in his spare time.
In fact, this year alone he’s run three marathons — Including one that he travelled to Kuala Lumpur just to take part in.
“I’m quite new to running actually,” he told me.
Bryan’s first marathon was in May 2012 when he ran the Sundown Marathon without doing much training of note beforehand.
“I actually collapsed halfway and decided I had to take a nap on a bench,” he recalled.
“I lost track of time when I woke up but I managed to finish the race in five-and-a-half hours.”
That experience threatened to turn him off the idea of ever running a marathon again, until in 2022, when together with a group of his old schoolmates, he decided to give the Standard Chartered Half-marathon a go.
While he did experience cramps that halted his strides and had to sleep “for a full day” afterwards to recover, Bryan managed to clock in at a respectable time of two-and-a-half hours.
“It was something that got me excited... that I had trained for a particular goal.”
Harnessing the high of finishing that half-marathon, Bryan decided to revisit the site of his first harrowing encounter — the Sundown Marathon.
This time he completed it without having to take a nap. He was hooked.
The octogenarian runner
Bryan’s experience of addiction to the simple act of running isn’t too far from the stories I heard the day I visited the Singapore Masters Track and Field Association.
The group sees members as old as 92 gather weekly at the Home of Athletics’ running track in Kallang training in various events like javelin, high jump, and of course, running.
83-year-old Chia has been running competitively for 44 years. Image by Andrew Koay
On the day I visited, 83-year-old Chia Hearn Kok cut short his warm-up four laps in (he usually does six) to speak to me on why he harboured such a passion for running.
The octogenarian is a sprinter who typically runs shorter distances than Bryan, but the urge is all the same — to cross that finish line in a shorter time than his last attempt.
Flipping through a neatly organised folder, Chia shows me pictures from his 44 years of amateur running competition.
Having first competed in 1979, Chia caught the bug for running relatively late in life as a 39-year-old.
At first he’d just been curious to test himself, but after that first race found himself wanting to improve on that performance.
Over the next four-and-a-half decades of his life, Chia dedicated hours upon hours to running.
One page in his folder perfectly encapsulated why he’d stuck with what can seem like such a mundane activity for so long. It was an essay he’d penned, titled, “Running for Life”.
“We understand that running isn’t just a sport,” wrote Chia.
“It is our passion, our fervour, a force-witching us that keeps us alive. It flows through our veins like a life force!”
Never stop running
Bryan now has a few goals when it comes to marathon running.
Among them is to eventually run a sub-three hour race (he finished the 2023 Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon in about four-and-a-half hours), and eventually take part in one of the six World Marathon Majors — both of which are common goals for marathon-enthusiasts.
To do that, he’ll have to continue training, and training hard.
This includes running long distances at a slower pace, running shorter distances at a faster pace, and also work in the gym to build muscular strength.
However, his top priority at the moment is just being able to finish a marathon without stopping to tend to cramps.
That is to say, his goal to run non-stop for a long, long distance.
Not too dissimilar I suppose, in an abstract sense, from Chia’s goal — which is to never stop running for the rest of his life.
The Marathon 42.195km flags off. Image from Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon
One foot in front of the other
All this runs through my mind — see what I did there — the next time I lace up my shoes for my evening exercise.
Taken at face value, both Bryan and Chia enjoy running because of the sense of personal achievement.
They both have small and large goals related to the sport and relish the feeling of accomplishment that comes with pursuing and achieving those goals.
“They say that after you finish a marathon, you end up with a very empty feeling. You know, because there's nothing to train for. There's nothing to look forward to and there's no more goal to work towards,” said Bryan, reflecting on what exactly he likes about running marathons.
“It's about putting in the daily effort, you know, and seeing the results in the long term.”
So it isn’t about the activity of running per se, but rather running as a means of channelling some innate desire to set goals and realise them.
It could explain why someone like me feel compelled to run two to three times a week.
I’m not training for any event, nor do I think I’ll ever run in one, but as I start taking my first strides and I feel the dull ache return to my knees, the blisters heating up on the soles of my feet, the option of stopping and turning back never occurs to me.
I mean who doesn’t enjoy the simple act of setting a goal and achieving it?
Even if that goal is just putting one foot in front of the other.
Top image from Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon