OCT 10 — I have a habit of wanting things fast, and wanting things now. (Yes, it’s a good thing I am not your boss). I used to hate waiting for anything — actually, I still hate it; I just tolerate it better now — and even now I time my walks from my apartment to the bus stop to the minute, so that I can minimise the time I have to wait for the bus, factoring in known and observed variances of the time the bus arrives. (I have a spreadsheet with some statistics.) 

So when I took up running as a sport a few years ago, little did I realise that it would not only change the way I viewed non-team sports, but also gifted me with some new perspectives when it came to perseverance and hard work. 

The shift to running was one of necessity more than anything else — I was looking for a new sport to while away the summer months when the team sports I played dwindled in numbers, and I was also a penniless student. Running became the choice based on frugality — a gym membership outweighed the cost of a pair of Asics Gel Kayano on sale. 

It wasn’t my first time treading toes to tarmac — I was a hapless middle-distance runner in high-school.  But as a teenager, the cool thing to do was run fast more than run far — I trained with sprinters and short distance runners, without developing the right mentality to deal with long distances. 

Running as an adult was a completely different kendi of ikan keli for me. I took it up more as a hobby than for competition, but even if I wanted to compete, it was all about endurance running: If you’re not a professional sprinter, then “short-distance” meant three kilometres, and that was really fun run standards. Running as an adult was about pacing oneself, endurance and patience. I very quickly realised that I wasn’t going to achieve anything fast, or “now.” 

At the risk of giving myself unwarranted credit, I actually did not give up despite learning that this was a sport I had to work at; a sport that had little need for skill, which was a key feature of other sports I took part in. I even surprised myself with my own commitment to the cause, commitment (or lack of!) being another item in a long list of personal flaws. I read up on techniques, even joined a forum for motivation and invested in an el-cheapo Casio wristwatch with a stopwatch function. And then I began to understand that the philosophy that underlay long distance running had within it ample lessons about life, too. 

If I could summarise the three key lessons I learnt, they would be: pacing, adapting and consistent training. None of which, I might add, fitted my “want-it-now” attitude. I took up running when I was at a particular stage in my doctoral studies where a consistent, slow but steady pace was more important than short bursts of “brilliance” followed by relatively long periods of inactivity.

On the roads I was learning to pace myself to sustain my stamina for  three kilometres and then five kilometres and onwards. At my desk, I applied a similar principle, learning to focus bit by bit and to concentrate on theories and ideas a little bit more each day until they became second nature.

An unintended, but very much welcomed consequence was that whilst running, I had time to reflect on the theories at the same time, as the open back roads of Lancaster afforded me time to think. 

Running taught me that too much, too soon, would only result in subpar performance. If I wanted to run 10 kilometres, I needed to start building up my distances from one kilometre to three to five and onwards, finding a pace of running that I was comfortable with to last the whole distance. I needed to learn about my own body, and what speeds made me tire faster, and when it was okay to exert myself a little bit more.

Funnily enough, this mindset came in extremely handy when I was facing my first marathon fast in 20 odd years. Ramadan this year began in August, and in Western Europe and places at similar latitude, a day consists of about 17 hours of daylight and only 7 hours of darkness. (It gets longer next year, too!)

What complicated things a bit more was that imsak (the time Muslims begin to fast, which is a few minutes before dawn) was at about 3.30am. This meant two things: interrupted sleep without the option of a caffeine boost during the day, and the possibility that if you missed the sahur (pre-dawn meal), you’re pretty screwed. 

And so it went down to “training.” Teaching my body to adapt to longer than normal hours of no food and water, and how to cope at work with lower quality sleep. I took to having oats and cereal as sahur to keep my energy up for longer — something I learnt through studying nutrition for running, no less!

I learnt that my energy levels dipped at about 4pm, so I structured my work day around that fact. (The fact that students were on holiday helped!), I paced my activities, keeping the more vigorous ones towards the end of the day when fatigue had set in, but iftar was in plain sight. 

An ustaz reminded us that if we could not stand the marathon fast, in certain situations, breaking the fast was permissible. But there was no need to, on my part. It was an interesting experience, and I actually didn’t end up doing what I initially planned to do during the month — sleep it off! 

When I came back for Hari Raya, the 17-hour fasting experience became a recurring topic of conversation at the open houses I attended. Questions revolved around how this was even humanly possible — I think friends who are heading northwards in the next few years were quite glad to hear that it was fine as soon as your body adapted. 

I tried as much as I could to go to as many open houses this Hari Raya, given that I had limited time in KL and many people I wanted to see. This was a marathon in itself, as I soon learnt. Five to six houses in one day not only meant that I had to manage the driving and the traffic, but also the food intake. Strategising for this, I ended up relying on three basic things: pacing (the amount I ate), adapting (to the different food types served) and consistent training (which meant just eating a lot of food a lot of the time). And as for the weight gain... well, there’s always some running.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.