Musings by Grace Chng

What a day it was! My 2 friends and I completed the Triathlon relay this morning. Of course, we’re delighted, never mind that it was only a MINI Triathlon - 200m swim, 10km bike and 2km run. Yenni swam, Cindy cycled and I ran. We’re newbies and the fact that information about the relay event from the organisers were scant, we managed to hustle our way and complete in (we think) just under 45 minutes.

Who cares if it’s a little too long than what others did. We enjoyed ourselves, swam, biked and ran our guts out and most importantly, completed the race. Being competitors in other sports - squash and tennis - during our younger years, this was an adrenalin rush that we’re looking for.

The day started at 5am, yes, we’re kiasu, we wanted to get out to East Coast early so that we can get parking space and don’t have to walk too far to the competition grounds. Problem is we’d to hang around until just after 9am when our event started. Luckily our mini event covered short distances otherwise it would be tiring.

Being newbies, we attended the workshops conducted by the organisers which were useful for my friends and I. While the event was really fun - and we would encourage people to participate - communications for the fun events like the relay and the family categories were missing. We’d other competitors asking us what to do this morning!

Watching the kids swimming, biking and running was really cute. Who says it’s all fun for the kids, they were really competing, wanting to win too. Parents too were busy running up and down, collecting their kids’ swimming goggles, passing t-shirts to them and drinks etc.

What really impressed me were the elderly. There was a 62-year-old guy, portly around his stomach, who ran down the ramp with a jiggling tummy to loud applause from the crowd. He completed.

Completing the event is satisfying and to do it with friends, is a bonus. Maybe, we’ll take part in the longer distances next year.