Yesterday morning on 18 April, I participated in the Dow Live Earth Run for Water. This was a running event to raise awareness about the shortage of drinking water in developing nations. The distance of the route was six kilometres, which is the average distance women and children walk every day in the developing world to have access to water. Six kilometres may seem like an easy, short run to some, but to others, it may seem quite the opposite. Still, it can be hard to imagine what it's like to cover this distance on foot unless you actually walk or run it for real.

I have to confess that I had woken up late on the morning of the run after a late and very exciting night of following the English Premier League matches the night before. As such, I was late on arriving at the start point at the Formula One Pit Building and didn't have time to warm up (okay, I was also a little too sleepy to bother). I thought I'd just have an easy morning jog and not push myself too hard. When the run started, I took my time to mosey along past the start point with the more leisurely runners in the pack. But about five minutes into the run, I remembered that I had my first half-marathon coming up in about a month's time at the Adidas Sundown Marathon. That spurred me into a quicker pace — after all, this run was supposed to be part of my preparation for the race, and I reminded myself that I should really be pushing myself harder, having already lost a month of needed training due to illness.

I maintained this quicker pace before really pushing myself on the last kilometre to the finish, clocking a time of about 30 minutes. Honestly, I was rather pleasantly surprised at the timing — 30 minutes isn't too shabby, considering the lack of warm-up, slow start, and the fact that I hadn't done any running for about a month. This result is a much-needed boost to my training efforts, and I'm greatly motivated to keep putting in my training runs in preparation for the half-marathon.

But while a six-kilometre run is a relatively easy distance, it's quite hard to imagine having to cover this distance every single day just to get drinking water. During the run, I was trying to imagine myself in the shoes, or rather, the bare soles of the women and children in developing nations on their way to get water. They had to walk this same distance every day just to reach a well for clean water. To put things in perspective for those of us living here in Singapore, imagine this: What if, in order for you to use any of the two or more taps in your home, you have to go out and run or walk 6km just to activate it? Sounds crazy doesn't it? Especially when in reality, we need only walk a few steps to use these taps, often without putting much thought into it. We turn them on to wash our dirty dishes, fill our plant-watering cans, or to wash off that little, insignificant speck of dirt from our hand. Water so clean and drinkable, but which many, for reasons I fail to understand, will never drink directly from. Water which is still probably a whole lot cleaner than the ones these women and children in developing nations endure walking 6km every day just to get.

Sometimes, basic things like access to clean water tend to seem like an entitlement. It's easy to forget that it isn't; it's a privilege. Think about that the next time you waste the equivalent of a week and 30 kilometres' walking worth of water on cleaning your car for the third time in a week. A half-marathon right now seems a really long distance to me, but it's only about three days' worth of daily chores to these women and children. Who the hell am I to whine?

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Read about Day 00, or what Gavin Gets Garang is all about.