I woke up bright and early at 630am on the morning of Saturday, 24 April, which is really unusual for me. Why? Because I had signed up to attend our MH Runners Workshop on Tempo Training to be conducted by our friends from Polar. Considering I was to be running in my first half marathon at the Adidas Sundown Marathon in a month's time (29 May), I needed all the help I could get.

So I put on my running gear and headed down the four flights of stairs to my walk-up apartment...and almost tripped over the body of a woman lying across the entrance to the stairwell. There she was, sprawled on her side, a disturbingly large volume of dried-up, maroon-coloured liquid painted the floor beside her. Her short dress had ridden up to reveal her underwear, and an empty wallet lay next to her face with it's former contents scattered all around.

My first thought was that this woman had been murdered, even robbed and possibly raped. That I'd been the unfortunate person to discover her grisly remains in the way you read about these things in the papers and see on Crimewatch. I was just about to scream like a girl in the presence of Justin Bieber when a snore emanated from the "body". On closer inspection, the "victim" turned out to be a young Caucasian girl with the damning signs of insobriety — mascara that had run like hell, a toxic breath, and an idiotic smile.

"Hey you, wake up! You have to get up. You can't sleep here." I berated her without raising my voice. Wasted Girl took her time to rouse from her intoxication. "Are you okay? Did you get robbed?" I asked.

"Mmmph.Uggh. Huh? I'm alright. Ermph." She mumbled.

"Had too much wine huh? Well, you have to get up. You have to go before someone calls the cops." I repeated. "Do you have someone to call?"

"Yeah...yeah...mm...I'm okay. What? Huh? Mmm... Alright...."

And this process repeated several times before Wasted Girl finally sat up.

"You okay? I'm going to go now okay?" I was running late for the workshop. Wasted Girl nodded as she flipped through the cards emptied from her wallet, including what I made out from afar to be a student ID card, as if trying to figure who she herself was.

Accepting that she was fine, I got into my car and was about to drive off when Wasted Girl decided to lie back down to have a snooze. She was not, as I had mistakenly surmised, fine. I got back out of the car, walked back over to her with half a mind to slap some sobriety into her. Instead, I again repeated the process of trying to talk her out of it.

It took a while but Wasted Girl finally managed to get up on her feet. Even then she looked as unstable as the leaning tower of Pisa, even doing the chicken dance several times before gaining some semblance of balance.

"I'm alright. Huh? Yup. Okay. Right. Unnhhh..." She mumbled all the way to the side of the road, where she miraculously managed to flag down a cab instantly (where it was usually impossible to get one), got in, and drove away into the sunset, er, sunrise.

I shook my head, and got back into my car. "Kids these days! Sheesh." I thought to myself in disapproval. But as I turned the ignition, I realised: That could have easily been me lying drunk at some random place, 10, 15 years ago. God knows I've had my days of reckless abandon. Instead, here I was waking up early, on a Saturday morning, about to go for a running workshop.

It was a strange sort of semi-epiphany — one that made me realise this late in life that I was a grown-up now, an adult. I hadn't gone out "partying", clubbing, drinking, or the like on a Friday night since, well, I couldn't even remember. I considered for a moment if I should perhaps reclaim my youth and go back to the literally dizzy heights of days gone by. But then I remembered why I was going to run — because I already was trying to put the brakes on the effects of time by getting back in shape; to keep from getting prematurely to that eventual state when I wouldn't be able to run, do sports, or other robust activities that I loved.

I was going to run, so that I could, in some ways, remain young. I'll be the first to admit that I don't live to run, and I guess that puts me in the "run to live" category. But if that's what I have to do, then it's what I have to do.

I made my way to the MH Runners Workshop as fast as I could. I'd be damned if some cute but underaged and drunk angmoh girl was going to stop me from running. Cute angmoh teenage girls sure as hell didn't stop for me when I was drunkenly chasing tail at that age. They ran too. They didn't stop. Now, I wouldn't either.

(Stay tuned for the actual MH Runners Workshop report tomorrow.)

Read next entry

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