It was something I had foreseen before I went, really the only reason why I went in the first place was because I had already made a promise with my friend to take the IPPT with him, otherwise I would have just procrastinated, stayed at home and have a much needed sleep.
Because of this IPPT session , I had to give up the only day in my week I could sleep in, and having to wake up to go take a fitness test I know I am going to fail sucked. It was a good way to gauge my current fitness level but it still sucked nonetheless to have to wake up so early.
During the IPPT session, I was most excited to take the standing broad jump, that was the only station I could attain a gold without even trying, and I managed to get a gold so that felt good, the stations that I weren't looking forward to were the shuttle run and the 2.4km run. The former I grazed my hands and the latter was just pure torture.
I actually was able to take the shuttle run 4 times, because I had faulted twice and really after failing the first try, you are pretty much screwed. There's no way your second try right after would be better than the first, and the reason why I screwed up my first try was because I did not tap the sensor strips at the end of the shuttle run, I underestimated the distance and ended up just slapping the floor with my hands and in the process, tore the skin on my palm, so I went for a second try right after and obviously failed that one.
So my friend and I decided to just try the other stations and go back to the shuttle run right after. Did the standing broad jump, got a gold for that one because of my amazing technique which I used to credit my continuous usage of the squat toilet to do a No.2 in Tekong every morning after breakfast,but after that, I found out it wasn't really the reason because right after Tekong, I stopped using squat toilets and was still able to get a gold for SBJ every time.
Did sit ups right after and when it came to my friends turn to use the machine, after almost 15 minutes of queuing up, the machine decides to malfunction, so he ended up doing probably 20 sets for naught and we had to join another queue and waited another 15 minutes for our turn.
After passing those stations, and the pull ups which we did first, I decided to go back to re-run the shuttle run again. So I was really pumped up and excited to give it another try after having given my legs sufficient rest, ran the first stretch, touched the sensor strips successfully, and as I was running, I could hear the Fitness Instructor saying something to me, which up to now, I still have no idea what he said, but I just ignored them and assumed they were words of encouragement, ran the second round, touched the strip, and as I was sprinting back in full force, I hear my friend going..
"STOP! STOP! STOP!"
So naturally, I slowed down and stopped, thinking the machine had malfunctioned and he's probably asking me to stop so I could conserve my energy for the next attempt, and for that split second as I was slowing down, both my friend and the fitness instructor just looked at me, confused... and that was when I knew I had fucked up, and my friend says to me...
"Why you stop? I am asking you to chiong! (speed up)"
My heart sank when he told me that, that pass that I could have gotten just slipped away from me because I heard "chiong" as "stop".
The fitness instructor was nice enough to reset my attempts and allowed me to try again, of course I failed the attempt the FOURTH time, was even worse than my very first attempt. I did not feel good after that and my friend felt apologetic for confusing me. Right after that, we headed to the 2.4km run, so when we got into the 2.4km run area, we went to join the very next batch that was about to run.
I thought this was going to be fine, I will just pace with my friend and then sprint during the last stretch. It was when the whistle was blown and I saw my friend dashing forward and leaving a huge distance between us did I realize how fucked I was.
It was only the first round and I already felt the shortness of breath and the strain in my legs, the fact that I had to run around the track another 5 rounds after that made it even worst, and I knew something was wrong because that level of exhaustion and strain doesn't happen that early on, I will only feel like death was the better option after covering slightly over half that distance.
So I just tried to knock that mentality out of my head and tried to just zone out and pace with this middle aged Indian guy who looked like he could pass the test, halfway through the run, I ended up running almost 20 meters behind him and at this point, all I wanted to do was stop and walk the entire journey, but when I realized no one was actually stopping, I just continued running the entire way, it was hell the entire way and also I failed by 40 seconds, my final timing was 13 minutes on the dot, which was a big improvement on my record in the past year.
Failed 2 stations, passed 1 station, got silver for 1 station and gold for 1 station. Add that all up and I got a total of "FAIL".
I was aware I was going to fail when I went into the camp, but what I wasn't expecting was being so close to passing had I actually given myself sufficient time to actually sit down and rest before the 2.4km run, or just ran straight through the shuttle run without stopping because I misheard my friends encouragement for something else.
Gawd it sucks.
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