"The Week That Was - Final Run"

The last event of a hectic week. The annual Cross-Country run.

Only this time they've combined it with the Education Ministry's "1 Murid, 1 Sukan, 1 Malaysia" thingy...

The result was... well, 'disappointing' would be an understatement.

In a return to times of old, our run now takes place around SMK Cochrane, much like it was back when I was F1 & F2. However, the underwhelming part of it was that the distance was effectively halved.

See, back then, as some of you would remember, we ran all the way through the houses to Laman Coales and pass the Laksamana flats on the way back. A roughly 3-4 km trip. And it was to be that way too this year. Somehow, things got changed around in the last minute. This time, the furthest we even got was to Jalan Shelly before running back along Peel Road. Granted, there's that massive construction project taking the place of the houses. Nevertheless, it was still entirely possible to run along Jalan Cochrane, past Laman Coales, and still run past the Laksamana flats on the way back.

So there I was, running at a pace meant for a 4 km run, finally perfected after 6 years, then came the revelation, the "what???", and the realization that I could have afforded to push myself that little bit more.

Not cool. Not fun.

The runs all finished before 9.00. Obvious result, given that the route was halved. To make up for the rest of the day until 12.30, the teachers organised games. Not that it was any consolation anyway.

Not exactly how I intended to experience my last ever Cross-Country run here at SMKC.

Sometime in the day, I think I overheard that the Ministry's aforementioned programme standardized all runs throughout schools nationwide to a distance of 1.5 km, or something like that.

****** Ministry and your ****** programme...