Writing back wards for all the events that happened lately. Well I still have not posted the Swim for Hope, Wizzair Venice Marathon and the Istanbul Marathon.
Planned this with Siew Ling earlier on this year when she was looking for guides to bring her to this eventful run. Usually, I just let the committee assign me the tasks they want me to do. But this time since I have been walking around with Siewling every other month, I thought maybe we should do it.
Website: https://www.runninghour.com/event-details/rfi-10km-run
Arriving at chinese garden with the pagoda s background
Running Hour is a charitable non profit organisation run by passionate people to make our country a more inclusive place to stay. There are many volunteers in the group from all walks of life some are even elite runners. Every year, the Run for inlcusion is organised to bring awareness to the society about being inclusive for people with special needs.
Along the way
Siew Ling has been a buddy for sometime in the organisation but during covid she also lost her hearing abilities on top of the loss of sight. I had volunteered to become her special pal group during the Covid times as we are not allowed to have group activities. Our activities are simple, its usually walking around parks or park connectors. Sometimes we might just end up having simple food and “chit chat” just to catch up. I think sometimes guiding her is a bit challenging because our communication method is only through her machine, which means if the machine is not there, it will be quite difficult to just draw on her palm to indicate your intentions.
with photographer See kok wan
in the green
Whenever I whatsapp message her, this machine that she carries around will pop up the braille words for her to read and understand what I want to say. Then she will reply back verbally in the dialogue. So basically I dont talk when I am with her. There were many times when we go out, people thought we are two special needs, my case – mute.
The Race
hiding from the rain before start
Tenth year anniversary
It is not a competitive race there were distances of 10KM, 5Km and a kids challenge too. A tandem bike session was also included for the crowd. As the race was in a PCN, there was no road closure, it was raining before the race and therefore the tandem bike session had to be cancelled. Both 10km and 5 km runs were also flagged off later, but it was cooling and nice to walk. We walked through the park and also went to the grassland area with grass dunes. Took some pictures and also chit chatted a lot as usual.
Finishing
the special wooden medal
We stopped one time for drinks and rest, and finally at the end we were greeted by the Running hour volunteers with the specially crafted wooden medals. There was also special puff by Old Chang Kee for all participants. While we catch up with some of Siew Ling’s friends. It was really a good break from all the running I did the past two weeks, which was leaving me rather drained. Kind of happy that we had a nice 5km walk and also a Macdonald’s dinner after.