[Read Part 1 – Travel back (& forth) in time]

[Read Part 3 – Travel back (& forth) in time]

2019 February Hong Kong Marathon was a good one. I had two young boys (they were younger than me at point of time when their age added up), Jeremy and David, working together on it. Both of them had previously ran marathons within seconds of 3hours, which was great motivation for me. Even though they two were training in Hong Kong while I was preparing in Singapore, we share training ideas and keep tracking on one another’s progress, we were enjoying our team spirit.-

Shortly before the race, David had to withdraw due to a nagging injury. Jeremy and I decided to aim at 2hours 55 min as our realistic completion time even though we know Hong Kong is known for its interesting course elevations and it would not be easy. Realistic but not easy…

My boss, Moon was well prepared and was on her way to run a personal best (PB) in her half marathon that morning. Jeremy and I ran the full marathon shoulder to shoulder until approximately 28km, then my cramp set in and that was the last time I saw his backside until I crossed the finish line. He did an amazing 2’51 PB (49^th place out of 10s of thousand runners) while I dragged myself to the finish line at 2’56. A few of our schoolmates did well and came in close to the 3 hours mark (top 1.5%) and we were celebrating taking wefies at the finish line. That was when my phone rang and I got a call from the medics… the caller from the other side of the phone said Moon was involved in an accident and was en route to A&E at Princess Margaret Hospital. I got her on the phone, she sounded shaken but compose, she told me not to go to the A&E (she thought I was going to have a trophy, how sweet and confident she was in me). I would had given up ANYTHING to dash to the hospital to see her even though my best friend, Dr Kua, is a senior doctor in that particular A&E!! Walking over almost 2km to subway with a heavy backpack after a hard full marathon was a bit more than a challenge, I wanted to sit down, cramp, vomit and faint at the same time during the subway ride! Luckily, my friend, Dr Kua, showed me his workplace before and I knew exactly how to get there in the shortest possible manner.

My jaw dropped after I saw my boss in the overcrowded A&E area, her white jersey was drenched in blood, left eye closed shut, a deep cut across her left eyebrow, black and blue face! However, as usual, she was in great spirit and energetic. She gave numerous instructions, such as when to check out from our hotel, when I should eat my meals, how to arrange payments for the hospital treatment while waiting for her turn for stitching and CT scan. My observation was; she is OK. The A&E was efficient and economical but her personal belongings were checked in with the marathon organizer. I was tasked with getting her stuffs, another round of running around on my damaged legs. I could not retrieve her stuff from the marathon organiser, HKAAA (even though my friend Yu worked at the event), but Moon was lucky that she had her running friends who helped after the race. Shireena, Liping, Evan, Shuzhen and Rachel were priceless because Moon got back the center of her universe (her phone) a few days later with their help.

The day was cut short, we did not manage to see my parents before we head to the airport, we dare not to show my parents her injured face. Luckily, we ran into a few fellow runners from Singapore at the airport. It was so comforting to see some familiar faces. 

A few days later in Singapore, our friend, Dr Karen Sng, gave her an expert cosmetic procedure over her injured eye. Her injured eye was blue for many days but out of the blue (pun intended :)), she whatsapp a photo of a metal ring to me. It was her ring with the stone on top went missing! It turned out she was 1/3 into her half marathon (on her personal best time) and another runner crashed into her. The hit injured her eyebrow and knocked out that stone from her favorite ring, which my family got for her when we got married. This time, her cousin, M.Y. who runs a jewelry store helped me to get a guesstimated stone for her. Well, I tried my best to earn a few brownie points as a good hubby.      

As a group, my friends did well in Hong Kong in 2019, Jeremy ran a big personal best sub-3 marathon and my wife scored her new eyebrow and a new ring. I got a chance to prove myself as a worthy husband.