X Physique (X Mistake?)

Goodness gracious. This morning/afternoon/all day Matt and I joined our friend, Martin (from the biking trip in Thailand, remember?) and his friend Philip for this crazy race called X Physique. (The picture is of my team mates. Matt is standing really tall to get to the same level as the other two. They're TALL!). The other picture is how red I am - and I don't think it's sun burn. I think it's from activity, and it's not going away!

I called to ask about it - the website has NO information - and they said it's like the Amazing Race, but in Singapore. That sounded awesome to us. We love that show. I told them I'm not in tip top shape, and I certainly haven't trained. They said no problem.

We started at 7:30 in the morning at the east end of the MRT line. Basically they give you a map with a red star, and you have to get to the red star. We had a book of maps in Singapore (street directory), so we could look up the streets on the clue, find the map and then find ourselves and figure out how to get there.

The first step - no problem. We ran a few kilometers, ended up at the beach. We got there quickly, got in kayaks and were off. These kayaks had no rudder. We (I was with Philip) ended up zig zagging through the entire course - wasting about four times the amount of energy necessary, and we were paddling hard. It was a LONG kayak run for no training at all. We got to go around these little "houses" that were floating out there. It seemed like some were places people lived and others were army posts, since that water is the border with Malaysia (the north side of Singapore). Anyways - my arms were shot after that, and I'm sure tomorrow they will be even worse.

Then we got a clue to go to some industrial area, and we actually ran along a SUPER DIRTY beach. Two things went through our heads - first that we didn't even know that Singapore had areas that were that dirty, and second that the missing man (Mas Salamat) definitely could be hiding in the woods (we had previously thought there was no way since Singapore is so small). Anyways, we hopped over fences, walked on non-paths, found a pet farm and some fish farms and ended up at this weird area that had paths and nothing else. We had to run to different points for no good reason (one twisted ankle and big tumble...), then we had to run out exactly the way we came, which always feels a little useless.

The next part was the worst, I believe. We started off running - meanwhile we had already run 4.5 miles...and it ended up that we were going really far. We ran by thousands of apartments, an IKEA, schools, nothingness, and much more. We finally arrived at our destination (our ninth mile), and Matt's knee was super hurting him, and I didn't think I could run anymore. I have never run this much in my life. Even walking became hard. But we were only halfway done. We ended up at Bedok Reservoir (where we did that zip line course, remember?), and we did one ropes challenge, and then we walked another two miles to end up at a school where we did a very small rapelling challenge (?).

Matt and I were feeling pretty guilty at this point, because Martin and Philip are in excellent shape, and they were excited to run the whole thing. Meanwhile, Matt and I are dying. We decided that we would cheat a little bit - Matt and I took at taxi to the next spot, and they ran. It's definitely not allowed, but it was either that or we quit, which would have meant that they couldn't continue. Also - there was a huge downpour at this point, but our shoes were already soaked from the kayaking...

Next - we got to the Tampines mountain biking park, and we biked for a few kilometers in the mud (rain, right?). This was my favorite part, but even this was so hard since we were beat already. At the end of that trail we were told we would stay on our bikes until the almost end of the race. This pleased us all immensely. We basically biked to a place, biked back to another place, dropped off the bikes and ran 1 kilo (at the most) back to the start. In total, thanks to Google's pedometer tool (or it might not be theirs, but I still give them credit), I found out that we completed 20 miles. That is a LOT for people like us who just aren't in tip top shape, and the truth is that if we had known how much it is, we never would have done it.

We finally got home, warmed up last night's leftovers and ate lunch at 4:00 pm (breakfast at 6:30 and going 20 miles...we were SO HUNGRY!), and now we're just hoping the phone doesn't ring so we have to stand up. Ouch!

In other exciting news, I gave a d'var torah at services on Friday night. I'm not good at public speaking, so that was exciting for me. Exciting in a challenging way.

We got in some good Settlers on Friday night with some Jews after dinner - it was fun.

Last night we ended up going to see No Country for Old Men. That was stressful.

Other than today, it was a super nice and relaxing weekend.

I think we'll look back on today and think it was cool that we did it, but right now we're just trying to move!!