"You cant always get what you want."

MSSM Champion School Relay in Kedah has taken a quick 4 days off my life. Well, to talk about our results would mean I'm still not over it, but heck, of course I'm still not over it. Jordan Jordan, our last runner, technically our fastest 200m runner in the team, what happened to the last 10m or so in the finals? This is everything you need to know.

22nd September 2005: Woke up at 6 to do a double check and pack the dried clothes that were hanging around my room the whole night through into an overpacked luggage bag. Set off for school at the usual time. And from there, arrived at Cobra Club where the rest of the Selangor team were staying at approx 7.30am. The only thing not worth enjoying is the 8 hour bus rides with multiple toilet breaks. No wonder it took 8 hours. Arrived at Alor Star at 5pm, settled into our dorms (as usual, the boys get the cramped, bottom-floor, ugly toilets dorm, and the girls?, the NEW block! Not tryna be a sexist, but God is a girl man...) So what do 5 curious guys do when they settle into an unknown territory and the toilets are a wreck? Of course, they search for toilets of their own. Our toilet (secret! as we claim la), was this secluded spot inside the school compound, and we only bathe when the students have all gone home, and NO, we weren't naked. Today's the first time I'm in Kedah and I finally know where the heck Butterworth is.

23rd September 2005: Bus leaves for the stadium at 7.30am, the 4x200m heats was the only event in the morning, as we reached the stadium, hung around for about 1 hour before Boss started nagging about warming up. I took my Ponstan(painkiller) tablet hoping it might take effect just in time for the race. Warming up, I guess we pretty much took the back-seat, didn't really warm ourselves well when they ushered us into the reporting zone, it all happened so fast, the only thing i can remember is the cold, stiff muscle feeling when I was doing my wind sprints, it was then I knew I'm in deep shit. And true enough, we clocked the 8th fastest time (1:38:61), and to make matters worse, we were the last qualifier to the finals, so it was really a narrow escape. Lazed the whole afternoon through at our secret toilet reading sejarah and listening to Audioslave. The damned Ponstan started taking effect at night.... =.=

24th September 2005: Morning was a free, until the afternoon, we were psyching ourselves with consoling words like "No pressure" and "We have nothing to lose, we cant go any worse than 8th". Although we knew that the first 2 medals were totally out of reach, (Kelantan and Perak were freaking fast!), the best we could hope for was a bronze. Somehow, the finals seemed perfect, our warm up was perfect, not much pressure mounted on our backs, the weather was quite warm, which adds the effect to our warming up, at that moment, we were actually confident we could really nick the bronze medal from the other 5 finalists. Even the Kelantanese wearing their professional body suits weren't enough to jitter me. For once, it was like the perfect race.
The gun went off, I yelled my nervousness with curious glares from the crowd sitting behind me, although we were placed in the 7th lane, I really though Ming Hee did quite well for his first 180m or so, until he stepped on my marker and I set off, now usually once the runner who's passing the baton reaches the marker, a standard yell of "UP" to signal to the runner recieving the baton to lift his arms in a stretch and then simutaneously, recieve the baton. But Ming Hee was abit special then, instead of the "UP", he yelled "Jinn! Jinn! Cannot ar! Cannot ar!", I had no choice but to slow down, once I had the baton, it was a blur, though I cant really remember my run, I do remember Boss' words of "Relax Run!" repeating over and over again in my head, my baton passing to Mogan couldn't get anymore perfect and after his pass to Jordan, somehow, I had that tingling feeling of him not really making it to 3rd place, it's like an intuition, when you have feelings like that, it usually happens. Jordan was in 3rd place when the baton was passed on to him, and 3rd place was the best bet. Though I didnt have the best view of the whole incident, the 2 faster teams were already far ahead, and in 3rd place, was Selangor, with Jordan, our hope-bearer, and then behind him was the chasing pack, 5 states, all chasing Jordan like a swarm of bees, none with the intention to give up. To make a long sotry short, we were overtaken in the last 20m, not one, but all 5 states (eg. Tsunami), and well, whats worst than 8th place? In the end, we were left convincing ourselves that it was indeed a very very close race and like a "fight till the end" scene, the 1st 3 runners got a few praises, and Jordan?, he didn't sleep well that night. Selangor was 6th in the rankings overall and only a mere 2 points seperates us from Sabah who are in 3rd, if we couldve won our race.......

25th September 2005: Another 8 hours back home.

There, the report on the last 4 days, this post has been written with a disturbance of the fact that my exams start in 2 days, and I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY have not studied anything seriously!