21K
I had one excuse to not run marathons. Today I ran one anyway. Raw emotions. Let's find out.
👋🏼 Hi, I’m Shan. I run Xandro Lab, the leading longevity science brand in Singapore. Every Sunday I write these notes, part building diary, part thinking out loud.
Today I am writing this a few hours after crossing the finish line of the Phuket Marathon 2026, my first ever half marathon. I am still a little emotional and I want to get it down before the feeling fades. So this week, no business notes, no longevity science. Just what happened today morning.
The excuse to not run
When I started running long distances, I often needed a few toilet breaks. In Singapore road running, you will find enough public toilets or mall toilets to stop at. These toilets are clean and I did not expect the race toilets to be anywhere close. I had heard horror stories, imagined scenarios, and decided marathon was not for me.
This was one reason why I chose to go for Hyrox - Max 90 mins inside a well facilitated and controlled stadium. Short enough time to not need a toilet break, and even if you do, good toilets are available right beside. Bonus point for being air conditioned almost always. But I knew I wanted to take the risk of running a marathon someday and needed a trigger. The trigger was a call from one of our partners at the start of May. I said fuck it, lets do it. Lets see what happens.
So, today on the 14th of June 2026, I ran 21 kilometres through Phuket. I used toilet twice during the race. Both were clean. I was dreading going to the first toilet, but then I knew I had to. So I did, and was pleasantly surprised. They were not disgusting as I made myself to believe for last few years.
Raw feeling
I expected pain. I expected to be managing myself through the second half, calculating how much was left, negotiating with my body. That is not what happened.
The entire 21 kilometres felt like happiness.
I know that sounds wrong. I am not someone who cries. But somewhere around 5K, my eyes started to swell. Not from pain or exhaustion. From something I still don’t have the right word for. It kept happening. At 10K. At 15K. At the finish line. I wanted to cry so many times during those two hours. Maybe it was the feeling of: I can actually do this. I can do it. I am going to do it.
My coach, Keane Ko, Singapore national athlete currently training to break Singapore’s long distance national record, had told me to aim for a two hour finish. I started at the three hour pacer, just to be safe. My daily long runs were at a 6.5 min/km pace or slower. Most were in the 7 to 8 zone. I genuinely thought finishing in 2.5 hours would be lucky.
Around 8K, I caught the two and a half hour group and moved with them. When I spotted the 2.15 pacer ahead of me around kilometre ten, I felt something rise up again. Eyes full. Not crying. Just full. Every time I passed a pacer, every time I passed another runner, I felt it. I was running at 5 to 5.50 min/km for almost the entire race without slowing down. I did not know this was possible for me. I think that is what kept making me want to cry. Some mix of pride and disbelief. I realise I love watching myself do new things.
At 5K I knew I would finish. At 10K I knew I would finish without difficulty. At 15K I knew I had more left in me. The question by the end was not whether I would make it. It was how fast.
When I came to the finish line, I had planned to record the moment and document the crossing. I didn’t. I was running too well to stop. I kept the pace. I crossed the line.
Flashback to 2020
In late 2020, I was 80 kgs. I had a full face, a body I would not call fat but not fit either. At the time I felt okay about it. I was happy with where I was professionally, and how life looked from the outside. It is only now, looking back at photos from that period, that I see clearly how much weight I was carrying and how far I was from resembling physical health.
I was living in Dubai. It was winter, December 2020 or January 2021. Dubai winters are genuinely beautiful, cool air, good temperatures, the kind of days that make you want to be outside. At the office, people were talking about running. My boss and a few colleagues were discussing getting back to it, doing 5K, 10K, how hard it was to restart but how they were managing. Most of them were older than me.
Something in me said: if they can do it, why not me? So I went out that the next morning. I could not run even 1K. My lungs and legs gave up, so did my mind. I stopped and walked back.
I left Dubai a few months later. But before I did, I made a note of things I wanted to do. One of them was run a 5K.
That 5K happened about two years later, in Singapore, after I had started running properly. And once it happened, it quietly became the start of something bigger. HYROX came in 2025, which was its own goal but also, I now realise, a test. A controlled way to build race experience before attempting something longer. Max 90 minutes, good facilities, air conditioning. A stepping stone I did not fully admit to myself was a stepping stone.
Today was the next step. Six years from that evening in Dubai where I could not run a kilometre, I ran 21K.
Training in four weeks
I had a very short training interval because I chose to register last moment.
I reached out to Keane, and he graciously decided to help me out. The structure was simple: Mondays off, Tuesdays an easy 30-minute run, Wednesdays track intervals, Thursdays 8 to 10 kilometres easy, Fridays or Saturdays a long run of 10 to 15 kilometres, Sundays an easy 10K. Weekly mileage was meant to be 45 to 55 kilometres. He wanted my long runs to hit 15 to 17 kilometres regularly before race day.
What he did was compress everything. Under four weeks of real training before the race. In that window I was running 45 to 55 kilometres a week, more than I have ever run in my life. My previous monthly maximum was around 70 kilometres.
The last long run before race day, I finally hit 16K. That was the first time I came close to what he had been asking for all along. It was enough. The race proved it was enough.
At the start line
Before the race began, someone started talking to me. He was around 55. He had run 25+ marathons. He was fit, easy in his body. His next destination was Gold Coast Marathon in Australia few weeks from now. He was going to run 10K and then the full 41K marathon. I was silently amazed.
That is the person I am building towards. Not just for myself, but in terms of what I think is possible. A 55-year-old who has the endurance, the health, the body to still be doing this.
It is also, in some way, why I do what I do professionally. The people I am building for are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, asking whether they can still perform, whether the body they have now is the best it will ever be, or whether there is still something to build.
I believe there is. I am building towards it personally. And whatever comes next, it will be about that question. Human performance in later life years. How you get stronger when most people assume the trajectory only goes the other way.
I am in my mid-30s now. I can feel what is possible at this age. I want to figure out what it looks like at 45. At 55. That is the work.
A regret
At the finish line, there were people everywhere. Runners coming in, supporters waiting, the particular energy of a race ending. It was the kind of moment where strangers are unusually open, where conversation happens naturally, where you could ask someone about their run and they would tell you everything.
I didn’t. I stayed within myself. I observed. I watched the surroundings. I took my phone out and recorded a bit. But I did not talk to people. I did not make friends.
This is a gap in how I move through the world and I know it. I am not good at initiating with strangers, at turning a shared experience into a connection. In a finish line environment, where everyone is euphoric and the walls are down, I still stayed behind mine.
That is something I want to work on. Not for any strategic reason. Just because I think it is a better way to be.
The sun was fully up by the time I finished. The race had started in the dark and ended in the light, which felt right for a first.
I did not know I would feel this much today. I did not plan to write about this either. But I said I would be here every Sunday, and this is where I am today, a little emotional, 21 kilometres done, already thinking about the next one.
See you next Sunday.
- Shan