History was made today

Today marked the day that SMU Tennis Mens Team registered PERFECT attendance for our weekly physical session. Our Guest-of-Honour, Jason (2nd Lieutenant) Poh was kind enough to grace the occasion. More than that, Jason was punctual, wore a totally nondescript adidas shirt (the rest wore SMU Tennis jerseys) and a pair of tight OCS shorts showing his sexy, but overflowing butt cheeks. However, his presence more than made up for all these shortcomings.

The run began as per normal, taking us through the bustling street towards Raffles City and the Padang. As with previous weeks, the ladies team ran 3 rounds around the Padang (approximately 600-700m each round), whilst the guys ran 5 rounds in the opposite direction.

The guys started off with a blistering pace set by #1 tennis player, Kamil. By the end of the first round, most of the guys were visibly short of breath. Jason courageously stepped up to lead the 2nd round. He too, tried to maintain the fast tempo but by the end of the 2nd round, Jason was showing signs of lack of physical fitness.

The first sign of trouble arrived in the form of Vijay (Singh) Krishna suffering from shoulder pains and having to reduce his speed. The team slowed the pace to accommodate Vijay. As Joshua likes to say, "We start as a team, we end as a team."

Slowly, Jason too displayed ominous signs of falling out. However, upon the urging of his teammates, especially Kamil who could be heard yelling out names like "Natalie Hiong" and "Debbie" and phrases like "SB1 is better than SG1", Jason became like a man possessed and ran through the exhaustion barrier.

The ladies team decided to adopt a different approach: Adeline, the fastest runner in the team, elected to run alone so as to challenge herself to improve upon her personal best. Alicia partnered with Sheryl; Clarissa with Jac. This partnership proved very effective as the girls egged their partners on and finished the run without much fuss.

As with all runs, our tour of Padang ended about 30 minutes after it began. We took a slow leisurely walk back to the gym where our second round of physical awaited. Today, instead of the usual 15-minute death-inducing skipping, we decided to do some plyometric exercise that involved us jumping laterally, front and back over a cone. This took the steam out of the players and even the more seasoned ones like Kamil and Joshua were crying out loud by the end of the exercise.

In the end, it was a fruitful physical session once more - calories were burnt, psychological barriers defeated, pain endured and much more. We can only hope that our superstar, one of the top Economics student, will grace our mortal training a little more often, with a little more enthusiasm. As it is, after the physical, at least 3 of the guys headed straight for the library, 4th floor to be precise, to bury our heads in our books, or laptops for some.

Life just would not be the same without mugging.