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I wanted to blog about this right when it happened last year, but I guess the willingness with which one tends to share positive news is always greater than that for something negative. Anyhow, wind the clock back to August 2024: Upon completing my 2.4km run on a Sunday morning at Bedok Camp and realising that I had barely ducked under 13 minutes, I distinctly remember feeling plain shock. Surely a Pass with Incentive would have been possible at the very least? Cries in one-point away (but that's also not the, ahem, point) But buried more thoroughly within was overwhelming guilt that I had allowed my 9-6 (or 10-7) fatigue spill over into the evenings, and more often than not, into the weekends too - so much so that regular cardio had quickly slipped out my routine. For a good 10-15 minutes after, I wallowed intensely in self-pity, questioning how exactly this had happened… …then I immediately drove from Bedok Camp to Mahamoodiya for prata. (I think my mind went somewhere into the realm of, “Whatever, my body is clearly not in its most optimal state anyway.”) The good thing about having your birthday fall closer to the end of the year, however, is that it falls perfectly in line with the season of looking back on the year… which then quickly leads into resolution-building. Lingering evidence of my undeserved, post-IPPT indulgence (Dated: 25/08/2024) I hate to admit it still, but some time over the past two years, I started taking to alcohol a lot more liberally than I had ever done before in my life. Workouts were also dedicated entirely to lifting weights, and not running. That, plus a general lack of boundaries with how my time was siphoned away, caused all that neglect to my body. There wasn’t any big goal or life-changing update actually - just a more intentional and quietly consistent effort to fully utilise my ClassPass credits on HIIT-centred workouts. The idea was to integrate strength and cardio training more tightly together, but a crucial piece of the puzzle was to also set a hard cutoff for myself on at least one weekday every week. (The penalties are quite harsh on the wallet if you miss a class you’ve booked.) An 8pm class means that you’re forced to shut your laptop by 7pm, and even if there are more time-sensitive duties to see to after, you’ve still gotten a workout in at least. Anyhow, when the time came this year: Silver! (I must quickly caveat here that everyone has different standards for their own health. Scoring well enough to receive some money from MINDEF is, for some reason, part of my metrics for self-worth; it certainly doesn’t have to be for everyone. In essence - as long as you’re healthy and happy, how high your IPPT score rockets shouldn’t matter that much. I hope this makes it clear that this entire rant is thus no judgement against anyone who’s very happy with a ‘Pass’.) Something something 'life is a marathon and not a sprint'... Having $300 PayNow-ed to you almost instantly is quite satisfying, but more than that, I think the joy of this year’s result lies in how it reflects progress and growth. In the meantime, I’ve allowed myself a bit more self-directed kindness. A good weekly routine – for easily fatigued folks like yours truly - can get broken all too quickly when you have to leave the country nearly every month, or when the folks at MINDEF think it’s fine to throw you into two separate high key ICTs within a span of 7 months. Things are not always perfect, of course – I still think I could be doing a lot more for my fitness – but the voice in my head, reminding myself that I have to treat my body right, has certainly gotten louder. Even when my fitness levels inevitably dip at some point in the future (in fact, as I type this out, I feel like I’m staring at the cusp of a new downward spiral), I have more faith now that I have it in myself to pick it back up. - Matt