Memoirs of an athlete

The weather was so warm that the air was still. No leaf stirred. I looked up at the azure sky. There countless white fluffy clouds suspended high up but none were strategically positioned in front of the sun.

The sun. It was a ball of inferno that rolled high in the heavens and the heat it emitted was strong enough to drive the coaches and teachers-in-charge into the shade where they cowered. We, the students, could only continue training on the furnace-like track. The only form of heat-relief was via the evaporation of sweat off our skin. Thank goodness our training ensured us an endless supply of perspiration.

The jumpers towered over me though I was the senior among them. We were those trackers who could be seen bounding with huge strides across the field and the ones who made the track sandy. However, it would be too unreasonable for us jumpers to take the blame for that. It was the sand.

The irksome tiny bits of particles of sand would simply stick to us or fall on us during jumps practice. As tiny as they were, they pissed us of to a great extent. After training, we would find bits of sand particle everywhere; on our hair, eyebrows, face, lips, neck, cleavage, buttock, thighs, calf and in our bra and shorts. The sand would also never fail to gather at our ankles and rub painfully against our skin when we walked. When we rubbed the sand off us, the tiny particles would exfoliate our already dried skin, and not without a slight stinging sensation. Otherwise, they would dissolve in our sweat only to crystallize by the time we reached home.

We would also find mysterious insect bites by unknown insects on our skin. No doubt, those despicable insects inhabited the sand pit, heir haven and hideout place.

We dealt not only with such irritants but with the generous training programs our coach would mercifully bestow upon us.

The high demands of the vigorous exercises was beyond description, but could be reflected on our faces, contorted with strain from the exertion of our muscles.

When we were finished we would then stagger breathlessly towards the parade square where we would be given debrief by any of the teachers-in-charge.

And one of which was the Miss Helen Chew.

She was a no-nonsense teacher and we could often see her glowering at students. If eyes could kill, many of our schoolmates would be dead already.