Putrajaya Half and other ramblings

First and foremost, I must commend the organizers on the Putrajaya Half Marathon held last Sunday. The event turned out to be much better than I had anticipated. Some 7200 runners turned up for the run. I will definitely take the race more seriously, next year.

I adopted a rather laid back approach to the run, for the following reasons-

1) I have been rather busy with wedding preparations, leaving me with little time to do longer runs. I only have about 45 minutes to a max of 1 hour to run, although having said that, I have been doing some pretty intense training in the last 2 weeks, even leading up to Saturday evening, barely 12 hours away from the race. Saturday evening’s workout consisted of mile repeats (6 repetitions) run at 6:45 pace, among others. So you can imagine the state of my legs when I started the race.

2) I’ve been packing up barang in my room- partly to move to my new apartment, and also partly to re-decorate and paint my existing room, leaving me pretty beat at the end of the day. As we speak, I’m still assembling some furniture for my room, having spent the whole of Monday and yesterday painting 2 new coats in my room.

3) I wanted to treat the Putrajaya run as a training run, i.e. long run which I haven’t done in some time.

4) Singapore is my main focus. After all, I’m the defending Malaysian champion! Hahaha, only kidding.

I arrived at the mosque area around 6am and saw many familiar faces. Good friends. Jamie (who had just about recovered from a bout of flu), Ryan, Adam, Kenny, Ronnie, Khoo, and so forth. We were to start the race on the bridge. It was somewhat reminiscent to Singapore, with the long straight road and the arch specially built for the race. There was even an electronic timer! Too bad we didn’t have the time chips to accompany such pleasing race aesthetics.

I think most of the runners were shocked when the gun went off, signaling the start of the race, because most weren’t really ready to start as yet. I certainly wasn’t- I was chatting with Kenny and Chen when the gun went off!

The Putrajaya route was very challenging. It was undulating with some hills. It was somewhat similar to the Nilai Half route. And, when you factor in the heat (the race started at 7am, which is sheer madness), you can imagine how difficult the race was. The good thing is that there were many water stations, which helped many runners who were wilting because of the route itself, and the heat.

Having decided on the pace I would run, Ronnie, Kenny, Khoo and Chen were well ahead of me, naturally. But I derived a new-found pleasure- I met so many people who overtook me- Thomas, the Penguins, Ah Seah (track mate), Li Sar, Be Hon, and many others. I chatted briefly with Khee Meng and Ah Seah.

I completed the race in a very leisurely but thoroughly satisfying and enjoyable timing of 1’52.40.

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My room is in a complete mess. I’ve just painted the walls to a warm, cream colour to complement my new furniture, which is teak-like in colour. The wardrobe is much bigger than I had anticipated, because it didn’t seem so big in the showroom. Now I’m wondering if I had purchased one too many (I bought 3). All my barang (clothes, mags, CDs, hi-fi system, etc) have been moved out to the upper floor hall. So, actually it isn’t only my room which is in a complete mess- the entire house is. It will be clean for my wedding and chum char (tea) ceremony.

I wanted to go to track yesterday but was just too busy with my room project.

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The wife wants to watch the performance of Stomp on 20th September. What is Stomp?

“[An] explosive extravaganza of dance, theatre and percussion combined into one rhythmic and comical performance.”

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Once again, I’ve been asked to put on more weight for my wedding.

You will see a pudgy Justin in the next month or so.

Non-runners just don’t understand.

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I am so tired.