PJ Half
It is soooo good to be back in the racing scene!
I had decided to run the PJ Half marathon sometime last week. I have been steadily working my way back to fitness, and when the opportunity to take another runner's bib came by, I found it hard to resist (despite my initial reservations). I wanted to test the waters, to see how well (or otherwise) my training of the past month has gone. I collected my bib from Tey on Saturday evening. Thereafter, I proceeded to Lake Gardens for a quick 3kms.
Anyway, to the morning of the race- After waking up at 5am, and taking slightly longer than usual time in the toilet, I picked up Kenny (PM27) at Cititel Mid Valley around 545am. We arrived at Kelana Jaya around 6am. After dropping off my reporting card, I did some stretching, and started seeing some familiar faces. I was standing at the back of the starting line and saw Jamie, Kenneth, Kelvin, Jacky and others. It was great to see everyone again, at the starting line. Words cannot describe the feeling of comrade-ship among runners, the calm before the storm, the final intake of breath before the deep dive.
The gun sounded and off we went. Not entirely certain with my fitness, my plan was to run slowly at the start, push a little harder in the middle miles and hopefully maintain that pace to the end of the race. But somehow, I felt more psyched up than usual- perhaps its because this was my first race of the year, and I ran at a what I felt was a reasonably quick pace, around a 5:00 per km. Kenny was pacing with me. was comfortable all the way from the start, to the uphill, onto the Federal Highway, the u-turn at the Sunway Bridge and onto the Federal Highway before heading up the fly-over to the route that leads to the old airport. I was slowly but surely overtaking other runners.
The race itself was fairly uneventful in that sense. I felt strong and managed to maintain a fairly even pace throughout the race. Having said that though, after the u-turn at Terminal 3, feeling strong, I sensed that it was a good time to subtly increase the pace because other runners appeared to be suffering and what better time to overtake them?
I lost count the number of runners I overtook, but the real "drama" came in the last 800 meters of the race. There were 2 runners ahead of me. Let's call them A and B. A was running slightly further ahead, and B was behind. Both were within my grasp. I reined them in, but B started really irritating me because he was cutting corners (taking shorter cuts) to finish the race. Instead of taking the roads, he jumped onto the grass to take a slightly shorter route. Not much you might imagine, but when you're raggedly running someone down at the end of the race, every inch counts. He did the same thing as we approached the stadium. Instead of running on the slip road onto the track, he jumped over the kerb, and ran on the grass. I was getting quite mad at the time. 3 of us were running together on the track, with A and B ahead of me, and me quietly behind them. With 200 meters to go, I made my move and zoomed past B. B quickly realised that I was passing him and made an attempt to sprint as well, but he couldn't catch up. I then overtook A, but A was much stronger and in the last 50 meters, just about had enough in the tank to finish ahead of me by a stride.
Finishing time- 1:44 and change. Position- 59th.
I was quite satisfied with my performance, as I had just returned to "serious" running a little over one month ago. With some work, I believe that I can run faster. Lake Gardens is an excellent place for those who want to get back into shape, to stay in shape, or to improve their fitness. I certainly benefitted from running there; in all honesty, the PJ Half route was fairly easy compared to some of the routes around the Lake Gardens area.
After the run we took some photos and hung out for a bit, before getting from the KNN man my new toy- the Nike Triax watch. Beeeeautiful stuff. Spent some time playing around with it and reading the manual.
Anyway, back to reality-it's another looong week of work. Hopefully there's time for me to run.
I had decided to run the PJ Half marathon sometime last week. I have been steadily working my way back to fitness, and when the opportunity to take another runner's bib came by, I found it hard to resist (despite my initial reservations). I wanted to test the waters, to see how well (or otherwise) my training of the past month has gone. I collected my bib from Tey on Saturday evening. Thereafter, I proceeded to Lake Gardens for a quick 3kms.
Anyway, to the morning of the race- After waking up at 5am, and taking slightly longer than usual time in the toilet, I picked up Kenny (PM27) at Cititel Mid Valley around 545am. We arrived at Kelana Jaya around 6am. After dropping off my reporting card, I did some stretching, and started seeing some familiar faces. I was standing at the back of the starting line and saw Jamie, Kenneth, Kelvin, Jacky and others. It was great to see everyone again, at the starting line. Words cannot describe the feeling of comrade-ship among runners, the calm before the storm, the final intake of breath before the deep dive.
The gun sounded and off we went. Not entirely certain with my fitness, my plan was to run slowly at the start, push a little harder in the middle miles and hopefully maintain that pace to the end of the race. But somehow, I felt more psyched up than usual- perhaps its because this was my first race of the year, and I ran at a what I felt was a reasonably quick pace, around a 5:00 per km. Kenny was pacing with me. was comfortable all the way from the start, to the uphill, onto the Federal Highway, the u-turn at the Sunway Bridge and onto the Federal Highway before heading up the fly-over to the route that leads to the old airport. I was slowly but surely overtaking other runners.
The race itself was fairly uneventful in that sense. I felt strong and managed to maintain a fairly even pace throughout the race. Having said that though, after the u-turn at Terminal 3, feeling strong, I sensed that it was a good time to subtly increase the pace because other runners appeared to be suffering and what better time to overtake them?
I lost count the number of runners I overtook, but the real "drama" came in the last 800 meters of the race. There were 2 runners ahead of me. Let's call them A and B. A was running slightly further ahead, and B was behind. Both were within my grasp. I reined them in, but B started really irritating me because he was cutting corners (taking shorter cuts) to finish the race. Instead of taking the roads, he jumped onto the grass to take a slightly shorter route. Not much you might imagine, but when you're raggedly running someone down at the end of the race, every inch counts. He did the same thing as we approached the stadium. Instead of running on the slip road onto the track, he jumped over the kerb, and ran on the grass. I was getting quite mad at the time. 3 of us were running together on the track, with A and B ahead of me, and me quietly behind them. With 200 meters to go, I made my move and zoomed past B. B quickly realised that I was passing him and made an attempt to sprint as well, but he couldn't catch up. I then overtook A, but A was much stronger and in the last 50 meters, just about had enough in the tank to finish ahead of me by a stride.
Finishing time- 1:44 and change. Position- 59th.
I was quite satisfied with my performance, as I had just returned to "serious" running a little over one month ago. With some work, I believe that I can run faster. Lake Gardens is an excellent place for those who want to get back into shape, to stay in shape, or to improve their fitness. I certainly benefitted from running there; in all honesty, the PJ Half route was fairly easy compared to some of the routes around the Lake Gardens area.
After the run we took some photos and hung out for a bit, before getting from the KNN man my new toy- the Nike Triax watch. Beeeeautiful stuff. Spent some time playing around with it and reading the manual.
Anyway, back to reality-it's another looong week of work. Hopefully there's time for me to run.
posted by pm19 at
9:57 am
3 Comments:
congrats on your comeback to racing!
congrats!
congratulation!so good that u beat that Bastard runner, take short cut some more,throw his face! kaka... hope to see u more in future running event :)
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