On the Penang Bridge International Marathon

Finally the debut run in the infamous Penang Bridge International Marathon since it was first started in the 1985. Probably becauase I was not even born back then. LOL. Since I was in Paediatrics posting and what nots, it was quite hard to leave early on Friday, which saw my friend and I leaving the Klang Valley late in the evening after our dinner.

On the day of the race, I woke up as early as 130 in the morning. In fact, I don't think I even slept at all! Flag off for the half marathon was as early as 3a.m., and not wanting to be late, we head over to Queensbay Mall from our hotel at 2.

It was my first time running a half marathon, as far as 21km!

I reached the junction to the bridge at 35 minutes, not sure what was the distance though. But I guessed it was quite a smooth run, didn't feel any soreness thus far, which was a good thing. :P

The run on the Penang Bridge was indeed an incredible experience. I've read about it on some other blog, about how great it was to run on the bridge, but little did I know it was so awesome.

The morning breeze from the sea, or rather the coming rain, was so cold I was shivering in my soaked jersey. But thanks to the movements of the muscles did I feel the warmth. Otherwise I'm sure I'd have fallen sick already. Though at the time of writing this, I'm already shivering at a normal air-conditioned room. LOL.

I reach the end point on the bridge at 1 hour 7 minutes or so and made a U-turn to head back to the island. The point of U-turn was 9.7km then. I was really enjoying every bit of my run. Before I knew it, I reached the island. There were so many runners in front of me, but I wasn't able to go any further, so I maintained at my pace of 8kmph. But subsequently, as we hit the coastal highway, my legs carried me faster, probably because I trained on flat roads all these while.

Alas, I managed to finish the whole distance within the required time, though I'd wished to be faster. I clocked 21km in 2 hours 50 minutes. I think that's gonna be on the bottom half of the crowd, about 6000 runners ran the half marathon, and I felt most of them overtook me along the way. :P Then again, I'm still happy. Heee...!~

Now that it's done, that should pretty much sums up the running event I'll be joining this year. LOL.