On the Standard Chartered KL Half Marathon 2011

Yay! 3rd Half Marathon this year, and the fourth since I first started. God! Don't know why I have to torture myself going through all the pain of running 21km and spend the next few days limping around. How stupid! But then again, 4th half marathon. Weee!~

Standard Chartered this year was... Humongous. News had been spreading as early as May and people are already registering months before. Speaking of yours truly. Actually... After the 2 bad experiences of 21km in Bareno and Bidor, I detest running another 21km. 10km seemed so so much easier. But then again, since I've already registered for it like, months earlier, I guess I have only myself to blame for not training. Ba-ha.

So the parking issues around the race route was still a pain in the ass. And the police was blocking the like, ALL the roads leading to the starting point. I can't even get into the bird park area where I had planned to park my car. And it was only after some other drivers negotiated with the police that, a few other cars and myself followed closely, and managed to get into Padang Merbok and parked there.

The amount of runners were sort of spreaded out as the 10km and 5km category flagged off in another point, while only that of the half marathon flag off in front of the Sultan Abdul Samad building. But even with the big chunk of the participants in the 10km ( I assume), the number of runners in the half marathons were overwhelming.

We flagged off at 6.15 in the morning when it was still dark. Love the weather, though it was pretty chilly. On top of that, it looked as though it was going to rain too, was so scared that it would. I saw some lightnings... But thankfully, the sky was clear throughout the run.

First 8km was pretty smooth. Kept a pace of 2km every 15 minutes and reached Jalan Cheras without any problem. But the problem starts soon after the slow down to walk.

And after that it just went downhill. My sole started to hurt with every steps, it even walking seem sore. It didn't help that the sun was coming up, and it was very hot. But I thought the organizers did a very good job providing drinks every 4 km...

By 2 hours, I hit the 15 km mark. The remaining 6km seems so near yet so far. Wouldn't be a problem to complete it in under one hour had it not because I've run 15 km earlier. Which was why, I always had to remind myself that I won't be able to make it under 3 hours if I didn't run.

We headed into the Golden Triangle from Cheras. Somewhere. Didn't recognize a lot of the roads. And for the first time, I thought running on a road wasn't as easy as it seems. Or maybe it was just because we're in KL. The surface of the road wasn't that smooth, had a few times I nearly twisted my ankle if I didn't manage to stabilize myself in time.

There was actually a very interesting small tunnel called the 'cool zone' as well! Though, well, it wasn't really that cooling running through the water vapor. I'd take sponges any time.

I knew it wouldn't be that far when we passed by KLCC. And I had been running for 2.5 hours. I was pretty confident I could make it to the finishing line at about 3 hours. Therefore, mental estimations over and over again were the form of motivation.

And it was finally the 20km mark. But the last 1km didn't seem as easy as I hoped it would be. I wasn't speeding up, but I couldn't seem to run for more than 5 minutes without stopping to catch my breath and rest my legs.

So finally... 3 minutes to 3 hours, I finally crossed the finishing line, to be hugged by the brother Josh. *Happy to have met you bro!*

Lined up for the finisher medal, and met up briefly with +Ant+ and another photo with Josh, before headed home and wasted the whole afternoon doing nothing.

My take on the run: I totally enjoyed it.

Love the sceneries!
Love that we are the big boss this morning and all the cars had to stop for me.
Love that there were water, plenty of them; plus generous supply of 100plus as well.
Love that the finisher medal is so shiny! LOL.