KL Marathon 2010

Woke up to find that it had rained and weather was great! Hopefully it will last throughout the run. The cough was still there, the legs were a bit sore from the past 2 days of walking throughout KL but spirit was high. No tourist runner today. It was going to be a serious run. Applied the Jump Start, the T-Max and for good measure – a new weapon in my run SBO – put on a pair of Zoots Compression Calf Sleeve and away we went.

Met up with 2 sgrunners, Mahesh and Irene at the hotel lobby, proceeded to Winsin Hotel to met up with Taz and Shut and we reached the start ground a good 30 minutes before the start. The crowd wasn’t so big and so we were able to walk up to about 30 metres before the start line before we stopped. Not elite no need to squeeze to the front.

Start off cautiously. In fact too cautious. Took over 7 minutes to cover the 1st Km. The idea was to run a paced race and hopefully finish in under 2 hours. The weather continues to hold. It was cooling, chilling at some points but the route itself was hell.


There were turns galore and did I mention the slopes? The race booklet said the course was generally flat but other than the start pen, there was nothing flat about the route. Just 200metres from the start, and it was a gentle slope up and this pattern continues. Turn one corner and there was a another slope or I prefer to call it an incline. These are not steep short slope like Mt Faber or Pierce but more gently sloping slopes. But the good thing is that what goes up must come down so likewise there were many down slopes.

For most of the routes, we were running side by side with the traffic. There were full road closures on some stretch and partial closure on some others. One such latter road was an underpass much like our Crawford underpass with an upslope at the end of it. Inside the underpass I was overwhelmed by the exhaust from the vehicles and developed a big coughing spell almost to the point of getting a stomach cramp and throwing up. Fortunately, once out of the tunnel, the air was better and soon I was able to resume my ‘jog’.

The distance markers were quite weird though. Spotted the 1km marker, then there were no more (maybe I missed them?) but the next one was 3km! Thereafter, until the 19km, the markers were at 1km interval but placed at distance of 0.5 apart ie 5.5Km, 6.5(missed that one too), 7.5 etc. Me being a figure deficiency guy wouldn’t quite work out the pace based on that and got a bit distracted trying to work out whether I was still on track for a sub 2 finish. At what I thought was the 10.5km marker, my watch shows 56:49. Hmm, not too good. Need to do a negative split if I still want to do sub 2. Only after reviewing the split later did I realised that it was 9.5km and not 10.5km.And I guess that mistake probably killed off my chance of doing a sub 2.

Anyway, the weather was still holding out well. Had gotta used to the up and down and started running a tad bit faster. At the 19km (the distance marker had reverted back to the single digit), my watch showed 1:50:42. Less than 10 minutes to do the last 2 km. A bit tough but I got a 30 secs buffer from the start so I figure can try. The 20th km was done in 5:20 but the last km even though I ran faster – the time recorded on my watch was a disappointing 6:42. I could have swear I ran much faster than that! Was the last km longer? Or was it the crowd? The full, the half and the 10km had merged together in this last stretch but to me it didn’t seem that bad. At least not like the chaotic finish of the last 2 SCSM. So either something was wrong with the distance but anyway, I think I left it too late and the slow first half probably did me in.

So I didn’t manage to get my sub 2 this time. As each year goes by, and with the constant jinx of injuries and sickness, it will definitely get worse. Maybe I am too old for this. Maybe I should just hang up my running shoes and devote myself to my sleep.

But first I have 2 or maybe 3 more half to complete this year. Until then….never say never!