KL marathon race report

The big day finally arrived, and not a minute soon enough I would say. I had been training my ass off since the very beginning of the year (and I mean very, I started that afternoon barely after shaking off my New Year's tipple). Trust me, in my entire career as a runner, I have never trained continuously for such a long time, and with no other competition in the mean time to boot. My body might have been getting fitter, but my mind was getting fatigued and antsy. I was itching to race.

Besides being probably my biggest race so far, topping the Penang Bridge Run, it was also my first race of the year, and also the first since my 'train focused' approach started. Talk about triple the pressure. A lot of things happened while I was in KL too, but since this is a race report I will leave running unrelated stuff for another post. Maybe.

Anyway, some background information. For the 3 months of training, the 5 hours of back-breaking boredom in a bus, and the fear of running in an alien course, I decided to set my targets high, very high in hindsight. To be exact, I aimed to finish in under 90 minutes.

On race morning, I basically went with familiar routine, since it's not wise to try new stuff on race day. I wore my trusty Brooks T4 racers, and my usual Brooks 02 hiking team vest and Asics shorts ensemble. I did bring along my adidas KOTR vest, but I decided to wear the Brooks because it was a badge of honour to represent my team all the way here in KL, not to mention the fact that I will probably be the only one wearing that vest. Yes I am a stickler for individuality, so sue me.

I reached Dataran Merdeka, which was the starting and ending area, at about 5.15am, plenty of time to spare before the 6 am start. I whiled away my time doing some lacklustre jogging and halfhearted strides and looking around for familiar faces. I guess my 3 hours plus of sleep didn't help and my Red Bull had not kicked in yet. I then wisely decided to visit the loo, in mind of a probable rush for the toilet by the other runners just before the start. Thus relieved, I sautered over to the starting area. Yup, my race mood started to fire up. I also bumped into a familiar face, one of the regulars in Botanicals. I even joined him in a long run 2 weeks before, though that was interrupted by some untimely bowel movement. May history do not repeat itself here, was my fervent wish.

By the time I reported to the starting line, there was already quite a crowd ahead, which means they were between me and the starting line, definitely not good. Using my slight build to maximum effect I managed to weasel my self forward, though my efforts still left me with a crowd ahead of me, just smaller. Now it was just a matter of time. Then "BOOM!!".

My mid-pack status hindered my progress in those initial stages. Thoughts going through my mind involved words like 'fuck', 'why do slow people insist on standing in f front??!!', 'move outta my way, slowpoke'. After annoyingly long seconds of shuffling to the start line, the jam loosened up a lot. I immediately zeroed in on a runner zooming by, deciding to use him as a pacer. In contrast to my usual tactic for half marathons, I decided not to go out slow any more and resolutely stuck with my pacer. To my shock, my body was already feeling the effects, with my legs feeling sore and my right ankle feeling very painful. Keep in mind that was within about 2km after the start. Honestly though, those have always been old problems of mine, but usually in shorter races. My mind was blaring at me to take a break or walk rather loudly, but my experience told me to just shrug it off.

The first few km of scrambling soon settled into a calmer rhythm. The course made things tough though, with small uphills and downhills and many turns. Surprisingly I coped quite well with that, even though hills were never my strong point. About 5 km in, I managed to lose my pacer. Almost around this point a pair of female runners overtook me and left me in my dust. I managed to limit the damage, and instead used them to pace myself. Forgive me for being a bit sexist, but it does hurt to be beaten by a girl, what more two at once.

The race soon settled into a steady pattern, with flyovers providing the pain factor. As expected, my problem ankle went numb a few more km afterwards, allowing me to cruise along at a comfortable pace. My hopes for some guide for checking my pace were wrecked though, with the idiotic placing of drinking stations. No way in hell will I run 30 minutes for 5 km, which basically screwed up my pace plan. The trouble was that they did not take into account the changes in this year's route and placed the stations at the same spot but did not make the resulting changes to the distance marking.

After some time in the outskirt region of the city, the course took us back into the city centre. In other words, I was as confused as hell with more twists and turns. At least I know that it will be about 2.5 km between each drink station so I just focused on getting to the next one, slow down, grab a drink them gradually pick up again. Eventually I managed to overtake 1 of the female runners, but the other one was just increasing the gap. From about a few metres ahead, she was just flying out of sight by the time I approached the finishing straight. I consider myself a fast finisher, but it was humbling to be dusted by her. In my defense though, that lady was from Singapore and finished in 5th in the women's open category.

I gave it my all, and I can't complain about that. Still, I only managed to clock 1:36.29, for 32nd place, waaaay off my target time. The redeeming factor was that I managed to beat my previous best by about 3 minutes. That kinda put things in perspective about the standards I have to reach to achieve my goals.