Race Report: KL City Day Run

I signed up for last Sunday’s KL City Day Run despite knowing that I will suffer on the difficult course. To trace back to the last time I ran that route you’ll have to go back to 2005. Psychological reasons or otherwise, I’ve never broken 60 minutes on this challenging course, the closest I came to that barrier was a few seconds after an hour. This made the 56:50 I ran yesterday all the more surprising.

By the time I reached the car park behind the court building at 6:30am, all that was left was a single parking lot. Since I intended this as a social run, I didn’t spend any time warming up. I even had doubts whether I could run all the way and so adopted the “take-it-as-it-comes” approach. My only plan is to run lightly and stay relaxed, in breathing and in form. After I joined the other males in the ritual of discharging our bodily fluids into the Klang River, I felt that my left abdomen tightening up. The banks of the river wasn’t a nice place to be on race day morning. Lots of territorial marking by the males.

Flag off was on time. My form was fine from the start. I kept this up right to the killer climb at Jalan Duta. Then I started questioning my sanity and intelligence. Not only had I repeatedly fared badly over this course when I was younger, but now I was completely unconditioned and . At the 7^th K, my arm swing, indeed, my whole body movement, went from relaxed to uncontrollable with arms flailing like a drowning person to the tail rotor of a helicopter. I felt a burning sensation in the rapidly warming air and my lips were parched.

There were still some distance to go after the Parliament stretch but at least it was all either downhill or flat, so I increased the churning of my rotor-arms and purged everything from my mind. Just think of the finish line, I told myself. When I got into the finishing chute, I was surprised that the FTAAA officials didn’t set their bib check and result tabulation way beyond the finish gate. Thus a queue had already formed even before we crossed the line. The FTAAA ought to set themselves further back after the gate so that the runners run past the finish line. I had my second surprise when I saw that my position was 189. Even more surprising was that I was given a finisher’s medal. Yes, I’m aware the top-300 finishers in my category will get medals but then you’ll never know about local races…

Before I left Dataran Merdeka to pick my wife up at the office, I spent some time catching up with friends. The day turned out rather productive – all the chores and week’s marketing was accomplished rather quickly since C1 and C2 were out at the mall with their Uncle and Grandma.