Pic 2 - B Suite Hotel welcomes all runners!! Peter and Boone in front of the hotel, Peter holding up the jco doughnuts Chee Hon bought for us... :-)
Pic 1 - Kangaroo courier delivers ... (though the pack a bit filled with useless stuff..) (little did I know I needed the poh-chai pills then...)
I have had a whirlwind of a week and barely had enough time to sit down to write this, and also I did not feel compelled to write it... this is the most surreal experience of my running career.
8pm Sat 21 Nov - we got back from dinner, driven by Chee Hon. We had gone to a Red Roof Inn hawker stall area at Jalan Penang (or something like that) and I had consumed my 3rd plate of Char Kueh Teow. That itself was a surreal experience... since I just arrived the night before and I was nursing a diarrhea case the week before... my knowledge of the methods and quality of char kueh teow had improved over that weekend by 1000% thanks to Boone, who could literally recite all the best CKT places in town in his sleep..
10pm Sat 21 Nov - just managed to get to sleep after arranging all my things...
220am Sun 22 Nov - Boone comes to eat a jco doughnut before we rolled off from B Suite. In the lift, the runners were dead serious in the middle of the night, we went to the lift where waft smells of deep heat filled up and Boone joked lightly but everyone was dead serious as though we were aliens from outer space...
230am Sun 22 Nov - My way or the highway - we took the highway ... walked from B Suite to Queensbay mall.. on the road, my fears of the highway taking all my energy out eased when I saw a stream of runners walking the route there, since B Suite was the Kenyans place to stay (!!!) - actually we coined that because we saw some kenyans there, but then later I realised KC and Running Mom was at the hotel too. This has got to be the most surreal experience in my running career - to be walking to the starting point, crossing a highway, seeing streams of people walking at 230am, and wide awake and excited... unreal...
300am Sun 22 Nov - we reached the starting line, despite halfway walking, we realised we were on the wrong side of the road, and only one other chap (was it Zahri?) was with us, and we consoled ourselves that we were hopeless dumb runners from KL attacking Penang grounds on foot on a highway in the middle of the night. Along the overhead, we saw the front runners of the full marathon passing through the road below, heading from Seagate to the bridge - that was a adrenaline sight...
330am Sun 22 Nov - The mens half marathon was flagged off - Boone, Chee Hon and Tan went off with this group. The women were told to not cross the line by a stern MC who told us we will be punished if we did by the greatest sin of DQ if we crossed the line..
345am Sun 22 Nov - Was flagged off the starting line, together with Su-Ann and Claire. A few cheerful Malay ladies in front told us they were from KL and we helped them take pictures before the soundless gun went off. I did not manage to catch Lim Guan Eng.. I was told he was driven up to the Full Marathon in his Merc... like moses parting the red sea...
0-10km - the 10km marker was the turning point on the bridge... this was quite a relaxed run for me.. I really loved the whether this year, clear skies, no construction on the bridge, cool breeze, passed a troupe of lion dance drummers on the middle span of the bridge and ran to the momentum of the drum beat. Just passed the mid-span, going down, I heard a person shouted my name across the barrier - realised it was Say Kiat, but I had no way of verifying as the slits were slanted the other way.. but I was motivated as it got me running faster in the dream of catching him... at just about the 10km marker, Running Mom Haza caught me (once again!!) and passed me, and I remember checking my watch 1:12 at the tracker - hmm, this is a fast 10km... at that point I actually felt I was about to get a personal best from this race
10-21km - don't know what happened, but from the turn all the way to the end of the bridge, I was much slower in pace, despite the ups and downs, I still felt very very good. I was still running strong, where typically when my watch showed 2hrs, I would've been drained. All the way, off the bridge to the turnoff where the IJM runners are, and then back to Queensbay mall to the finishing line. Realised in the last 4-5km that I was no where near my Personal Best, but actually it is a Personal Worst!!!
What happened?? I think I ran the second half of the race not as motivated as the first, and tried to focus on running without injury downhill and also running continuously when I should've paced and walked if I was tired. Instead I slowed down completely, and when almost home, met with the 10km runners, quarter marathon, I actually was slowed by the traffic as they stampeded the majority of the road, and the back of the mens 21km who walked blocked the rest of the way, despite I still managed to shuffle through.
Still, its no excuse, but a very mixed feeling, I loved penang, ran a great race feeling very good and ran all the 21km for the first time in my 21km experiences, and had good food, good company. I just wished I had run faster, but it was not to be. Maybe next year it will be blazing hot, raining or even poorly managed, but I will be back, and grab that personal best, marathon or half marathon category.
It was the most surreal experience :
- Walked to the starting point at 230am
- Race started at 345am and finished when still dark
- Ate 3 CKT over two days BEFORE the race
- Flying to-fro Penang for a race
- Clear pretty peaceful run on the Penang Bridge at 4am+ in the morning
- Met a marathoner (Peter) who could do a 3hr 39mins and still eat more CKT than me before the race (tabik)
- Stayed at the "runners" hotel
- Took public buses Rapid Penang and to the shock of my friends, did a serious concall on the bus.. (sorry guys I could not avoid it)
- Being offered doughnuts jco as a pre-race meal and declining it (only to have it for lunch later!)
- Feeling so unreal about a race because I did a personal worst time in good feeling (!)
- Asked to jump across a drain after the race to walk home which I did not dare to test the stiffness of my legs, so I chickened out (and we took a longer path which led to a cab)
There was a finishing line, I reached it, and I want to run more... to the next finish line...!
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