A "Fool" Print

It was 4.30am. Some of the sgrunners had woken up earlier to participate for the Full-Marathon event. Since it was still early for me (race starts at 6.00am), I took my own sweet time to have a long, hot bath, and fully-equipped myself with deep-heat, performance drink, and enjoyed a delicious whole meal bread from the courtesy of David. It was 5.15am, feeling entirely satisfied with myself on the preparation, I took a lift down to meet with another sgrunner (Oops!! forget his name). At the time when I stepped out from the lift, I hit upon another sgrunner whom susposed to join the Full-Marathon race. He was suffering from diarrhea and had to withdraw from the race.

Stardust’s friend was waiting outside the entrance to the hotel. We had a moment of confusion on how to reach the race venue. Thankfully, the runners on the road going towards the starting point provided us the lead. The venue was brightly lit with yellow and blue light bulbs. Most of the runners at the scene were chit-chatting, laughing and doing warm-up exercise. For this year, there was a slightly change in the route where we have to made a loop to run across the Dataran Merdeka again. Drums from nearby could be heard, cheering and lightened up the atmosphere. The DJ was counting every moment and seconds. As the start time were drawing near, we were all marshaled to the starting area. The horn blew and we all crossed over the starting line like a bunch of hungry bees.

The first 7 km was a terrible experience for me. My leg muscle was feeling awfully tight, esp the lower calves, and the new ASIC GT2130 did not help much in lifting my heavy foot. Every landing on the ground sounded like a “bomb dropped from the sky”. It was depressing to see runners overtook me one by one. My pace was reducing to 7mins/km. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of relief to change my registration to Half-Marathon event at the last minute. It could be a lot worst if I was racing for Full-Marathon.

I knew that I had to work out a countermeasure against this negative physiology of mine. Yes! I needed a pacer. Similar to a radar scanning for an enemy, my eyes were rolling from left to right aiming to spot a suitable target. Out of the masses, there was a female runner wearing a red running top. Ha!! What a prominent target she was. She was running at a relatively good fast pace and it was difficult for me to overtake her. However, by following her, I managed to overtake one runner after another.

After 12km checkpoint, the pain attributed from my ITB syndrome had seemed to disappear as if by miracle. I would feel my feet were being lighter liked jumping up and down from the ground with every step made. Perhaps, in reality, my knees were too numbed with pain to feel anything by now. In front of me, I would sense the tiredness of the “lady in red”. She slowed down her speed and our gap with each other was getting narrower. Eventually, I had crossed over her. Yahoo!!

At this moment, it was unnecessary for me to look for another target. My legs were recovering. Now, my mind was totally focusing to reach the finishing line within the sub-2hr barrier. To make up of the lost time, I hurried my pace and dashed quickly towards the end point. Tick by tick, I counted the number of seconds had went passed in my heart. Every street and building looked similar to me, as if I have run passed them just after the starting point. At every turning point, I could imagine to see the finishing gantry.

1hr and 57 mins had passed. There was minimum marking on the route. In my mind, I calculated I still had 1km or slightly more to cover. As if a thunder stroked on my head, I overheard someone shouted “3km”. Oh no!! I had miscalculated the distance!! But, I couldn’t give up. I knew that if I slowed down my pace, I would have lost.. At my last attempt, I made a sprint towards the destination. When I saw the sight of the gantry, there was a red carpet welcoming me at the last 100m. Hanging on top of the gantry, there was a digital clock registered 2:01:48 (Chip time= 2:00:54, Rank=108). I have failed to make it for the sub-2. Nevertheless, I felt content since I had did my best.

After a few minutes of rest, I saw Melvin and Stardust working on their warm down exercise. Melvin had done a 3:32 hrs. He was complaining of his lack of sleep due to his roommate's snoring at yesterday night. Stardust did his PB at 3:19hrs. Subsequently, other sgrunners (David, Jancy, Ultraman, Kayano, Vincent) were all back. Stardust queried the whereabouts of his friend. I was puzzled too as I didn’t spot sight of him. Right beside of us, there was the Toa Payoh Safra which comprised of 30 over of them. I managed to find Xiu Lee, Sok Hua, Shirley, Amelia and Wendy at a later while. Rosemary came to us after a while following by Peter. We had a few group photos before I joined back with the sgrunners whom waiting in front of the finishing line for SV. From the conversation exchanged, I knew that SV was suffering from diarrhea. Since most of us were taking the same food, we were suspecting that it would the pancake at the street that created the food poisoning as this was the only thing that the rest didn’t take.

Back to the hotel, the sgrunner whom withdrew in the beginning of the race, was feeling better now after given an injection by the doctor. Stardust’s friend was suffering from diarrhea too!! He gave up the race after running for 10km and had to wait for the sweeper bus to pick him up. As for SV, it was a nightmare to him. He did his worst timing of 6hrs by bearing with the pain to finish. I had to applaud for his determination. He was looking terribly sick. We had a Bak Kut Teh and some other Chinese dishes for lunch before heading back to Singapore.

In the end, it was a fun and enjoyable trip to me. The greatest prize to me in this trip was not to break my personal record but to acquaint with a bunch of friends sharing the same passion. Err..Still, the experience would be much better if not for me sitting behind SV and sniffing the vomiting smell coming from his plastic bag for 4hrs. :(

Coincidently, today was the same day when Linda set off for her Everest attempt. I would wish to send her off personally. Unfortunately, my departure time to KL crushed with hers. The only possible thing I could do is sent a sms wishing her all the best of her endeavor.. Hmm.. I’m still hoping to do a climb in mid of this year. Perhaps, doing the Everest Base camp is another good alternative than a climb. HAHA..

Inside the coach, I had seen some of the familiar faces from sgrunners, e.g. David, Jancy and etc. Well, since I hadn’t booked any hotel yet, it seems a pretty good idea to join them as they would need one more person to share the room. The rest of the journey to KL was pretty much a solitude for me, listening to my MP3 walkman phone and thinking whether I should change my registration to Half-Marathon instead (My knees were seriously suffering from ITB syndrome again). I recalled those stories of MR runners and Henry (Mt Safra), Alvin, whom all suffered from knees injuries and had to go for operation. I wouldn’t want to take the risk of this marathon race would affect my aftermath plans (Sundown Marathon, Duathlon, Climbing, Powerman Series etc.)

We all settled down to Ancasa Hotel when reached KL. Somehow, memories of me participated in last year’s KL marathon flow back in my mind where I was staying alone in a noisy street in a small, four-walled room at Chinatown. I had passed by this hotel at last year but retreated from staying here due to expensive hotel’s rate. Finally, I came back here again.. ha.

After settling our things, we went to Wisma OCM Jalan Hang Jebat to collect our number tag. At the collection center, I met more of the familiar faces, those from Toa Payoh and Mt Faber Safra and few other runners from MR. The registration proved to be a great hassle for me. Firstly, the old Malay auntie couldn’t find my registration form and wanted me to check from the computer terminal. Secondly, my record was not found there at all. And worst of all, they won’t allow me to re-register for the event. Wow lau, can’t believe it!! Lai Chee had also suffered the same fate but in a much better state than mine. I did use my super selling skill to persuade them for me to do a re-registration. Apparently, this method did not work to a guy and an old Malay auntie. Thus, I had to ask the group to leave first while I cleared out the things with the management. After waiting for an hour, I managed to use my charm to induce a young Malay girl of allowing me to search through their forms. Yeah!! Finally, I had found it. Apparently, they had mixed up my application form with other categories.

At the center, I resigned to fate and decided to join the Half-Marathon. For the past 3 years, I had registered for Full-Marathon but never did I run for once before. Sigh.. The collection of the running package went smoothly then after. At the same time, I also collected Yong’s number tag on behalf of him. This year, the sponsor for the event was from Adidas. The running top was in red color with yellow strips running at the middle. The quality was also much better for those whom joined the full marathon. Sadly, as for mine, a white cotton, cheap looking Pasa Mala T-shirt for those participated in half-marathon. Talked about racism (=racer)!!

After leaving the center, I couldn’t able to contact Yong. Huh?? An hour earlier, we did speak on the phone and in the next moment, there was a message at the other end telling me that the number was invalid. Strange.. I couldn’t wait anymore, and walked to his hotel. Dark clouds were covering the city of KL by now. Before long, a heavy rain was pouring from the sky, lightening strike and thunders roared. Within minutes, the road was flooded with water. With great difficulties and an umbrella bought from 7-Evelen, I managed to reach the Swiss Garden Hotel. In vain, Yong was not in his room and I left his number tag with the reception and a message behind for him to collect his belonging.

After back to my hotel, the sgrunners were ready for dinner after an hour of rest. Yong had also managed to contact me by using a local line. There were some problems with his SIM card. After looking through the hotel’s buffer menu, we all decided to try out some vegetarian food. At the dinner, David never stopped making fun of Jancy. It was a fun and cheerful chit-chat where we all questioning Stardust(vegetarian) about vegetarian food. Finally, the group reached a conclusion that being a vegetarian helped runner to attain PB based on Stardust’s past records. Ha..