Running in the Standard Chartered KL Marathon race has always been on my to-do list ever since I got involved in these racing events. It’s one of the biggest and well-known racing event in Malaysia featuring participants from all over the world. Last year I missed to sign up for the race since I delayed registering until well after 3 days and all the good (read: doable) categories are full. This year I registered bright and early I got my wife and I in the 10KM leisure category which cost us 70 ringgit each. It’s the highest race fee I’ve ever paid yet but I’m sure it’s well worth it.
So how did we prepare for the race. To be honest I didn’t train much. Believe or not I was recovering from my last hiking trip for a long time not to mention the number of days that I went down with one illness after another (mostly cold & fever). I lost one toe nail from my last hike (now two) and it took me a while to start running again. So in the month before the race I ran a total of 8 kilometers only which is needless to say highly inadequate for a 10K race. My wife, let’s just say she ran even less 😃
For race pack pick up, the organizer have choose an obscure mall in downtown KL called Kenanga Wholesale City. For 70 ringgit, we got the standard Adidas singlet race kit, running bib, a pair of batteries, some muscle cream and that’s it. Pretty crappy for a race of that prestige I must say. On to the race day. Since we didn’t flag off until 7:45 in the morning, we left home around 7:00 AM which was a mistake on our part. We didn’t take into account the number of roads leading to the starting point that were closed that day so we had to park about 1 kilometers away and rush to the starting point. I guess that counted as our warm up. Fortunately we got there with 10 minutes to spare so we did get to stretch family. Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman was crowded for sure and as the flag off the race we hustled slowly along with the crowd.
Unlike our previous races, I didn’t leave my wife behind and sped off in front of her. We jogged and ran together pretty much the entire race until the finish line. The route took us along Jalan Sultan Ismail along KLCC, Jalan Parlimen, Masjid Negara and back to Dataran. It wasn’t my best effort and to tell you the truth we walked about halfway through the race but at least we did it together. Our first StanChart KL Marathon. Hopefully we will do much better together in the future. We went to collect our medals after the obligatory picture-taking of course. We were given green apples instead of the usual bananas which I don’t really eat.
We didn’t hang around for long after the race and walked back to my motorbike to go home. Our plan of stopping by a restaurant in KL for breakfast was scrapped after one of our helmets went missing, as in stolen by somebody missing. I purposely brought my oldest and busted helmet and still they wanna steal that junk. We assessed all our options and I ultimately decided to risk it and go home with just one helmet. After some clever maneuvering and taking the Mex highway, we arrived safe and sound without any untoward incidents.
So that’s how our first KL Marathon was, it was filled with bitter sweet memories and an unfortunate ending. Next time we will seriously consider taking the train instead. How long did we take to finish 10K? An embarrassing 1 hour and 17 minutes LOL.
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