So one of the things I managed to achieve this year was to participate in 10-kilometer runs. For a fat slob like myself, this was something I never imagined I would accomplish in a million years. But there was one day back in February when Chris asked me if I wanted to join the Energizer Night Race. I don’t know what came over me, but I said yes. Did I know what I was getting myself into? Fuck no, but somehow I managed to run/jog/walk (not necessarily in that order) over a distance of 10km in about 91 minutes.
Ever since then, I’ve participated in two other runs. Even The Missus also caught the running bug, participating in two runs over yonder in KK. I still don’t know what made me take up Chris’s invitation, but I’m glad I did. It was an exhilarating revelation, to find out first-hand that doing something of this nature was not out of my reach. Nice boost for the ego-lah, basically.
The latest run I joined was the Nike City 10K SG v KL Challenge. It had a nice little twist: runners from KL and Singapore join up, and those utilizing the Nike+ applications will be able to upload their total distance run in their daily workouts from the point of registration, to the race day, up until October 31. The country with highest logged total distance run will get US$30,000 donated to a deserving charity. It’s something I could get behind, so Chris and I decided to register. We trained as much as we could, considering that it was nearing finals at the time of registration.
I even managed to get the elusive Nike+ SportBand at a 50% discount; way too good an opportunity to pass up.
I was supposed to meet up with Chris in front of KLCC on race day, at a time when no sane human being would be up, but he overslept. Yeah, it sounds as painful now as when he told me over the phone. He couldn’t get to the venue on time, and I was so ronery there.
I was hoping to bump into Syefri, but with a crowd of about 9,000 it was like finding a needle in a flourescent-green haystack. Even with the ‘fro.
All photos of the run taken with Nokia E63.
JJ from hitz.fm was the emcee at the starting line, pumping up the participants until the run started.
The route was a funny one. For the most part, it was well-planned. We passed by some hot-spots, and the route even got us on board the AKLEH, but there were sections of the route where the participants were literally forced to stop at intersections for traffic. Now, I haven’t joined many runs, but I’ve joined enough to know that this was extremely sloppy. It messed up a lot of the runners’ times, and also had a potential to be dangerous for us. The most dangerous one was near the end, when we were actually told to make a U-turn… WHILE traffic was headed our way. It was a genuine WTF moment, and there were a lot of confused people who didn’t really know what to make of it. But we were all too exhausted to care; we just wanted to get it over with.
Another lulz moment involved the water stations; the first three stations ran out of water extremely fast. But there was a brilliant work-around that I observed at the last water station. Race officials were handing out bottles of 100-Plus so the runners could drink and run at the same time, but there were too little to go around. So runners who had the bottles took a few gulps and put the bottles at the curb, so other runners behind them could refresh themselves. Pretty soon, everyone did this. The last 2 kilometers had literally a row of half-empty 100-Plus bottles at the curb so anyone could drink them.
Solidarity among runners: booyah.
Despite that, I had fun. It was a good event (despite the major problems), and the feeling I get on finishing a 10km run is still fucking awesome. Would I join another one? Most definitely.
But this fat boy is gonna have to do a shitload of training for the next one.
