Sunday, August 24, 2008

One heck of a SHAPE race

The Shape & Men's Health Run 2008 which i ran was kind of a carnival. True to its name, we got people of all shapes and sizes running in this event. Runners that I have never seen before in other road races, tall and short fit looking ladies, bodybuilders, etc,etc. You name it you probably get it. Lotsa young and pretty gals....cuci mata sikit, and definitely good for those bachelor boyz to smell around, i mean try their luck. Who knows some will be lucky to hit the jackpot and get to know some of them too.

























Anyway back to the race, after collecting my bib and pinning it onto my vest, it was oredi 7am (as the race will start at 7.30am) I walked towards the starting point which is at Tapak A of Lake Gardens. As usual bumped into those regular road racers. The bunch of tri-athletes was there to greet me too( the two Raymonds, Siok Bee, Mich Looi, Shih Ming) They were talking about their Saucony shoes and Shih Ming was showing off her brand new Nike+ Lunar Trainer.

Time to register and get into the kandang. This will be the 2nd race for me after Sundown Marathon and also the KOYAK outing last week. So my plan was not to go out fast as I am still on medication for my cough and throat. I will just use this race to condition my fitness and pace myself well and hopefully get a medal if I am fast enuf. Went to the back of the kandang to do some stretching where I bumped in Abang KP. He too was there and I think he is also not going for timing in this race as I think he is also not training regularly all this while. Had a chat with with a Rac which is around the corner.

Out of a sudden we heard a BANG and the race got started without any announcement. As this is almost like a carnival run, most runner take it very casually even though there isnt any countdown to start. I just run slowly following the sea of runners slowly moving forward. We are required to run around the lake before climbing the deer park and out of Lake Gardens and then out on Jalan Parlimen towards Kenny Hills, and back to Jalan Parlimen and end at Tapak A.

Nothing spectacular about this race as I just maintain a very comfortable pace so that I would not stumble to exhaustion towards the end. The route was very familiar to me as this was part of the training route that I normally run. I was kind of held up by the sea of runners and by the time we are out of Lake Gardens the crowd kind of eases of and create more space to run and overtake.

I just continue with a comfortable pace and not pushing too hard as I know my condition is still not fully 100% to run a 50minutes race. Just cruising on to enjoy the run until i hit the 6k mark where i bumped into Michele Looi. She was kind of slowing down and I encourage her to pace with me since I believe she needed some motivation at that point. We ran for the next 3k pacing each other and got to overtake 2 lady runners that was in front of her. I hope that gave her more motivation to push harder to the finishing.

Towards the entrance of Lake Gardens, Mich drop back a bit and I signal her that I will push forward towards the finishing. As I enter into Lake Garden, I still have some reserve to push hard all the way to the finishing point at Tapak A, but there is no Junior Veteran runners in front of me. Just as I was collecting my position card, I saw Aeow Chen Peng in front of me. Say hello to him and told him he had a good run since he is in front of me. My position was 53 and that means I am entitled to a finisher medal. Not bad for that even though I didnt go all out for this race. Timing was 53mins 47 secs in a distance of 10.38km based on my GPS.


















Race was very well organized with lotsa of sponsors, good crowd and traffic control and the goody bag given out to all runners was quite spectacular. Quite a lot of things in the shoe bag that is being used to store all the goodies. I must said this is one of the very few races that gave out so many things in a goody bag.

Anyway no regret in participating in this race and will be back again if the event is happening next year.

1 comment:

Frank Chong said...

After koyak last week, you are now back in shape, just in time for marathon training. *sweat* -_-"