First Long Night Run

Race: Putrajaya Night Marathon
Date: 6th February 2010, 8.00pm
Venue: Palace of Justice, Putrajaya
Distance: 21km
Website: http://www.putrajayanightmarathon.com/
Why this race:
1. First ever night marathon in Malaysia
2. Surprisingly pretty good organizations!

Didn't sign up full distance for this race, was a bit skeptical of Malaysia's ability in organizing races, especially the "FIRST" race. In addition, the race was put to the public quite late, only about two months to prepare. So I decided to sign up half marathon. Was a bit regret after knowing the very low number of female participants and the high chance of obtaining prize money $$$ LOL **

I guess I was luckly to run only half this time, Ms. Menses visited me for the third day. The weather at night in Putrajaya is always hot and humid. Planned to do an easy and slow run with some running mates, but they were all in 'pia' mode. Do not believe these people when they initially said they wanted to run together and do slow LOL!

My first night run was Shape Run 2009, only about 11.5km, so this would be my first longer night run. Usually I would have one PowerBar Performance about 45 min to 1 hour prior to races in the morning, now I had no clue of food strategy for night races. I had my lunch after 3pm, and few pieces of cream cracker at 6pm+. Ate another two bananas at 7.30pm, and took the new Weider In Energy Jelly 20 min before the race. I could already feel problems in stomach before taking the bananas, not sure it was because of the food I ate or because of menses.

As anticipated, it was hot and humid as usual. Felt very stuffy at the starting line with so many people around, I already started to sweat heavily. The distance marker was placed every km, kudos to the Organizer... but they put something like "Achieved 41km, 40km to go" for full marathon and "Achieved 1km, 20km to go" for half. Oh boy, they should only do this after half of the distance had been completed, it was so scary to see so much more to go!

My first km was about 6:30+, still looking good. After about 2km, problems started to kick in, I could feel little pain at different areas of the stomach at different time. Anyway, the pain was little and bearable, just felt very uncomfortable to run especially under hot temperature and stuffiness. I kept peeping my watch, noticed I was getting slower and slower. Reached 10th km at 1:08:12, well, quite sure I won't be able to achieve PB anymore with this timing.

I suddenly got second wind, ran quite well from 11th to 13th km. At the same time I was worried whether this energy could be sustained until the end? Yeah... I slowed down tremendously after catching up with a running mate at around 13th km. Decided not to follow her pace, just do whatever I could to finish the race... I didn't want DNF.

At about 14/15km after a big turning, saw someone collapsed on the floor and the medic was trying to rescue him. Since I couldn't help much, I just went ahead (same to road accidents, just go ahead if can't help anything, don't congest the area...). Next morning I heard he had passed away due to heart attack. May he rest in peace...

My pace was terrible. A little demon on one side telling me to just stop running since I won't achieve good result, while the little angle on the other side encouraged me to keep going. As long as I didn't give up and just kept running, I should still be able to achieve respectable timing.

I think Malaysian have to learn to respect runners, including slow runners. At one point, a traffic police allowed the cars to pass thru and stopped the runners until I yelled at him. Then later a car was trying to get thru even though I was running across, I showed him my... fist... hey, not middle finger larrr.

I was very tired, didn't know how I did it... just kept running. I checked the route before, I knew we were not running towards the finishing line directly on the flat, instead there would be a detour for another km or two. You know, the Malaysian organizers are not sane people and like to torture runners' mind, ha. When knowing only 150m left, I sprinted as fast as I could in order to show a strong finish in front of public LOL! The time on my watch was 2:26:42... well not too far from the PB of 2:24:16 in PBIM in Nov 2009. But I made 2:11:49 when crossing the 20km mark in the recent NB30K, which means I could actually run sub 2:20 for half.

Anyway, despite of the bad timing, I did feel satisfied as I didn't give up. We can't expect every race to be perfect and we are always in tip top condition. However after this long night run experience, I would not put too much hope anymore of doing well in the up coming Energizer Night Race. The new event would be held in Cyberjaya where the weather is no better than Putrajaya. And, the full marathon starts at 5pm, so hot! Will try to make some adjustment to my training plan after Chinese New Year, probably more evening runs. As usual, I like the feeling of putting efforts to train and focusing in the race, and the most important part is -- Enjoy Every Run!

** Luckily didn't run full distance. The timing for 20th place (which eligible for prize money) is 05:22:15. I don't think I could do that in this kind of weather! BIG CONGRATULATIONS to my running mate who made a decent time. placed no. 16 and won the prize!