At first I did not intend to buy new running shoes as I thought one enough already. But then after the Larian Sinar Amal at Bukit Jalil, the goody bag super generous, they gave Brooks discount voucher 40%. Being the smart consumer, so I bought my Brooks running shoe at a reasonable price. Another typical Malaysian. Hehehe…

Oh… I must mention Joshua here as he was the one who brought me to the Brooks shop at The Curve. He wanted to buy some illuminating vest because he plans to run early in the morning.

Two weeks after Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon, and I’m proud to declare that I ran my first full marathon in …*ahem*... in less than 6 hours (cut off time 6 hours).  I donned my running gear again, high in running spirit, and off I went to Seremban early on Sunday morning. Even though my eyes were in disagreement with me, but it was my semangat “PIA” that really pushed me out of my REM and made me get ready to meet my friends at Taman Midah, Cheras. Ahh… being a girl has a lot of advantages. No need to drive. Hehe….   

Reached the destination at 6.15 am. A bit “kap jio”, searched for the toilet and FUYOH! …queue very long and mission abandoned. After reporting, the urge to wee wee was still there. Back to the queue and now even longer. Plan B, cut queue. Reason: race start in 5 minutes and telling how sorry I were at those girls (students mostly). I do not wish to tell the condition of the toilet, but desperate situation needs desperate measures. 

Race gunned off at 6.45 am. Not so many runners as it coincided with the Port Dickson triathlon and KL Olympic Run. Few regular faces were there. To put it simply, the race was more or less like Bidor where you run along kampung roads, except that there was more traffic, hills and thank goodness no cow dung smells. Funny thing is about 3 km into the race, I saw opportunists set up a stall selling bottled drinking water for RM1. Maybe for those new to the race, they might get tricked to buy, but for an experienced runner like me, I was adamantly sure there will be water station 5 km ahead. True enough, there were 3 water stations offering 100 Plus and drinking water after each 5 km. I did not hear any complain about not enough water. See… even not so gung ho race they managed to organise well. Congrats to the organiser. This is their 22nd time organising the race.

Along the route, I didn’t see any distance marker. I saw few signages showing the direction for 21 km. To estimate the distance that I had run, I relied on my faithful TIMEX stop watch. I agak-agak, half an hour about 5 km I ran. To my disgust, I saw a young chap, taking a cab, stop just right in front of me, paid the driver and started running. Main tipu! Never mind, set in my mind, even you main tipu I still can overtake you. Well, I did! Boo to that guy!       

Suddenly, I felt my legs were failing me…Oh no! It was the sprained right ankle. And bad news, another funny, mild tingling sensation also can be felt in both my legs. Stubborn! Not yet fully recover, “hiaw” run again. I think it’s time for me to stop running. Wait la…fasting month is only a month away. My head screaming…you should STOP NOW but my other side said, if you stop now, you become fat. Arghhh….Fat or pain? Pain….

Checked my time. 1hour 50 minutes. Should be about 3 km to go. Finally, I saw a distance marker. 4KM. Swearing in my mind. Cannot be…should be less than 4 km. I know my timing and my pace. Run… run…run… joined with the students, zig-zagged overtaking them, walked for a while, a male runner gave me encouragement, almost there, and viola! I finished in 2 hours 17 minutes. Ah…off my targeted time. Kononnya wanna do sub-2 but not within reach yet. Aiks…no photographers around, expected anyway L. The medal, not bad…made from pewter. Brand? ROYAL SELANGOR! When I collected my not personalised certificate, inside attached a lucky draw coupon. The prize, 4 cans of 100 plus! Can do la…

Post race, took a shower at one of my running friends construction site. If you go to KFC in Seremban in the future, that’s where I took my bath. Then, brunch at the famous Hainanese chicken rice. Malacca’s one is better. Then the famous “Seremban Siew Pau”. Back to KL around 1 pm. Took bath again. Mandi kerbau just now ma... Jumped to bed. Turned here, turned there, could not sleep. Crazy…closed my eyes, hugged my bolster, tried to catch back the interrupted earlier REM but failed. 4 pm, read newspaper, then went back to bed. This time could sleep till 7.30 pm. My dreaded fear, can’t sleep at night if I sleep in the afternoon. I think I only managed to sleep at 2 am. Woke up 7 am next day! Hit the road at 7.30 am. Office…another dreaded feeling. Time to change job? YES! I’m in protest with Government for reverting back the teaching of Science and Maths to BM. Wish can do something…let the public voice to be heard. Can’t they learn from the last General Elections? Sorry…out of topic.

The end…

Preparation time, a power bar (peanut flavoured), two gels (tangerine), gatorade (orange flavoured) and a bottle (now I know why my friends gave me this bottle three years back. LOL)