My First Duathlon!

As part of my quest to get fit and stay fit from 2006 I have started taking part in several sporting events in and around KL. It all started with the Siemens 10k run, Merentas Desa 8k cross-country and the Power 10k run early in the year. I then signed up for my first Duathlon (run-bike-run). As I much prefer cycling to running, this kind of event suits me much better. I was a bit unsure of how I would cope with a combined 5k run-15km ride-3k run as my usual training involved a slow 5-6k evening jog and the occassional 15km cycle to work on a Saturday morning. As you can see from this first photo, I got off to a fairly slow start (I'm the tall one nearly in last place, with a blue cycling jersey, above the furthest right cone), but I always do that as I like to keep at the same pace for the whole event.

If I remember rightly I felt ok on the first 5k run and finished in about 33mins. I was way behind my fellow 10k run aquaintances Lee and Bhupinder but planned to catch them up on the bike ride - my strongest discipline. The 15k bike ride was great fun - it is so nice to cycle without traffic. I managed to cruise up Jalan Kuching at a fair pace, overtaking a few Sprinters and Long-distance competitors, and even got up the hill at Jalan Duta without much difficulty. The rest of the ride was uneventful, which was unfortunate as I had planned to catch-up and overtake Lee & Bhupi. The final run started off ok (as I started I caught a glimpse of Jackie, Lucas, Daryl and Sri who had come to cheer me on) but as soon as I hit the slight incline up past the JKR building I started to struggle quite badly. I ended up walking on 2 or 3 occassions for a few minutes at a time, so I reckon I lost 5-10mins on this run.

I finished in 1:32:15. I caught Lee and Bhupi by around 5 minutes on the bike ride but not enough to make up what I lost in the first 5k run. Never mind - I had a great time and signed up for the next round (MMDS2 - Putrajaya - 30 July 2006) within a few days.

As I left the course to cycle up to Lake Gardens to the car, some officials and a policeman got a bit concerned as they thought I was lost. They asked me to remove my race numbers. The policeman must have seen this as early-morning inspiration for a flutter on the 4D lottery, so he asked me to add a favourite digit to my race number - to help him choose his. So hopefully 5037 came up that day and earned him some extra cash.