KL Half Marathon Race Report

I'm quite a happy bunny right now as I managed to finish my first ever Half-Marathon in 2:14:42 - a mere 18s inside my target for the day - but inside nonetheless. I did however have to put in a fair bit of effort in the final 1km to make sure I dipped below 2:15:00. My heart rate was higher than desirable, but only for 3 or 4 minutes at the end.

I don't have to compare this run to last weeks shambles (SMART Tunnel Run) to say that it was well organised. We started 1-2 mins early, the water stops were great, and they had 5 and 10km markers. All finishers got a medal and the chip timing system is a bonus - the results are online about 10 hours after the first finishers!...21st century stuff eh? Here I am (a British Virgin Islander apparently)...265th out of 655 - a respectable place if I may say so myself...


Here's the HR and Altitude profile for this run.


I took the first 5km fairly easily. It was quite dark, and I was surprised at the number of runners around us. There was one person (of questionable gender) wearing tight jeans and beige boots, with long frizzy dyed hair, running along near me, making quite a noise with their boots, and sprinting along at a fair old pace. They disappeared for a while but reappeared again after 8 or 9km still running along!

The 5km water stop came up in 31minutes. This was surprisingly fast so I suspect it was a bit less than 5km. The hill on the highway past Taman Desa (biggest hill on the profile above) wasn't too bad and I made it onto the long flat stretch alongside the TUDM airfield. Here I bumped into Edwin Ng, who snapped me on his camera ...

By this time (1 hr or so) my body had settled into the exertion as it usually does after 30-40 minutes. The 10km water stop came up in 1:05:32. This suggested that my second 5km was 4 minutes slower than the first, which i think isn't right - reinforcing my idea that the 1st 5km marker was early. I swallowed half a PowerGel. There were several empty packets on the road so it seems many others had the same idea as me.

As we headed back into KL we joined the 10km and 7km runners. Fortunately this didn't slow me down really - there was plenty of space. Past Times Square and up the last "hill" past the posh hotels I was feeling quite good - certainly able to finish, and my time looked ok (no 15 or 20km markers). On the approach to the final loop I could feel my muscles tiring and my HR was firmly stuck in the 160's (I like to keep below 165bpm).

Although I was expecting it, having to do another 1km loop after getting to within a few hundred metres of the finish is a bit depressing! Any way I managed it. I was keeping a close eye on time as I passed runners finishing the loop, to see what time I had to exit to be able to reach my target. I worked out there was about 1 minute in it either way and was beginning to think I might miss it. As I came out of the loop I was still unsure and with 500m to go my time was past 2:12 - I needed to do 500m in 3 mins!

I pushed on a bit and came in with 18s to spare. I could have sprinted harder but there was no point and my HR was almost at 180!

After stretching and drinking lots of fluids I milled around for a while. I hoped to see Ah Fook finishing his 42km but must have missed him. I did however see Azwar on his final sprint.

I have a huge but thankfully painless (unless I pop it!) blister on one of my left toes - the same place where I always get one - would you like me to post a photo of it here??

At home I watched the Aussie F1 GP and just played footy and "learn how to ride a bike without stabilisers" with Lucas. Already my mind is wandering back to training.....a hour in the condo pool would be nice.....PD Half Marathon in 2 weeks.....