Seremban Half Marathon

My prayers were answered last night, and live coverage of the Tour returned to ch80 just as the race hit the Alps! However that meant that I was up until midnight, when I should have getting beauty sleep to prepare for a 5am departure - for the Seremban Half.

Armed with a new pair of skintight shorts to prevent myself from skinning the inside of my thighs, and with a left knee support tube thingy, we were underway at 6.42am. The first 5-10minutes were ok but once onto the open road my legs and arms, particularly the latter, felt like lead, possibly due to tiredness. Lucky it was a dead flat route. I soldiered on, confident that after 20-30 mins I'd feel better.

Passing the masses of school kids in the last km.

Inside the final 500m.

The heaviness disappeared as predicted after 30mins or so but my left knee was threatening to cause me problems, and I was being overtaken regularly, which I didn't like much. Usually after 30 mins I'm the one doing the overtaking. The possibility of a DNF entered my mind. Some Pacemakers, and Raymond, all passed me.

After 45mins I was really starting to feel good and my knee wasn't getting any worse. My perceived effort dropped and I began to catch those in front. I even caught one of the Africans who was walking/running at about the 9km mark. At 11km I was just over a minute behind my target time.

km11 to 15 was pretty hilly, but I kept running and was cruising past a good few runners and walkers up the hills. After 16km I had caught back a few seconds and was only 52s behind target. But then it got tough - I was tiring and it was hilly. At 17km or so we joined thousands of school kids and lots of traffic. Some of the kids had their handbags with them, and one was reading a newspaper as he walked! From 16km to 20km I dropped over 90s and was 2m26 behind schedule with 1km to go!

A push to the line brought me home in 2:07:55, a mere 10s faster than the Ipoh run 2 weeks ago. I was glad to finish with little effect on my dodgy left knee. I'll cut down on running this week as I need to be good for 10km efforts in 2 consecutive weekends of Triathlons.

My season is hotting up now! I've got 2 Olympic and 2 long-distance Tri's and possibly 2 Half-Marathons in the next 6-7 weeks!