The event was a Merdeka Run on 31 August at Sekolah Rendah Cina Pandamaran B in Pandamaran, Klang. The race start time was 7.00 am.
Before I started driving, I checked out a map on how to get to the school. It was still dark when I left the house at 6.00 am intending to reach there at 6.30 am. I should have known better as I got lost. Although I reached the area at 6.30am, I promptly became hopelessly lost. I spent the next 30 minutes driving around, stopping 3 times to look at the map and pissed one time into a drain. It was only at 7.00 am that I was able figure out where the school was but it was too late as the race would started already.
As it turns out, when I reached the school there were still many people milling in front of the school hall. Ahh thanks goodness, it is a "political" race. You can always count on such races to start late. I met up with many Klang Pacers runners whom I didn't meet often due to absence from running scene and weekend training. I was especially glad to have met Kong who I have not seen for 3 months.
An announcement was made before the start that the race distance had been shortened from 5.5 km to 4.5km. The race finally flagged off with a Malaysian flag (Merdeka!) at 7.34 am. In no time everyone else was ahead with me "leading" the back-end of runners. 5 minutes later the Klang Pacers have all dissappeared far ahead. For a while I was running with Mrs Kong. I think this was the first time I've run with Mrs Kong. I think if she was younger she would be more than able to give the current female runners a run for the their medal.
After a while , my right knee was still OK so I decided to run faster in the hope of making up for lost time and perhaps a chance to get the 100 medals. Alas, my desire and attempt to run faster was not matched by my stamina. I had to take short walks (100 to 200m) about three times. I had never run at the back-end of a race before and it was quite discouraging to be at the bottpm 10 percent of the pack. But still I reminded myselt to let it go as I was in not in the best of shape. I still felt the tinges of excitement to be in a "race" and ruefull recalled the races I had missed this year; Ipoh, Seremban , Penang and so many others.
27 minutes later I passed through the school gates and ran in between a row of chairs to finish the race emptyhanded - the 100 medals were all gone.
I hung around for a while to watch the prize giving ceremony and witnessed two Pacemaker members (PM 37 and PM39) getting their hampers. I left the scene after all the prizes had been given out.
1 comment:
too bad abt the medals but you were still able to pia, which was what matters!
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