Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2011

I opened my marathon saga this year by running for the Standard Chartered KL Marathon last weekend. For the first time, I didn’t bring anything on me this time. No camera to snap on any funny scenes that I might come across along the track, no hand phone to update my twitter and facebook to tell the whole world that I’ve made it at least half-way though the race, no little back sack to bundle in snacks and chocolate bars (bad choice) just in case I got peckish somewhere along the way.  Those are some of the crazy things that I had done in my previous runs.All I had on me (apart from my clothes of course) was my lost and found mp3 player with a carefully selected list of songs. I really wanted to concentrate on my run although my main target was merely to complete the race.This marathon has been quite special for me this time because my mom was  there with me. I wouldn’t say that she was there to support me but at least she could now see what the heck this activity called marathon is all about. She didn’t seem to grasp the idea of torturing oneself by running 21km and getting literally nothing in return.I don’t blame her. A lot of people don’t see the point of running for a marathon. I’ve said it before, and I’m gonna say it again – You gotta do it yourself to know why people like us keep wanting to join a marathon. It can’t really be expressed through any use of words. It’s almost mysterious. 😛Being eager to be on the front of the pack at least at the starting line, I pushed my way to the front and found myself regretting it later. We had to wait for least another half an hour before the flag-off time and being squeezed among a sweaty crowd of people with all the different smells and stale morning breaths attacking me from every direction, it really was suffocating me to death.  It was such a long wait that even the ever smiling VIPs were beginning to look like a bunch of clowns on the makeshift stage that they had set up on the side. People were beginning to look at their wristwatch and shake their heads in disbelief. The ever-kecoh emcee was beginning to sound like a blabbering drunk that slurs his words in between the deafening loudness of the music.Then, never in my history of joining a marathon had I ever encountered two count-downs for the same category – or at least the same crowd of people. The first count-down was done at 6am and the second one (the ‘real’ one) followed half an hour later.

I later tweeted about it and a quick response by the organizer said something about Ekiden Run – whatever that was. Oh well, maybe I didn’t read or research thoroughly enough but judging from the roar of excitement when the first count-down was done, I am pretty sure a lot of people didn’t know about it either.

When the actual countdown finally took place at 6.30 am, I almost passed out even before the race began.

So – KL marathon as I had expected had proved to be quite much of a challenge. There were quite a number of slope encounters which reminded me very much of the pain that I had to endure when I joined the Singapore Marathon sometime last year. I must say running up the ramps to highways had always been the weakening part for me.

I started off quite well by running the first 5km without a single pause until – oh well – those slopes, one slope after another and by the time I reached over the tourist-laden Star Hill area, I found myself doing more walking than running for the rest of the race. LOL!I’d rather think that KL is still quite new to organizing a marathon of such a big scale considering how the people react to the chaos caused by closures and temporary altering of roads. Despite all the efforts done by the organizers and authorities in repeatedly telling and reminding people of the event and the ‘consequences’ that it may bring about to the traffics, many people didn’t seem to buy it.Many road users found themselves trapped in a long line of cars in a bumper to bumper traffic stretching probably a few kilometers away. Making a U-turn was impossible so they’d blast their honks in a mix of anger and frustration. I even heard somebody shouting and cursing at us but of course everybody was too busy to keep up with the flow to even show a damn shit of sympathy he didn’t even deserve.I think the traffics must have had become too chaotic that the cops had to loosen up a little and let the vehicles come through at a controlled pace. Quite short-handed in term of numbers (the traffic officers), some of the vehicles would sneak their way through whenever the cops turn their backs on them.

There were times when the marathoners were left to take care of themselves and I almost foresaw some danger especially when everybody was eager to finish their run. I guess the time taken to stop (and get stopped) and wait for the traffic give way for me had contributed a little on the less-impressive finishing time that I did this time. Oh well, it’s always good to be able to find some convincing reasons behind an underachievement right? Hehe. Another thing worth mentioning is probably the fact that KL is such a smoky city. Thanks to the refusal of rain to pour down in the last couple of weeks – every particle of dust seemed to have dried up enough to float along with the morning breeze so that they could be inhaled into the thousands of lungs that were eager to suck in the air at an intensified rate. But it was quite bad to say the least. Seriously, KL really is in a dire need of massive reform in controlling its air pollution. Otherwise I may have to come up with some crazy idea of putting on a facial mask if I were to join KL Marathon again.So – all in all – the marathon did go quite well although there were still some (since saying A LOT would sound too bad) room for improvement. Unless you’ve had too much beer the night before and you get dehydrated faster than a running coyote, you’d never get thirsty because drinks were quite aplenty – although drink stations for the much needed 100-plus was quite limited to just a few (stations). There must have been complaints about inadequacy of drinks back at Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon when I had to brace against the idea of drinking my own pee to keep myself hydrated. <exaggerating?

The number of participants overwhelmed me. And even more overwhelming is the fact that there seemed to be more hot chicks in sexy outfits than I remember my eyes laying on when I was doing  the Singapore Marathon. I mean, seriously. I can’t help but mentioning that. Oh and I gotta say it was another sort of distraction that contributed to the less-impressive time. Guys, I need your back-up. LOL!*sorry, no pics of hot chicks. I didn’t bring my camera, remember? 😛

So – again, putting the less-impressive performance aside, it’s not really that bad when I look at how I ranked among my fellow runners in the Half Marathon Men Open category. Ranked at 1,400-ishth, I think I can still hold my head up considering how I have had at least more than 1000 people finished behind me. 😛TO conclude this post, let me share with you some inspiring quotes from somebody by the name of Syahril Kamaruddin – one of the participants in the SCKLM who had ‘run’ his weight down from an OMG 120kg to a WOW75kg. His awe-inspiring story was featured in the ‘be inspired’ section of The Star the day after the marathon.“People say that when you finish a marathon, you emerge as a new person. You have a sense of achievement as if you had just picked yourself out of a gutter and did something on your own..”

“For me, I don’t think about running faster or further anymore, I just want to run to enjoy it. I see myself running into my 70s and 80s..”“The point is to have a healthy lifestyle and I want to sustain it for a long time. I don’t want to run crazily until my 40s and stop. What would be the point of that?..”

Well-said Mister. Well-said.. 🙂