Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2010

I joined the Standard Charted KL marathon 2010 that was held on the 27th of June. This is the second time I'll have joined a marathon, the first time being the Energizer Night Race. Previously I have ran the 10km and this time, I've registered for the 10km category again because I believe this is my current limit. The marathon has the usual categories of 42km, 21km, 10km and 5km. The difference between this marathon and the Energizer race is that I'll be running in the morning as opposed to at night.

Few days before the race, I collected the race pack in Stadium Titiwangsa, near Taman Tasik Titiwangsa. The race pack consists of a KL Marathon singlet (1st bottom), a BIB number, one timing device (2nd bottom) and sponsored goodies (not alot). The timing device is this cool gadget called ChronoTrack system. The device is a strip of plastic with some chip-like feature embedded on its back surface. By securing it to my shoes, the timing device is activated at the beginning of the flag off line and at the end of the race. This might sound like a minor issue in a major event like this but it clearly provides a huge advantage. Imagine this, it could take me as much as 10 minutes to get from the back row at the start of the race to get to arch that marks the beginning of the race due to the crowd. Therefore without a tagging system, this would encourage the quicker ones to rush and shove their way through. It does not help that there are slow coaches that hogs the front row at the beginning of the race. A little bit of comfort for the runners goes along way indeed. 

  

The starting point of the marathon is at Merdeka Square. The 10km route covers Jalan Bangsar, KL Sentral, Brickfields, Lingkaran Syed Putra, Jalan Parlimen, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman and back to Dataran Merdeka (Bottom).

The 10km race starts at 0700am. That's pretty early even for normal working day, whats more this is a Sunday! My biggest headache is to think of a way to get to Merdeka Square. Firstly, there is alot of runners participating in the event, possibly up to 16,000 people. Secondly, the entrance to the very limited car park closes at 0500am. In any case, there is no way I'll be waking up so early to jostle for a car park. That leaves me only with one choice and that is to catch the earliest train to Masjid Jamek. Fortunately for us, we managed to get on one of the earlier trains out of the station. Since we had time in the train, we went through the checklist again: Running shoes, checked. ChronoTrack system, checked. BIB number, checked. Singlet, checked. =) (1st bottom).  It is quite empty inside the train so early in the morning but one thinbg for sure, whoever is in the train is definitely heading towards Merdeka Square (2nd bottom).    

We arrived just 15 minutes before the race started and barely had enough time to pass our bags to the organisers for safekeeping.  From then onwards, I was not able to take anymore photos since I don't have a camera. The first 5km was like training. However by the time I reached the 8km mark, my feet was already killing me but I kept on pushing ahead. After a torturous final stretch of 2km, I've finally reached the finishing line of the race. Thanks to the organisers, I managed to get a hold of a low quality (but free) photo of myself crossing the finishing line (1st bottom). Oh and please don't mind the wordings that are splashed across the photo. Two minutes later, Julia also crosses the finish line in style (2nd bottom).

Our finisher medals of the race (1st bottom). My final results: I finished the entire 10km in 1 hour 18 minutes (2nd bottom).  Timing is not too bad but it ain't great either. I'll try to dip below 1 hour the next time. Anyways, here is a useless info that might be of interest, the top three men runners of the 42km marathon are from Kenya whereas for women are from Ethiopia. Speaking of domination by a single continent.