No Finish Line...

Seremban Half Marathon

I didn't get the finisher's medal. I didn't win the prizes at stake. I didn't even finish within the cut-off time. But the trip down to Seremban wasn't a waste. In fact, it was one of the most fulfilling runs I had ever done.

I helped my buddy Plum finish his 1st half marathon and stayed with him thruout (ok, 90% of the time) the race. I know what its like to the mentally and physically hurting when you run long distance for the 1st time and contempleting thoughts of giving up. I hurt badly in my Pg Bridge run last year and it wasn't something I would like my frens to go thru alone.... So this run was meant to be run together... And finishing the race side-by-side as we ran across the finish line together was the biggest prize for me so far. You did it dude!! And to top it all off, he won a mystery prize in the form of a 6-pack of 100+. You go rehydrate yourself kau-kau man..

The race started off at 6:45am and in a 21km run of about 300 odd runners, we soon found ourselves at the back of the pack with barely 1km gone.... No worries, most important thing for the day was to finish, the timing wan't important.

1st half of the route was scenic, taking us thru a new development called Forest Heights and it felt like running up Camerons, albeit with wider roads... The air was fresh and cooling and it was a bit of an uphill, but as it was early in the race, Plum was going strong. And so was myself.

We had agreed that whenever the pace slowed to a walk, or if there were any detours, I would run off, get some extra mileage in and catch up with him a lil later... Since I was running at a pace which I was comfortable in, the race was a training session for me to get in additional mileage as the base for my marathon training. I would eventually end up running 25.3kms instead of the designated 21km.

The 2nd half of the race was where the tiredness start to set in for Plum. Although he didn't admit it to me then (I know you were hurting, dude) and he kept on going (kudos to you!!).. the pace slowed... but the traffic didn't. It was getting later and traffic had started to build up and we were getting onto main roads now and going pass intersections and some of them were not even manned.

Traffic control was kinda poor, and there were no traffic cones for us to run within a designated path for safety and for a lot of stretches, we were running on the white lines on the road; 3 inches to the left - grass and gravel and stones, and 3 inches to the right - whizzing traffic. Stressful.

Plum did well for his 1st half marathon, and although we walked thru the water stations, and refilled our bottles, he only dropped to a walk just before we hit the last water station at 16km... That's practically a full 16kms of running for you before walking man! After that however, the road started to go uphill, but Plum's day went downhill...

Cramps started to set in on both legs, and it was stretch, walk, stop, stretch, walk, stop, stretch, walk all the way until the finish line where he summoned enough strength to run the last 100m across the finish chute. I'm pretty sure that was a huge sense of achievement.

Dude, I'm proud of you. Lets do the full next.

posted by CapArnabBrand @ 8:35:00 AM