Tapering Run for KLIM 2006

I woke up at 4am this morning all charged up to run the final 20km training run before taking up the Kuala Lumpur International Marathon (KLIM) 2006 challenge, which is one week away. A moment later, I heard the drizzling sound followed by downpour. Oh No! Not again. The weather seems to know my training schedule and included obstacles for me to overcome. During weekdays, it rains in the evening, and on Sunday morning, it rains in the morning.

To go or not to go? That was a pressing issue while I was sitting in my house at 4.30am thinking and listening to the intensity of the falling rain. Since I only did 3km run the entire week, I must go for the final long run. So I sent SMS messages to Weng and others to delay starting from 6am to 6.30am. If necessary, postpone it to 7am. Even the heavy rain could not dampen the spirit of running a marathon.

I arrived at Bukit Aman car park at 6.30am and I was most delighted to see the rain had just stopped. So this time, we were running 20km but started with those running 10km.

I heard one runner was saying: “Bodoh lah (not clever), with the nice and cool weather, we should be sleeping soundly in our home.”

Meng was saying: “Since this is the tapering week, we exceeded requirement by running even less.”

Running after the rain was just superb. Though the ground was wet, the air was really cool and fresh.

There were not many runners this morning. I presume many runners would prefer to continue with their sleep knowing it was running.

Publicity for KLIM 2006

When returning at the Bank Negara roundabout, I saw there were a few colourful banners hanging on to the lamp posts. But with a closer look, those were not banners promoting KLIM 2006. Just one more week to go but there was still no banner promoting this event.

Much like the recent Chinese New Year celebration in my hometown, the KLIM 2006 was just too quiet. There was not much publicity about the KLIM 2006. Even the prominent English newspaper did not carry any news about this event. What had actually happened: AmBank, DBKL and FTAAA?

Comparing to the Singapore International Marathon on 4 December 2005, that event attracted over 20,000 runners and more than 5,000 runners participated for full marathon category. Why Singapore can and we can not?

Back at Pacesetters Club itself, I remembered last year that the runners were really excited expecting and later receiving the sponsored running vests and shorts from Adidas. It was much like receiving Ang Pow during Chinese New Year: the excitement of receiving the sponsored items. Let us hope the Club would revive the idea of sponsored running vests and shorts for next KLIM 2007.


Back at Bukit Aman Car Park

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I was pleasantly surprised to see the certificates for Great Eastern-Pacesetters 30km Run were ready. Jenny Lim and Uncle Tan were in-charged of distributing the certificates. This certificate achieved a class on its own: it was colourful with the necessary details such as runner’s name, completion time, etc. The icing on the cake was that it has a runner’s photo crossing the finishing line printed on the certificate. Flip to the back, it bears Konica-Minolta brands – the entire paper was actually photographic paper.

See you at KLIM 2006. Enjoy the run; enjoy the camaraderie.

By KCxxx :-))