Cheering for All Women's Run

According to our plan, we were supposed to start our 20km training run at 6am today, Sunday 30 April. It has been almost two months since I last did my 20km training runs starting at Bukit Aman. Joining me in the training run were Meng (Penguin-2) and Chee Wee (Penguin-11).

On Sunday morning, there was a Jelita Run of 7km and 5km distances starting at Dataran Merdeka, 7.30am. Since Jelita is a womens’ magazines, only females are qualified to participate.

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I realized that starting at 6am could be too late if we wanted to cheer those women runners. At the peak of our 20km training runs, we require about 2 hours and 5 minutes. So with some complex mathematical calculation, ahem, we derived that we should start our training run at 5.45am.

After layoff for almost two months, the running momentum was sluggish. The feeling was as though I had added on a few tonnes of weight and the body did not seem to be able to run at optimal level.

Met In Half Way

When we returned from Sri Hartamas (the furthest point), we met the first runner at the T-junction in front of an abandon condominium of about 4km mark from Dataran Merdeka. Since we were in the opposite direction, we could see all runners. The first 100 plus runners were running; beyond that numbers were mostly walking in pink Jelita T-shirts.

Meng was so kind that he kept a counter and he announced loudly for each runner that passed by. Some runners acknowledged with smiles while other did not respond. At one point, he was saying, “Wah! So many runners together, very difficult to count.” He decided to stop when the counter reached 100.

We saw the following Pacesetters runners running by: Lisa, Agnes, Sook Ying, Crystal, SH Tan, Tamy, Pek Yah, Yoke Peng, Pei Choo, Miss Yee, Chooi Ling, Jenny Leong, Sharon.

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Cheering Team

On the way back to Bukit Aman car pak via Bank Negara, somewhere near Bank Rakyat area, we saw the first runner approaching us – the timing was perfect. Imagine that the course is a big circle: the runners ran in anti-clockwise whereas we ran in clockwise directions. The first five positions seemed consistent when we first met them.

While counting for 9th position, we saw Mr. PK Chan heading in the same direction as other runners. So we announced loudly that he was in the 9th position. The 9th position later went to Lisa.

We assembled at the traffic junction to Bukit Aman car park to cheer the runners passing by. There were about ten Pacesetters runners already started cheering. A few of the runners were very serious despite that we cheered them. However, when we said, “Senyum (or Smile) lah.” Immediately, the runners responded with happy smiles.

When we saw Pacesetters running friends, the applauses were much louder. It was easy and fun to cheer other runners by just clapping hands and shouting motivation words compared to the runners who were in the midst of struggling to complete the course.

Mr. Lok, Subang Jaya Team Leader of PACM, was curious and asked why I was not taking photos. Since it was all female, the choice would be simpler. So I replied that I still have photos taken during Duathlon not processed yet.

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At Bukit Aman Car Park

At around 8.25am, the number of cheering members was dwindling, and the whole group disbanded and returned to Bukit Aman car park, which was about 200 meters away.

There were not many runners as there wasn’t any major running event in the pipeline. Francis Toh, Vice President of the Club, and Jenny Lim were seen operating a booth to accept registrations for the coming New Balance 15km Race on 21 May. The running vests, issued free during registration, were in black bearing New Balance and Pacesetters name.

By KC