I reached The Boulevard of Putrajaya at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday 21 October 2006. The first person I saw was Mr. LimFW who was cycling at the other side of the very wide road. I honked at him but I doubted whether he could recognize me with glares from the car windscreen. I passed by the starting area located in front of the Palace of Justice where Janet Tan was guarding the water station.
While I was cruising slowly in the cool, comfort of my car and listening to songs broadcasted from Mix-FM, I spotted Chantelle was running alone slowly. She was donning white and bright orange running apparel. At that time in the morning, the sun was partly shielded from the haze but not the heat. Despite a heavy rain the night before that brought joy to me, the haze was seemed adamant not having been dissolved or dispersed.
It was quite a funny and contrasting situation. Instead of running and sweating it out as another runner, I am now relaxing and watching them into action. I honked at her when my Waja car was about 20 feet behind her; when she turned her head, the car was almost parallel with her for us to exchange pleasantries.
All present there on that morning have their objectives to achieve. Though the name Tonymathon (coined by Ngae; further improved by Marvin in recognition of the main coordinator, Tony, aka Penguin-3) may sound like tomato or marathon, it was purely for training purpose and non-completive in nature. Each is free to run at their own pace, or cycle as and when they wise.
Runners participating in the coming Bangkok Marathon or Singapore Marathon would be focusing in running. For those that were preparing for the Powerman Lumut would be running and then cycling.
As for me, I did neither of the two. With a strenuous bout of badminton game the evening before, I decided to relax and train on my photos taking skills. After I attended two photos talks, I was trying to take more shots with what I have learned. However, it takes additional brain processing power to compose a photo according to a photographer’s standards.
I stopped and parked my car at the bridge before the Conventional Centre and I stationed there to take photos. On seeing Tony, MoCheng and Vivian crossing the bridge, I squatted next to the white line almost in the middle of the road to take their photos trying to achieve more dramatic effect. During conversation after the training, MoCheng said that I looked like a traffic policeman conducting speed trap with the speed-gun camera pointing at them. The only concern was that they were traveling too slowly.
When I drove my car to the small roundabout – at the far end of the Boulevard – there were many cross-roads with traffic lights not synchronized in timing to enable green-wave flow of traffic. So the vehicles have to stop at the traffic light observing traffic rules but the cyclists and runners were exempted from this traffic rule. Well! Runners, cyclists and drivers all have their different moments of “unfair advantages”.
At around 10:30 a.m, Ngae KH and Siok Bee have just started their 60km cycling feat after running 30km. At that moment, I could still see Meng, Weng, Bruce, Chiam and Vivian were still busy in their training.
At around 11:00 a.m., we could feel the uncomfortable heat. Though the Boulevard is a long tree-lined drive but the trees are still in “infant” stage and planted quite far from the boulevard that could not provide the necessary shades.
One good point of training at Putrajaya was that the place was almost devoid of traffic. Because the runners and cyclists were looping, it is fairly safe for a lady runner to run alone as any moment, there could be runners or cyclists passing by to deter the bad guys from crystallizing any bad intention.
Mr. Chris did a measurement of the distance by driving in his Toyota Vios. The distance is 9.5km round trip between the small roundabout at the Boulevard and the Conventional Centre.
Those Present were:
LimFW, Chiam, son and daughter, Meng, Weng, LimPY, MoCheng, Mr. Foong, Janet Tan, Chantelle, Chris, Eric, Vivian, Soik Bee, OngSL, NgaeKH, Bruce Wan, Stephenie Chok, Hoo Brothers, Tony, and a few other runners and cyclists.
By KC
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