Coming 21km Race @ KL Marathon

Finally, it is the time for the long anticipated event: KL Marathon, this Sunday. Race kit collection started yesterday at Dewan Sri Putra, Bukit Jalil. I did it on the first day as usual. Took half day off from work and thinking of to jalan-jalan a bit after the race kit collection.

Reached there about 2pm, the collection is very well organized. As this is only the first day plus it is a working day, the dewan is not really crowded. There is visually no queue on all the categories, but the queuing barriers are fixed. I walked from the end of the queuing, and start walking zigzag to the counters. My head spin a bit after the zigzag thru the barriers and I think this is even more challenging than a 10k distance.



Race Kit collection counters



Collection is fast. Each counter has 2 guys stationed. One operates the computer + scanner, another run to collect the bib and the rest of the goodies. The one who collecting the bib number used a small piece of paper to write down the bib number, which, I think is absolutely not necessary. As the organizer emphasized that we need to produce the confirmation slip upon bib collection. If the bib number can be assigned and printed on the slip, you can save some hassle here. I guess there will not be major problem for FM and HM as there are on about 6000 in total, but try to imagine the 10,000 participants who doing 10km. You saved lots of time and potential mistakes there. Also some potential to improve further on the flow, as 2 more goodies (the yogurt bar and the PowerBar) needed to collect from their expo booth (but this may be the trick they used to get you to their booth).

Race kit & Goodies for half marathoner

Looked around at the expo area. The New Balance booth as usual offering 20~30% on the shoes and some extra discount on the apparel. I am hoping to find NB905 or even the Minimus series, but none. TIMEX also have a big booth set up, lots of people there as they are offering RM500 discount for their GPS model, and the new TapScreen model at RM268. I am happy with my GF405CX, so I didn’t walk into the booth. Quick-Sport have a booth selling running gears that filled with people, we all runners will never missed the change to check out the runner gears. Left the expo about 3pm without any purchase.

Back at home and study further the race guidebook. I actually get more worried on the final leg of the race. There are about 10,000 runners on 10km, and 5,000 on half marathon and 5km respectively. I would expect about 50% of us will enter the Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman in front of the SOGO at about 8:00~8:30am. Average runners use 30min for 5km (flag off on 8am), 1hr for 10km (flag off on 7am), and 2hrs for 21km (flag off on 6:15am), plus some elite from FM who doing sub 4hrs. My estimation, it will be around 10,000 runners from varies categories running on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman on that 30 minutes time slot! If we all on yellow, then we are actually practicing the rally 2 weeks earlier. My plan? No, I have no plan to avoid the jam. If I wished to push myself for a sub 2 HM, I will need to maintain 5:30min/km pace all the way. This will definitely kill me. My target pace is 6:30min/km, which will bring me to that hot spot about 8:20am. Hopefully the peak is over or at least easing a bit.

Event Bag

Another problem will be parking and baggage handling. If we take the shuttle buses, we need to carry our gears with us. But the event bag is too small! The baggage counter will only took this bag and it will be very challenging to stuff all you may needed (clean shirt, tower, short and slippers and later exchange them with your running gears, wet shirt, short, tower and running shoes) especially the running shoes. I plan to start my journey early at 3:30am to reach BA before 4am, and try my luck to get a parking lot.

Despite all these potential huddles, I am excited, and looking forward for the event. See you on the starting line 6:15am this Sunday.