Race Report: KRI Anniversary Run 2012

This is my first ever bandit into a race. Incase you are not aware what is bandit a race is all about, it means running in a race without registration. Why I did this? I did that just for fun and I planned to support myself all the way from the starting line. The only resource I used is the marshals and traffic control, so I think it is ok to try it out. The initial feeling is ok, but I don’t really felt great after bandit a race. I quite agreed with the blog HERE. Guess this will be the first and the only bandit race I got for experience sick.

The right feet still feeling some pain, I grounded for few days to see if it will heal by weekend. But sadly the pain was still there when I did my 7k on Saturday morning. Anyway, as I need some long distances run to see if I can go for next week Putrajaya Night Marathon, I decided still give it a go. The drizzling started about 30 minutes before the race flag off, just nice to wet the road and give some nice cooling ambience to start with. I started with very conservative pace, stay with the 6:45~7 minutes pace all the way to 7km. This is to test water to see how my feet doing, and I need to save the water in my Gatorade 500ml bottle until 17km.

The route is actually very flat with only an overhead bridge at the start and the end. Great PB route but I am really not in condition to push for one. Btw, Jalan Kuala Kangsar is really not very good for runners and traffic is heavy even in the Sunday morning. When we directed to cross a traffic light @ 7km into the Tasek Industrial Park, I found that I am running all alone and the traffic police under lots of honks and pressured me to go faster. The right feet straight away complaining right after that, I need to slow down and adjusting my landing to see if I can continue. Lucky, the pain subsided after a while and I continued my 7 minutes pace without issue. After the industrial park, we got detoured to a housing area for another u-turn. Then back to the main road, I stopped by the Shell petrol station @ 17km for a Gatorade. Without much hesitates, I up my pace to 6.3 minutes and hold it up until finished with 2:22'17".

Running with the free t-shirt from MPIB 2013 Running clinic

Great things about this race,

1. Great organizing especially on the water stations, the supplies are plenty (eventhough I didn’t use any of the supply).

2. Route is relatively flat, good if you aiming for PB.

3. Ipoh race, plenty of lenglui (pretty girls) running in this race. You always got a reason running right in front of you to run faster to chasing them.

The only thing to improve will be the traffic control, especially on those traffic lights crossing points. Saw a near miss for the 10k lead runner stopped for traffic.

Overall a great event and I will come back next year to run as an official participant. On a side note, the registration fees for this event is actually on the high side. Lets hope that next year they will improve on this too.