Race Report: Back to Basic 30KM

Like last year, PACM arranging a training event in order to support our preparation on the coming marathon races. This race happened in Mardi Serdang this year. I intended to use this as my last LSD before the SCKLM, and judge my fitness level to look at how much harder I can go during SCKLM.

The event started at 5:30am and target to end by 11am. Knowing well my LSD pace will only cover 30km in 4 hours, I planned a solid 30km as minimum and hoped to go further than that. So the key is to arrive there early and may be do a few km warming up. Anyway, I am not very familiar with the place so I missed the SKVE entrance from LDP and went straight into Putrajaya. Only arrived at Mardi around 5am and I got no more moods to cover some extra distances up front. Just hang around the starting point and chatting with friends. The race director conducted a briefing, and at 5:30am we let loose to do our long slow distances. I didn’t aware about the last minutes change of route, until I completed the 1st loop at only about 7km. May be the race director announced it but most of us can’t heard what he said without a loud header.

4th loop, I was looking at the party happened at the finish line.

Running in the Mardi / MAEPS for the first time, I seriously love those rolling hills. It let me practicing how to scale back my strides and adjusting from running to brisk walking when climbing a slope. But I think I haven’t fully recovered from the RJM, the tights and calves were not doing very well in descending. Covered the first 3 loops with steady pace (slightly slower than my target marathon pace) but the mind was keep debating how many loops should I go. The finish area was partying since we started. PAC will give you the finisher medal as long as you completed one loop; hence lots of runners didn’t continue but chose to hang out with their friends at the finish area. This made the decision to continue the next loop getting harder as more runners joining the party after each loop. Finally, at the end of 4th loop, I decided to just continue and I left the finish area alone without anyone running in front or behind in sight. The sun was overslept and the volunteers did a good job to keep us running; it will be completely wasted if I didn’t continue for the 5th one. The last lap was tough, but I am glad that I did it. Learned the real meaning of "bloody nipper" during this training, now I can claim myself one bloody hardcore runner.

Hard earned medal and finisher t-shirt

I really enjoyed the event and thanks PAC to organize the run in a new venue. Now is time to zone into tapering mode and get myself ready to push real hard for the sub-5 target in SCKLM. See you guys next weekend at the starting line :)