Race Report: Adidas KOTR 2013

This is my 2nd barefoot race so far, and first time I joined KOTR. The previous editions often crashed with other races, so I planned to sign up this event immediately after it announced. Eventually it still crashed (or some say back-to-back) with Putrajaya Night Marathon, but the choice was easy cause I ran in PNM for the pass two years.

The race started from Sunway Pyramid, actually just 6.5km from my place. The plan A is to run from home, do the race, and run back to home, then I will clocked 30km in total. But I don’t really had a race in near future needed this LSD, so plan B, to cycle from home. Reached the venue with about 10 minutes before flag off, rushed thru the baggage checkin and breakfast, then I joined the big crowd in the starting pen to start off from the back. Then we were flagged off on time. Expected from this kind of popular event, the starting part was people mountain people sea. The human wall only starts to clear up a bit after 5km.

I decided to run a full barefoot race, hence didn’t bring along any spare tires. I concluded that it felt really good to ran barefoot on NPE. I was too excited and speeding all the way! The pace maintained at 6 min/km at until 7th km, overtook lots of people until I hit the usual limit of my soles. I am lacking of barefoot training, hence the soles are not conditioned to go long distances or go very fast. From the previous experience, I knew very well that the soles still were doing fine, no actual damages yet, but they getting too sensitive now. No choice but to slow down to 7.2-7.8 min/km. Then lots of people I overtook earlier not overtook me. The stamina and muscles were all doing fine, but the soles can’t kept up now, it felt terrible. Key notes, must plan and adhere to race strategy. Finally, finished the race on 1:52’08”, with a great relief.

People mountain people sea, but start to clear off now.

Entertainment at the U-turn point.

Merging with the 10k runner.

Finally finished.

Nice Finisher Medal.

Hang around with some barefoot kaki and took some photos, then heading back home to checkout the damages on the soles. There were 2 water and 1 blood blisters formed. I didn’t pop them, just clean up the surface and let it heal by itself (didn’t felt them anymore until Monday evening, and Tuesday morning I can continue my usual running). Think these blisters are from the soles condition, and the speed I started. I should be doing fine for the whole 16.8km if I only go with 6.5-7min/km.

Barefoot kaki Hawaii style!

When barefooters met the Viking...

 Overall, this was a great event with the overall closure of NPE. The only draw back will be the number of participants. Most of the participants are not regular runners, so you need to anticipate the human wall at the start, and dodging lots of people who slowed down half way (me inclusive this round).

Now, back to regular training plan. Signed up a big one in February next year, and planned to follow the Handsons Marathon Method. Btw, I have not much confident on myself to take in the whole 17 weeks of training program. Since the program started this Monday, I already missed 2 workouts :P