Race Report: Seremban Half Marathon 2015

After 2 years of working with my full marathon timing, I finally signed up a half marathon. I was looking forward to fulfill my sub-2 half marathon target which missed for many years. My PB for HM was 2:03’35” in GM Klang Run For It 2013. There are actually too many half marathons available nowadays, but I picked Seremban HM mainly due to it is a familiar route and small town event.

This is my 4th times running in this HM (3x official racing, 1x bandit run on own support). Most of the issue (pro & cons) remained unchanged, so I won’t elaborate here. Seremban town area had not much changes compare to my first visit 15 years ago. But if you going with the HM route, you can see the urban area was moving really fast. The numbers of cars were growing too. Lucky the people still, roughly follow the small town style. Traffic will usually slowing down when they approaching, and will wait patiently when stopped by traffic police while waiting for runners passing the busy junctions.

On the other hand, I think runners really need to improve our running etiquette. Most of the time I observed runners took up the middle of a lane without any reason. Some cross the road without considering his / her owned safety. If you are familiar with this HM, you will know that the traffic controls for most sessions on the route actually none exist. With the narrow kumpung style 1 lane trunk road, you really need to run at the road side and be careful with the traffic.

Back to my race report, the game plan was simple, run at 5.4min/km pace until finish line. Knew the route is under-distance by about 1km, this will give me a nice 150 HM PB. The race flag off on time, lots of people sped out from the start. I need to hold back to maintain at my target pace, from the starting line until we left the town center. At the long inclines up to AEON Big and McD at Forest Height, I started to overtake others. This basically continued for the rest of the race. I kept overtaking others, few on the flat, and many more on the 13/14km stiff incline where we finally turning back heading to town center. Pace maintained at 5.2-5.5min/km thru out the race. To certain extend, the consistence pace is a bit boring, but it paid off nicely towards the end. The pace was held back until 18th km, then after the final incline where we merged with the school boys and girls. I dropped the hammer and sped to the max, clocking 4:30min/km like how I did in my speed intervals. I finished as 58th, with 1:47’20”, a nice PB for my HM.

SHM 2015 Finisher Medal 

Need to work on my posing while running in front of the camera man. TQ Tey.

Turbo mode ON! TQ Allan.

This year the Royal Selangor pewters only for the top 10 position (or 20?) so I only got a cheaper version of limited medal. The field were extremely competitive and crowded too (650 participants in HM compared to 320 participants in 2014). The organizer should really start to address the traffic control issue if they wanted to grow the numbers. The finishing area support too was obviously overloaded by the growing numbers of participants. Overall, if you are looking for a short break from the usual KL / Selangor race, this is the best nearby alternative. Muar and Bidor are too far for a touch-and-go race.