first of all, i felt i was under-prepared. i wasn't too sure whether my body was recovered from the half ironman the previous week. also, i didn't run the entire week after ironman 70.3 save some short recovery runs. and yeah i had many reasons not to go. after much contemplation, i thought, i paid 160 bucks for this, i better damn well go. and i ain't no quitter. how can i give up without even trying. so off i went to the pharmacy to get some basic first aid stuffs.
i'm not a fan of plain white rice. i'm the fried rice, chicken rice kinda person. normally before a race, if i eat dinner at home, i would pack a packet of rice to eat with the dishes that grandmother cooks. this time, i didn't. so dinner for me was only egg wine soup and vegetables. and this was one of my thoughts during the race. i should have eaten more.
got up around 4, and went to zoo negara together with coach. he was joining the 45km category whereas harjinder, kak hani, kak syaz, guzzy, dave and myself were joining the 30km category. i watched him prep and watched his flagoff. then it was my turn to prep. met harjinder and dave and we had breakfast whilst prepping. the whole race is about the both of them, harjinder and dave. they are epic. so i passed them some ORS to take. but they didn't have water, nor could they find water. so they decided to drink the ORS with teh-o. epic i tell u.
anyways, upon flagoff, i did pretty well for the first 10km. until, a dude fell on me. it was a steep area and he slid and fell. i grab hold of his bag and pulled him. i thought i was going to roll down the hill with him. luckily the girl behind me also grabbed hold of him and he really was there hanging with the 2 of us pulling him. that almost gave me a heart attack. after the incident, i felt my heartbeat shot through the roof. i went slower and was extremely cautious and sections.
the entire run, i was thinking, i should never join a trail run more than 20km, ever. and also thought of how i should have eaten more the dinner before. and thought to myself i was insane when i signed up for this.
also, after the 10km point i had a stitch which made it difficult for me to run. i had to run, walk, run walk. the frustrating part was running towards cp7. checkpoint 7 seemed like a world away. it was like a never-ending trail to cp7. whenever i passed oncoming marshalls, they would tell me, really near. but, the really near turns out to be, i still don't see anything 30 minutes later. my joy when i saw cp7. the trail after cp7, is what the organizers would term technical and what i would term walking through a jungle not a trail.
another drama was when i saw my watch hit 30km. but, i was still in the middle of nowhere. i asked oncoming runners whether there was a junction that turned off nearby but they said no and they said the checkpoint was pretty far away. i majorly panic-ed. i thought i was lost. my energy levels stooped major low. i had zero energy levels. i was frustrated by the over distance. and i just wanted to sit there and not move. i turned back, and i saw coach. if not for him, i don't know how i would complete the over distance. he motioned for me to keep walking and keep moving. there were no distance markers so we didn't know how far along we were and how much more we had to cover.
the finishing line was a whole over 3km away. the joy when we crossed it. i managed with a time of 5h 50 minutes.
but the highlight of this race was not my experience. the highlight of the race was watching harjinder complete a 30km trail run. and hear his epic stories after his run. his experience was definitely gold i'm sure. he was very semangat throughout the entire run and that spirit is super admirable. congratulations harjinder on your accomplishment. you did amazing. congratulations to dave as well who was harjinder's partner in crime in this entire thing. you both just have that extra something special in you that is worth admiring.
congratulations everybody on finishing the race. and congratulations coach on his 2nd place finish.
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