friday evening, myself and daryl went to pick chingyi up from midvalley. we had a quick simple dinner, i packed some supper, and off we went. i drove the first part, from kl to senawang. it was pretty jam and i was getting sleepy so daryl took over the wheel and drove us down to muar. we left about 8 and arrived about 11 ish at night. i had my supper when we got to ayerkeroh. and we had a second supper upon arrival in muar. got to chingyi's house about 12-ish and immediately ko-ed. crashed. was super tired. and also questioning myself how i was going to perform the next day.
alarm rang at 5. i dragged myself out of bed. took a quick shower. put on my racing gear. then had breakfast. i had a heavier pre-race breakfast than normal. normally i would just have 1 moolabar for a 10km race. considering this is a 21km race, i had 2 moolabars, had a hot cup of milo and had a couple of strawberry biscuits. coach recommended i take something hot pre-run because i tend to get stitches easily.
daryl and chingyi followed me to the start venue, dataran tanjung emas in muar. i saw sheela and told daryl, no hope for first place. also saw a couple of running people with their coaches from JB and doubted my chances. but i just concentrated on my own warmup, and my stretching. in my head i was thinking to myself, just go steady. i didn't want to repeat my 3r run and nike run experience whereby i went too fast in the beginning and just died-ed towards the end.
i was super nervous because my last 21km was in february and it was a nightmare for me. i wasn't sure how i would fare.
upon flagoff, alot of people ran ahead of me, but i maintained about a 440 pace. i did feel like following them but i told myself to keep a steady pace, its a 21km and you don't want to k-o halfway. my arch also started hurting slightly so i slowed down to about a 450 ish pace. i kept two girls in my line of sight though. passed one of them about 4km-ish.
after 3km ish, i felt pretty good. i had no stitch which is pretty normal for me to get. so i pushed to go on faster. i had a pretty strong run for the next couple of km. there were a few climbs and i was pretty strong at the climbs. at the 10km point, i passed the other girl, and caught up to another indian girl, that i later on found on was from jb. she has never done a 21km before and was super tired. i gave her some words of encouragement and motioned for her to keep going on. i remember i was okay running till about the 16km ish point. i could feel my legs tiring out. i maintained about a 5min to 510 ish pace till the 19km point then i picked up to about a 455 ish pace. i wanted to go faster but my legs really didn't allow me to.
the joy when i saw the finishing line. when i was handed a card which said i got 2nd place, i was even more happy. it was great to see daryl and chingyi at the finishing line as well. and the icing on the cake was of course my new pb of 1h 43 min and 10 seconds. garmin distance was 21.18km.
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and the icing on top of the icing of the cake was of course seeing familiar faces - daryl and chingyi at the finishing line waiting for me.
it was a great run for me, and a great weekend definitely. i ran less than 2 hours but ate for 4 hours straight after. muar has good food.
i'd like to thank my coach for the neverending support and most importantly, he believes in me so much, so much so i am starting to believe in myself. id like to thank daryl and chingyi for being there to support me. i am so super thankful for that. seeing familiar faces at the finishing line, that feeling is really indescribable. thanks to all my hrc team mates who train with me and encourage me every single training. also have to thank moolabar for fueling my race. moolabar makes a great pre-run breakfast for me, every single time.
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