5 and counting

Ok I know this is one week overdue but better late than never.

So last week, I took part in my FIFTH marathon, That's right FIFTH. How I got this far, I have no idea. When I ran my first marathon in Dec 2007, I thought back then that it was just a one-off thing to see how much I can push myself. But fast forward 3 years later, I find myself running at least one marathon each year. It's always the same story every time. I run. I finish. I tell myself that it's damn painful. I tell myself not to do it again ever. But I'll do it again anyways.

It doesnt help when you have friends like Is who has been officially termed gila by his parents. This dude is going to France for an ironman next year and he plans to bring a whopping grand total of 2 sets of clothes! Along with his bike of course, which he has to pay for shipping fees and not to mention the registration fee alone which costs bout $700. He has to get up early every morning to train and (as far as I know), he's not going to get laid! But that's ok cos HE IS AN IRONMAN. IRONMAN.

(Ok la that's beside the point but I just wanted to have a paragraph about him cos he is seriously mental dok)

Anywayyy, I dont know how I did it but I did my personal best this time. I think the official race timing was 4h 50min. I find this really amazing cos if you all had not known by now, I'm kinda of a pemalas haram. I sign up for races and I dont train for them. Usually about a month before the race, I get a bit worried so I'll probably start running. But this will last at most for a week and after that I'll be back to my normal lazy self. The most I've trained so far was for the KL Marathon 2010 and even that was disrupted by exams. So I know that I was severely underprepared for this one and my only expectation was to complete the race in decent time. If you take all these factors into account, it's no wonder I'm so pleased with the results in the end.

This brings me to the point of the entry, so what actually contributes to a good race? Cos as far as I know, from my first marathon till now, I have not been doing anything radically different. I have been practicing my own pre-race rituals and if anything, I've actually done less this year. Yet I managed to somehow slash more than 30 mins off my timing, which usually falls around the 5h 30 min region.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I ran with two very fit people in Jon and Is. We ran together, side by side all the way from start to the finish. The only times we broke away were at the drink stations where I tend to take a little bit more time than them but we caught up with each other eventually. I started to sense that this was going to be my fastest race ever when we crossed the 20km mark at 2h 07 min. We did our first 10km in 1h 02 min, which was tremendously fast considering that the bottleneck extended all the way till the 5km mark so we pretty much had not much space to run into. We told ourselves to slow down but apparently Jon has no sense of timing whatsoever so ya he lead the way and we completed our next 10km in 1h 05min. So much for slowing down but ya.

I experienced my first slight hint of cramps at the 25km mark and the legs really started to get heavy from then on. There were numerous times when I really felt I was slowing them down so I needed to walk and but Is told me to hisap and pegi mampus so I had no choice but to keep going. At the 35km mark, both my thighs suddenly cramped up and this was the point when I started to scold myself for voluntarily signing myself up for this shit again. Surprisingly I managed to walk it off and made a final push for the final stretch. The last 2km was extremely torturous but with the crowd cheering us on, we glammed it up a little and crossed the finish line with our hands together raised up high.

Aside from the running company, I cannot really explain why I managed to outdo myself this time. There were a lot of times when I could have foreseen myself giving up and walking had I run alone. But these were the times when that little push from them can go a long way. And in my case it did and I'm thankful to them for that.

Perhaps, there is an even better explaination for this. Perhaps, I know the reason all along. It's actually cos... I'M A SPORTSMAN. I PLAY SOCCER EVERY WEEK. I'M A TENNIS PLAYER.

Tak.