Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Raya & Birthday Run

Salam Aidilfitri to all the Muslim friends and runners.

We have had a pleasant run to Hartamas this morning. Weather was cool. Traffic was light due to the long Deepa-Raya holidays. The haze has also minimized....

I started running together with Adam at a very relaxed pace. We later caught up with Tey, CCube, Lisa, KNN and the birthday boy, Dr Jamie somewhere near the Mosque. We joined the group and ran with them all the way to the Hartamas Petronas station.

On the reverse, Lisa, Adam and I upped the tempo slightly but still running at a comfortable pace. Upon reaching the Mosque, we were surprised to see so many cars. Apparently, our Muslims friends were also up early for their morning prayers especially for today.We were careful at this stage, not wanting to be knocked down by any careless driver.

When we reached the main road of Jalan Duta, we had to slow down and practically stopped to hop over the divider which is as high as my waist level. (I wonder how is PACM to plan the coming 30km without the participants slowing down to do a hop over?)

With another 4km to go, I decided to be a pacer and increased the pace to a competitive level with the intention of helping Adam who is preparing for his 21km in Singapore. He responded and followed closely behind. As always, he did well....Good for him!

All in all, it was a good run as I came back satisfied knowing that I have done 5km more than my initial plan of 15km!

Once again, many happy returns of the day to Dr Jamie!

Monday, October 23, 2006

Sa-Wa-Dee Ho Ho Ho...

THANK YOU to Jamie, Adam, Khee Meng, Azwar, Rohaizad, Dr Raymond, Justin, Newton, Bernado and other running friends for your words of encouragement and compliments on my recent achievement in the Putrajaya Marathon. Hope I could do better in the coming marathons.

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I know this blog has been somewhat quiet as I have not been running much these days after the Putrajaya Marathon. My weekly mileage is around 11 to 20km with the longest 11km-Double Hill run on Sunday mornings.

That's how poor my current condition is! And if this isn't enough, the thick haze has "killed" my every little hope for a decent run. Sigh!

In fact, in the beginning of October, I had to halt all my running and working activities for a week as my both eyes were infected and red. My wife has passed her conjunctivitis to me....talk about sharing! But then again, no thanks to this haze!

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Haze or rain, we can still see so many PACM members running the long distance on Sunday mornings. They are either busy preparing for the Bangkok Marathon (26 Nov) or Singapore Marathon (3 Dec). Here, I would like to wish them the best of luck in their run during the competition.

As for us "the running couple", we have just booked our air tickets to Chiangmai for their marathon on 24 Dec 2006. Yes, it's Christmas Eve! I believe it will be a brand new experience for us to be able to compete and celebrate the festival in a foreign country!

If you ask me whetrher I will be a running Santa Claus again this year, like what I did en route to Hartamas, I will only tell you when I come back from the land of smiles. Sa-wa-dee!

For more information on Chiangmai Marathon 2006, click here.

P/S special thanks to Ms Narumol, an avid long distance runner from Thailand for providing the information.

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Crazy or not, I'm going to sign up for the 42km event in Chiangmai. I have only 9 weeks to get my fitness back to a competitive level. I will apply my tested formula from the Putrajaya run to this race except to shorten it by 2 weeks. I know time is not on my side. I only wish the haze will go away as soon as possible.

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The next overseas running trip on our list will be the Maui Marathon which is scheduled on 16 September 2007. There will be full and half distance categories. Anyone interested to join, please let me know.