KL Mizuno Wave Run

Just spent the weekend in Malaysia. On Saturday morning, I took a 5-hour FirstCoach ride with BoSe to Bangsar in Kuala Lumpur where we were then picked up by Kien Seng and driven (with lots of thrilling swerving in-between lanes!) to a newly opened cafe in Klang for lunch with Yu Mei.

After lunch, Yu Mei, Lok Bin, BoSe and I watched the movie Phenomenon, starring Sandra Bullock, at "the best cinema in the country". This was followed by shopping for omochi and mooncakes (in particular the snow-skin durian-paste mooncake), dinner at a Japanese restaurant (with William joining us there), and dessert comprising tangyuan and muahchi under a tree by a carpark. :D

BoSe and I got back to the residence at around 10 pm, where we promptly washed up and went to sleep.

On Sunday morning, at around 5.45 am, Lok Bin came over in his car to pick us up (and also Yu Mei and William along the way later on) and brought us all to the starting point for the KL Mizuno Wave Run. Conversation in the car was extremely hilarious all the way, but I shan't go into the details here. :D

At the start point, I bumped into Andy Gan, Fennel (who was going to run with her SLR camera), Ronnie, IMD and Yee Hua, as well as BoSe's other Klang friends.

The race started rather promptly at 7.30 am. And after that, it was 10 km of exhilarating and breath-takingly shiok hill running. It took a while for my engine to warm up, but about 2 km into the race, I was proceeding at a fairly good pace. I decided to maintain my pace on the upslope and open up my strides on the downslopes. That was a rather good strategy and allowed me to conquer the hills without developing too much fatigue.

But at the 5 km mark, there was a steep (maybe 30-degree) slope that went for quite a distance. By the time I reached the summit, I had the wind totally taken out of me. The next 1 km was critical for me to recover my breath. When we exited onto the highway, I got my "second wind" and actually gathered enough speed to overtake quite a number of people. :)

Into the final 2 km of the race, I could feel my chest tightening up (I had been coughing quite a bit for quite a while recently), so I decided to slow down my pace. But I managed to finish the race with a timing of 59:23, which met my sub-1 hour target. :D Not a bad timing for such a hilly route, I'd say :) I came in #364 (if I don't recall wrongly) in the Men's Category, of which there were nearly 1000 participants.

After the race, there was the usual milo-drinking, photo-taking and shower. And then we headed to KLCC for lunch. I had a really filling meal comprising Cantonese friend noodles and teh tarik. :) We then window-shopped in KLCC itself (spending some time in the Kinokuniya), before returning to BoSe's house, took a quick nap, and then went out again to catch the 4.30 pm AeroLine bus back to Singapore. During the ride back, my attention was divided between reading my travel guide on Taiwan, watching the in-coach movie of Poseidon (the modern remake version), and admiring the electrifying sight of a lightning storm outside the coach in the distance towards the horizon.

I finally got home at 10.45 pm. :) Home sweet home :) And tomorrow's another new working day :)