Bizarre run but glorious end none the less

When my cell phone conked off and my Garmin watch wasn’t working this morning, I kind of had a gut feeling that these were early morning omens ahead of the Kuala Lumpur Marathon. 

The party revellers wished me on Jalan P Ramlee when I was going to the KLCC to take the light rail to the starting point.

At the start of the run at the Merdeka Square, it all looked well organised. There was a large turnout with over 5000 runners attempting the full marathon.

Although I felt a bit uneasy, I got off to a blazing start. I was running ahead of the 5-hour pacers hoping that I could maintain this pace until at least the 30-km mark. I loved the start of the run and seeing the Petronas lit that early in the morning.  

As I set the roads of KL on fire, I started thinking that this would really be easy. The air was cleaner than in Bombay and my lungs had an easier job.

The problem was that most of the route was on highways and flyovers. By the 14 km mark, I ran out of stamina and energy and was sure that I could not finish the run. It was really early and there was no chance of the sweeper bus picking me up anytime soon and since we were on flyovers without exits, I could not get off the route and take a cab back to my apartment.

On this nightmare path, before a flyover, I saw a gurudwara and was tempted to take refuge there, but I decided to keep going. So I continued on tired and out of energy up to the 21 km mark, where I approached the volunteers and said I want to pull out. When will the sweeper bus come, I asked. They replied that it could take hours as the bus would follow the last runner!! They said if I was sick or injured, I could get evacuated by medical staff. That would have been unfair since a really sick or injured person would have needed the assistance.

I asked them if there was an exit from the never-ending highways and they advised me not to exit the highway until the 31 km mark!!! There were some exits in industrial areas from where I would have never gotten a cab.

This was a bizarre run, since I desperately wanted to stop but had no choice!! Once I reached the 31km mark, we were parallel to a road with traffic, but none of the cabs agreed to stop for me.  And then came another flyover!! By the time I reached the 35 km mark, I realised that since I came this far, I just as well might finish off the run.. Slowly we reached the city again and I stepped up the effort and yes, I finally made to the Merdeka Square!  Yes, I ran my second full marathon!  I have mixed feelings.. On the one hand, I am irritated with the “prison route”, but I am glad I managed to finish.

I learnt a big lesson from this run. I need to run hard and fast during my training sessions to be able to sustain the speed on race day.  

On the whole, a big congrats to all those runners who braved out a tough route and hazy weather. It's just ironic that for hours all I wanted to do was quit and could just not do that!!