Mizuno 10k 2009

Date : 25 Oct 2009
Time : 0730 am
Place : Stadium UPM, Serdang, Lebuh Silikon
Weather : Wonderful!
Slope : Challenging!
Course : Scenic and almost no traffic.
Memorable points : Killer Hill before you can reach the stadium...Made walkers out of runners!
Pros : 1 water stop at mid way point
Good starting point.
Good crowd!
Cons : Narrow route, especially at the starting point
Parking arrangements quite haphazard
For those who depend on public transport, this location is not very accessible.


The day started early at 5am as we were planning to meet the KK pacers at McD. Hung around McDonalds and left 6am, with a big group of cars in tow.

Hooked up with another friend in Shell near the Serdang toll. However, I proceeded first as another fellow runner was there to guide the rest to the stadium.

We arrived there at about 6.30am and the parking area was filling up quickly.

With ample time to do the warm up and and stretching, we could see the masses of people starting to arrive.

By 7.30am, as the horn went off, there were still quite a lot of people making their way to the starting point. I started off about 20 meters from the front row, but it took a good 400meters before the road was clear to actually move into the pace that I wanted to run at.

With a 5 min/km pace in mind and to see whether the 'chi running' approach, the 1st km was understandably slower at 5:12. As we reached the golf course, the crowd began to thin enough to run at my pace.

After running through the undulating terrain, I was still on mark at 7km. At that point, I knew I just needed to focus and push through the last 4k or so. Things was made much more interesting as the last hill had silently sneaked up on most of the runners as most of us didn't notice the severity of the slope when we headed up....

I managed to maintain a good pace up the hill and was able to pass about 30 others on the hill alone.

After that, it was downhill all the way, literally speaking!

I managed to maintain a pretty good sprint for the last 300m to 400m, even hitting 21kph at 1 point. I finished in 54:13 for the total distance of 10.93km and a pace of 12.1kph, about 12 seconds in the black. It was a vast improvement compared my Mizuno run in 2008 at 11.5kph at the reverse double hills loop.So far, only the Siemen's run was better in terms of run time, but of course, the slope challenge was a different story.

In short, nice run, good organizers, great running course.