Wild Wild Run (Der Pacemakers)

Date : 8 March 2009
Place : Da Zoo
Time : 0730

Arrived quite early at 6.40am but there was already quite a bit of a crowd there. The first remark that came out from my daughter when I opened the car door was "What's that smell?"....Welcome to the zoo.

We had some problem getting the kids in as apparently I was supposed to book the tickets for non participants earlier (in this case, my 2 kids). Luckily, they managed to get in on time, and we were at the starting line by 7.10am.

A short jog, a few stretches and I was all set to go. Kelvin, who was the MC again, was announcing something about going around for 4 laps at 1.85km/lap. I was thinking...ok 1.85km x 4, that comes up to....7.4km or thereabouts. Did a quick recalculation based on 11.6km/hr and came up with 38 mins or thereabouts.

My wife was joining me for this round as with the previous 2 runs. Her ITBs were giving her problems and she didn't have time to get the mileage in. So I told her go slow, go slow. At our present paces, I would finish the race and keep pace with her on her final lap.

Next thing we know, 54321, off we go!

I started off at the slowest possible pace ever 10.5kmh for the first lap, which wasn't bad for the overall race. What I've been listening to some podcasts recently (The Running Shoe and Phedippidations), the advise was always to start slow and finish strongly.

I felt pretty good in the 2nd lap and pickep up the pace to 11.5km/h. Going into the last lap, I poured it in a bit more, hitting about 12km/h. Going down the final stretch, I put on the turbo and finished strongly with my hands in the air and a smile on my face....except that the head of Der Pacemakers, Ronnie was shouting, 209! 1 more lap! 1 more lap! Huh?

It kinda knocked the wind out of my wings for a moment, before I realized that I probably didn't catch the other part of the announcement on men requiring to finish 5 laps.

Suddenly I was kelam kabut on my pace and regaining my breath before I steadied back to a reasonable pace. By then, I realized I stopped my watch earlier and restarted it again.

I felt pretty good with still quite a bit left to put more pace in. Nobody passed me in the final round, so it was pretty obvious I was somewhere in between. Hitting the last stretch....again, I did a repeat of what I did before and was pretty surprised I still had so much left. Finished in 46'58", which was great. I guess these podcasters do know what they're talking about.

I paced back up the route to meet my wife and paced with her (more for encouragement than anything else). She managed to do it in 52'10", although the ITBs were still bothering her.

There was a father and son team who was also participating. I could feel the way the son felt as the father was running with him and paced with him. Ah, maybe I can get my son to do it as well...one day.

I did managed to get a prize too, lucky draw lah. All in all, it was another great event by Der Pacemakers. Maybe the young race director can make a career out of it when he finishes his studies. Hmmm...

Looking forward to the next one 10k Melawati...