Thursday, May 01, 2008

Labour Day, Labour Of Love (Pain)

Event: Labour Day, Labour Of Love (Pain) LSD Run
Venue: Bukit Aman carpark, Kuala Lumpur
Date: 1 May 2008
Time: 5.00am
Distance: 30KM (30.32KM by Jamie's Garmin Forerunner 205)
Shoe: adidas Supernova Cushion 6
By Frank

It's a cool Labour Day morning and I was up as early as 2am to catch the Champions League semi-final second leg match beween Liverpool and Chelsea. Sadly, Liverpool lost. But hey, I'm not to here to talk about footie. This is a running blog!

After KLIM08, most of us has been slacking on our long runs. My recent Bidor Half Marathon 2008 can be considered one actually, but the pace is very different. It's a race after all. Therefore, in conjunction with Labour Day, Jamie organised our first LSD run for our upcoming Sundown Marathon at our usual Bukit Aman to Hartamas route. However, those who are interested were welcome to join us. He named the LSD run Labour Day, Labour Of Love (Pain) run. Haha... Seriously, I like the name. There were 2 "categories" for this run. The first being the 30KM runners scheduled to start at 5am, while the second being the 20KM runners scheduled to start at 6.15am.

I decided to put on my adidas Supernova Cushion 6 for this run. Despite not wearing it for quite some time already, I still find it very comfortable. And besides, 30KM is no joke if I were to wear the heavy adidas adistar Cushion 6. Me together with Geraldine, Jamie, Choi, Cheang, Kit and Tey were in the first batch and we started off around 5.10am. I had Geraldine to run side by side with for the first 10KM. We were chatting along the way and this made my run relaxing. Didn't worry about my pace too much as quickly enough, we found ourselves at the Petronas station at Hartamas already. Jamie managed to caught up with us and we did 4 loops around the petrol station so that we can cover till 30KM later. Geraldine did only 2 loops and she went off by herself. By the time we completed the 4 loops, we covered a distance of 13.2KM in a time of 01:22:35. We took a breather at the Petronas station and rehydrated ourselves while waiting for Choi, Cheang, Kit and Tey. And when they arrived and have rested enough, we continued our adventure.

This time however, it was the start of a lonely run for me. Jamie has up his pace and I just couldn't keep up. Back at the income tax building, I met up with the second batch runners doing the 20KM distance. They were Ronnie, Tay Poh Chye, Stanley and a few whom I don't know. I did one loop around the income tax building and upon doing so, was rewarded a view of a beautiful rainbow formed up in the sky. What a pleasant view and I managed to share it with Choi who was just behind me before we made our way back to Hartamas again. Bumped into Geraldine just before reaching Petronas. Although I'm tempted to stop to rehydrate myself at the station, I didn't as I wanted to keep going. Jamie who was there with Ronnie and the others took off as I arrived.

As I left the station with Tey, Choi too checked in followed shortly by Kit and Saiful. At this point, I can feel my quads aching already. It felt very tight. Didn't want to give up as I had already come this far. Besides, I have Tey just behind me to add a bit of pressure. Hehe... But he slowed down once we reached back at the Duta stadium, and soon I lost him. So I was all alone from here all the way back which was like 5KM more to go. So in the end, I made it all the way back in one piece, and was greeted by Geraldine, Jamie and Ronnie who had completed their run earlier. And so my time for the total 30KM was 03:05:51.

We all did our warm down and stretching while chit chatting, and once Choi is back, we all gathered around him as he showed us the 2008 Saucony model which was just one word, OUTSTANDING! And before we all left, we took a group photo to to mark a successful LSD run on Labour Day 2008, one with lots of love and pain.
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Despite running 20KM and 30KM respectively, we are all still smiling...

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