Drive, Cycled and Ran the Penang Bridge

Congratulations friends who had participated in the Penang Bridge Marathon (PBM). Met Wendy, CK, Adeline, Maysenn, Kam Kasturie, Kar Yan, Adli, Roger, Admiral, Azmaar (my saviour), Tony Q, Saiful, Abu Power and most fantastic Tey (our favourite photographer - we owe him a lot of lunches and dinner). My apologies if I have missed out other names.

I can now safely say that I have driven, cycled (Interstate2007) and ran across the Penang Bridge.

Morning prep for some of us began as early as 1 am on Sunday morning. Prior to this, we arrived in Penang after a 6 hour journey from KL and getting stuck at the entry of Penang with a massive jam just before the PBM toll house. Pick up our kits at Queensbay Mall and went around Queensbay Mall for some late shopping. Decide to carbo load at Kassim Nasi Kandar (near KOMTAR branch) just before 6pm. Went back early to get our planned beauty sleep. Most unlikely as we soon found out as there was lotsa people making lotsa noise at B-Suite.

Decide to leave "early" at 2 am, but unfortunately road block had started, hence had to do "involuntary" warm up by jogging to the race site. Race start was very uneventful, after watching CK, Senn and Kar Yen started, some of us decided to loiter around for the next 1 hr 30 min waiting for our own flag off.

I actually surprised myself by being able to run all the way from the start line to the turn around mark (which was 12.5km).By about kilometer 15km, i was on a walk/jog/walk mode until km 20. Reaching the 20th km mark, with the road being clogged up by the Fun runners (10km) (mere excuse on my part), i resigned myself to just mere walking back. The actual reason being is that my knee had given away and the ball of my feet felt like bursting. It was the longest 5km walk back (1 hour plus) as I embarassingly hobbled to the finishing line. The absence of drink station on the way back and it being finished does not help many of the marathoners. Some even thought that it is very inappropriate and pose a danger to some slower runners, as the days get hotter and some runners might dehydrate.

Reaching the finish line, I was quite surprised that I was given a finisher medal since its about 4 hours 10 mins passed the start time and I had thought that the cut off was 3 hours 30 mins. I thanks god and every one else who had given me the motivation along the way to finish the race and not wait for the sweeper bus like many this year.

Overall, its good training before Singapore Marathon which is due on the 7th December 2008. Looking back, if someone was to tell me that I will be running 25km, last year, i would have dismissed the thought as rubbish, but now looking back, i am quite surprised that I can become this insane and did it, more so since we just came back from Powerman the week before ;-).