Finally I have signed up my first ever Half-Marathon event.
The distance of Half-Marathon is just like the name, half of the Full-Marathon distance, which is 21km.
How far is 21km?
It is 52 laps of the race track of a standard olympic stadium... that's 52x400m = 20.8km. Someone said running 52 laps of stadium will get a head-spin... may try this one day.
It is about 3 laps of the biggest loop of Taman Desa... plus smoke from the exhaust of motor-vehicles.
It is the distance from Old Klang Road to Shah Alam... again, plus smoke from the exhaust of motor-venicles!
Race Date and Venue
The race-day is on 6,February,2010, the event is Putrajaya Night Marathon.
The Reason
Running 21km non-stop is achieveable by now. The reason to sign up for the race is just to get an 'official recognition'. In this country, everything has to be 'official'.
Was initially planning to attempt my first ever Full-Marathon, but tight work schedule failed me again.
Should I sign up for the Full Marathon, there would be about 7 weeks left for training. That meant I have to endure a self-torturing 'hell' training program, which was to run 27k, 29k, 30k, 32k, 34k in five consecutive training weeks before taking a 2-week break leading to the race day. All these distances had never been attmpted before. I was not confident to be able to stay injury free after that, let alone to enjoy the fun of it. So, decided to call it a quit even before beginning it.
Fee
Paid RM47 for the event. That inlcudes the courier service to deliver the race-kit to my door step and the bus trip to-and-from Putrajaya on the race night.
The Magic
Now, the MAGIC of Half Marathon distance... while plotting the distance of half-marathon run from home, which is 11km out-going and 11km in-coming (taking my home as the centre-point), I realized that half-marathon (or 20km) is a very tempting distance to run.
With the ability to run 20+km, I can actually travel to almost all the destinations in my daily life, on feet!
So, if I can run 20+km, I can run to-and-fro the following destinations:
1. Major shopping malls in Klang Valley (1-Utama, Suria KLCC, IOI Mall, Sunway Pyramid) and back home,
2. All the nice parks in KL and PJ, and back home,
3. All the nice food outlets, and back home,
4. Main bus station (Puduraya), and back home,
5. Main train station (KL Sentral), and back home,
6. Subang Airport? (perhaps slightly more than 30km, two-way)
7. All major tourist spots in KL, and back home,
8. Too bad, not for KLIA. Two-way KLIA is an Ultra-run distance, not for an ordinary amateur (Steven Yip et. al. excluded). Now, unless one stays in Sepang, most of us can't claim that our home is within the Half-Marathon distance, two-way, to-from KLIA. I guessed that is the innovation of our very clever city planner. To go to the 'privatized' international airport, you have no choice but to take a 'monopolized' taxi service, or a 'monopolized' tol-highway, or a 'monopolized' bus service, or a 'monopolized' train service. Smart, right?!
Amazing!
