Life's Most Unusual Training Run

The Plan

As part of my training for KL Marathon on 24/6, I had decided to do a LSD run to KL city and back on 28/4.

I was planning to park my car at MidValley Megamall and run to Brickfield followed by a walk to the starting point of KL Marathon.

The run could possibly be much more tougher than the usual training run for the following reasons:
1.  There would be no water stop, hence no water re-fill.
2.  There would be many many more runners using the same running route.
3.  Petrol stations or 7-11s along the route would most likely be closed.
4.  There would be unknown/hidden/open "hazard" and "trap".

However, my spirit was high.

The Day Before

I told SB about my plan.  Her reaction (in Hokkien): "lu mai xiao lah"!

However, after finding out that my sons' petite lady teacher planned to run too, she changed her tone to: "have fun and take your time".

The Running Gear

As I might need to switch my run to much faster pace, I knew that I had to be very very light.  As such, I decided not to carry backpack as most other runners did.

Here are the running gears I brought with me, not much different from the "century run".

The only additional item was the two surgical mask on the right.  I just had a feeling that I might need the surgical mask just in case the quality of air turned bad.  Also, there were fully filled 2 litres of water in my favorite "platypus" water bags.

The Run

10:45am
Journey started.  I was greeted with massive jam in front of my housing "garden".  Uncles-in-blue-and-white have blocked the road to Midvalley Megamall, perhaps to stop runners from using the KTM Komuter next to the mall.  I immediately switched to plan-B, which was to park the car at the 3rd Mile Square and started my run there.  That would add another 1.5km x 2 to my running distance.  The sun was burning hot.
Fortunately, thanks to uncle-in-blue-and-white, I was overtaking all the cars heading towards the same direction, in my trusted bus-11, which was the best transport at that moment.

10:50am
Reached the first (and most likely the last) opening petrol station, I cleared my bladder and shower my hair and face with cold tap water before continuing the run.

10:55am
Journey continued.  Was overtaking all the slow moving cars like a marathon champion along KL-bound Old Klang Road.

11:00am
Came to the first pitstop set-up by uncle-in-blue-and-white.  Syed Putra Road heading to KL city was closed completedly, first time in my life.  All the cars were either diverted to Cheras or PJ.
Ran passed the pitstop without problem.

Ran passed a lot of shoppers heading to Midvalley on feet, mainly foreign workers.  The buses had to drop the passengers before the road closure.

I felt really privileged to be able to run alone along the empty 3-to-4-lane Syed Putra Road!

11:05am
Ran passed Midvalley Megamall.  Never in my life that Midvalley Megamall was so peaceful.  The famous jam-packed Midvalley Ring Road was turned into a ghost town... was totally free of motor vehicles.

Was overtaken by 5 full-geared mountain bikers.  The last biker slowed down, turned back, and shown his thumb... probably signalling "are you okay?".  I responded with my thumb up too.

11:20am
Reached the second pistop set-up by uncle-in-blue-and-white blocking the road leading to Brickfield.  No problem with my trusted bus-11.  Passed a few more runners on feet.

11:45am
Reached the "mid-point" pitstop.  Saw huge crowd, mostly in yellow.  I was given a yellow flag too.

12:00pm
After a short briefing by the run organizer, we started to walk (no one ran from here on) to the starting point of KL Marathon.

I couldn't really figure out how long was the human belt... I guessed the newspaper on 29/4 showed better picture from the vantage point.

Despite the partial road closure and massive traffic jam on working day, motorbikes, cars, lorries, buses, taxies (with all skin-colours) passed us with big thumbs up and honk-of-support.  This was so different from 2010 KL Marathon during which we were shown mostly middle-fingers on Sunday morning.

Buildings windows were full of watchful spectators, cheers, thumb-ups, claps.

Foreign workers stopped their works at the building-under-construction, some at the roof, and cheers.

The most unforgetable moment came when we approached the old train station.  A KTM komuter train put up a very very long and loud honk while passing by the long human-belt... the train conductor was seen putting up big thumb too.  Fellow walker was jokingly said that the conductor would get fired soon.

All walkers were very friendly and discipline.  Unlike KL Marathon, no one tried to overtake others.  Whenever there were accidental body contact, there were always "sorry" and "excuse me".  The atmosphere was like a huge carnival... much bigger than KL Marathon.

1:00pm
Reached the old market place.  Merged with crowd from National Mosque, Jalan Sultan and the old market place.
As there was no chance of getting to the starting point of KL Marathon, walkers could only circulate the road around the square...

....to be continued... or not.