Bidor Half Marathon 2009

The best-looking medal in my trophy cabinet. The Bidor Half Marathon 2009 finisher medal.

The run time was 2:05:33 after running for 21.81km (according to my GPS reading) under a hot sun in Bidor. Technically this is my first half marathon. The GE20km in Jan was just short of half marathon distance.

BP and I were missing Will for this run. He had to take a rain check. I really wished he could join us for this. But we will have to wait for the next one.

We arrived in Bidor at Saturday evening to collect the running vest and bib. The place to collect the package was called Tukang Jahit Mexico. The owners belong to a runner circle called Bidor Runners. The running vest turned out to be just an ordinary T-shirt with all the sponsors' name all over the T-shirt. See photo below for the medal and T-shirt on display in the tailor shop.


Then we surveyed the run route. Apparently the route was not so hilly as expected. And it was not as scenic as we thought. The route passed through mostly wild bushes, palm oil plantation, kampung houses, (smelly) pig farm, and cemetery. The route was a narrow two-lane road with a section that took us to the end of the road (gravel road). Now we know the other reason (apart from accommodating outstation runners from KL etc.) why the run was scheduled to start at 7:00am. The route was without street light and was pitch dark when we survey it at 8:00pm.

We had our dinner in a hawker stall before leaving for Slim River for the night. We couldn't book a hotel in Bidor last minute. All the rooms were full the night before the run. In the end, we had to trouble Will to ask his dad to book a hotel room in Slim River, that is about 25 minutes away from Bidor.

The room was a really basic one. Luckily with air-conditioning. The cost was RM60 per night. We had no complaint, we just needed a place to sleep. See photo below for the best hotel room available in Slim River.

We slept early around 10:00pm so that we could wake up early. I had a relatively good sleep as I was tired.

We woke up at 5:15am and prepared ourselves. Then we shot off to Bidor and arrived there around 6:20am. We hung around and warmed up before the race. The start/finish line was just outside of the Dewan Muhibbah Bidor. The MC announced that there were around 1600 runners. The race started 2 minutes before 7:00am according to my watch.

Moment before the start of 21km.

We started at middle of the crowd. We were pacing quite fast (for our standard) at the first 1-2km. So we decided to slow down the pace. The first 5km was quite flat except for a bridge over the PLUS highway. The 5km mark was where we collected our first check-point ribbon and made an U-turn. The split time at 5km was 27:27.

Then we returned to the town and took a kampung road going up a small hill. This was the 10km mark. My split time at 10km mark was 54:34. My fastest 10km time so far.

The kampung road was a bit more challenging than the first 10km. The road was winding and with some small uphill roads. We quickly made our way to the second check point which was near the Bidor waterfall at end of the kampung road. We collected our second check-point ribbon and made an U-turn. We were heading back to town by the way we came. The road was not interesting to run on and the sun was shinning brightly to our body. I had to stop at every water station to rehydrate myself.

From the 16km mark onwards, BP was still maintaining his pace and I dropped off a bit. From 18 to 20km, I was running slowly at about 6:40 per km. I was feeling too tired then. At the last km, I gathered enough strength to pick up the pace and made sure I was not passed by anyone from behind. In the end, I finished the race in with the average pace about 5:45 per km. The position I got was 125th. BP came in 2 minutes earlier and got 114th.

With BP at the finish line. You can see it was a hot day.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the run. I didn't set any big target before the race. After the race, we quickly collected our medals and headed for the famous duck noodles in Bidor. This was the real "reward" for us. See the photo below for the duck noodles.


Our next run will be the New Balance Pacesetters 15km in May. See you there.