Running the race of my life (2) - PBIM09

Photo taken near the finish line with BP in PBIM09.

(This article is a continuation from this post.)

After I crossed the finish line and got my goody bag, I saw Andre. He is my ex-colleague, a friend and runner too. He finished his half-marathon and was waiting for his friend.

When I stopped running, my calf muscles tightened up. Andre helped me to stretch my calf muscles and I felt very grateful to him.

Then I quickly drank more water given to me at the finish line. I also ate a banana with isotonic drinks before I went to the baggage deposit centre to reclaim my baggage.

There were many people already waiting there to claim their belongings. It took me almost 15-20 minutes to get my stuffs. In it, my D40 DSLR camera, a PowerBar Protein Plus and some other small things.

I called my wife and told her about my finishing time. She was very happy for me. At that time, she was waiting near Eastin Hotel (a few hundred metres away) for the start of the Fun Run.

When I started shooting at the finish line, it was already 7:14am. I had promised BP to snap his finishing photo. He targeted to finish in sub-5 hours. While I was shooting other runners, I have to move my legs constantly to stretch and ease the soreness in my leg muscles.

BP finally came in at around 5:08 (after the start), just outside the 5-hour mark. I quickly put away my camera and looked for him. Due to many people around, I lost sight of him while I was putting my camera back into my bag. It was drizzling then, and holding a DSLR in the rain was not a good idea.

I finally saw him near the medical tent and I asked him if his knee was ok. He said it was ok but his leg muscles were very sore. Since his knee was injured, I felt worried and concerned when he ran in any race. Before the injury he could run faster than me. He finished in front of me in GE20km in January and Bidor Half Marathon in April.

I told him that I ran a sub-4 finish and share my happy feeling (that haven't sunk in yet) with him. He was the one that brought up the possibility of a sub-4 finish to me. And I didn't think I could do it then.

I showed him where to get some isotonic drinks and food. I continued to shoot some more photos and waited for my wife to finish her race.

I saw her coming in after 1 hour 8 minutes. She did well for the 10km run. I quickly met up with her and called BP. Then we shot some photos before we left Queensbay at around 9:00am to have our breakfast in Island Glades.

Looking back, I have exceeded my own expectation and target in the race. I felt it was a combination of factors such as encouragement from family and friends, consistent/persistent training, race strategy, home ground advantage, conditions on race day and mental strength.

There were some learnings from this race that I can improve on in the future. I need to learn to run an equal or negative split race. For many races, I had run positive split, i.e. first half of the race faster than the second half of the race. So I need to figure out something to address this.

Until the next run, stay healthy and train hard.