Bareno Run 15km 2010

Photo courtesy of Tey.

I came into this race with no expectation as I have been a bit slacking in training lately. Lots of things happened including my mother went for operation last week. Running was not on top of my mind when my mother was in the hospital. I'm so glad and relieved that she was discharged on Thursday.

Anyway, what happened to my mother reminded me how fragile human being is. We should always be grateful and cherish those that are around us. Never take anything for granted.

The Bareno Run 15km was the first edition this year. I registered quite early for this as this race is just 2 minutes drive from my house. So, I felt the "home ground" advantage could do me good in this race.

I was joined by my wife for this race. It was her longest run thus far. She hasn't run further than 12km before. But I believed she could do this, within 2 hours.

Some other friends and colleagues also joined. BP, Devan, Janice, James, Zafir, Pang & family were there too. I registered and collected their bibs for them. Got more kakis this time. And I am becoming like an agent or ambassador for running, haha... Some more today, got a few people looked at me or cheered me on or talked to me like they knew me, but I didn't know most of them. Hello and thanks, my new runner friends!

For the run today, I completed the 15km in 1:13:36 (my personal best) for position 34th in Men Open Category. Average pace was 4'54" per km. I was surprised actually because I'd never expected to run below 5 minutes per km in this race because of lack of training. Also because of the pain I felt on my right foot near the heel area, made me worry early in the race. After about 3km, the pain subsided and I continued to push on.

After I had completed my run, I quickly got a drink and grabbed my camera bag. I ran back the running route in reverse direction to shoot photos and to find my wife. Along the way, I just tried to snap as many photos for the runners as possible. I met her around 1.5km from the finish line. Then I ran with her until the finish line. She completed her first 15km in about 1 hour 52 minutes for position 55th in Women Veteran Category.

Running towards the finishing line with my wife. Photo courtesy of Tey.

It was a good run organised by the Bukit Jalil Running Club. Some of the officials in organising committee are my running friends also. Mr Yong, Mr Tang, Mr Lim to name a few. I must congratulate them for a good job done.

Congratulations to Julia Lim too. She got champion position for Women Veteran Category. We shared the same training base, i.e. Taman Bukit Jalil (part of the 15km and 10km route today). She is a very hard-working runner and improved so much since last 2 years. She trains there almost every morning.

I will upload the photos that I took today to my Multiply site later. The quality is not so nice this time as I was running while I took some of the photos.

Until the next run, do train hard and stay healthy.