Breaking Record @ KLCC

Report from Justin Timberlake @ PM19

Here you go Ron...

Unintentional record @ KLCC 29/9/2004

The day began as usual, with me logging on to http://pm1.blogspot.com/ despite the fact that I had work to do! Going to his website and participating in both the chatbox and forum has been part of my life for the past few weeks, and it is addictive! Anyway back to the story of our run. Left the office at 6pm sharp as I was told by Ronnie that he’ll be at the KLCC park at “6.27pm”. Went to my car got changed, stretched a little and off I ran to the park. When I arrived at the park I saw Newton who obviously wasn’t running today. He said he had to leave early. Oh well, hopefully you get to run today man. Shortly after Kenneth was just about finishing his run and he stopped and chatted with us. Turns out that all the water fountains at KLCC today were out of order. Probably no water supply. So we left Newton and proceeded to the nearby stalls intending to buy 100 Plus. We bumped into Rohaizad and chatted for a bit. We talked about what was discussed in the chatbox and it centered around one person- this fella by the name of Gypsum, and his rather pugnacious and belligerent entries into the chatbox. Why are you so mad? We are here to help each other, not grab each other’s throats. Ok, you give it all you got in a race but that’s it. We train as friends and we try to raise each other’s levels as runners.

Anyway Ronnie turned up shortly after (dunno whether it was 6.27pm or not) and after some stretching and warm-ups we were ready to run. Our intention was to keep the pace consistently at 6:30 per lap (did we keep that pace? Hahaha, read below). Kenneth and Rohaizad decided to join us for a lap, which was great because the more the merrier.

Off we started at the 800meter mark. The pace was very comfortable and for my part at least I was breathing very, very easily. Kenneth and Rohaizad slowed down around the 500-600 meter mark (I wasn’t sure) and Ronnie and I continued. As we approached around the 730 meters mark I looked at my watch and saw that the time was 5:47. I told Ronnie “Eh, this is too fast man…” and true enough when we completed the time for the 1st lap was 6:11. Too fast! Ronnie and I were surprised because we felt we weren’t pushing the pace at all and this was faster than the opening lap of last week’s run. Anyhow we continued and I felt that we were slowing the pace until Ronnie told me the time for the 2nd lap: 6:01. Unbelievable! We were still feeling really fresh and we couldn’t believe the time. By then we covered the 3rd lap in 5:54. Laps 4, 5, 6 and 7 were covered in about the same times: 5:59, 5:57, 5:58, and 5:57. I think it was around lap 4 onwards that the rain started spitting on us. Yup, more like spitting than a full-blown rain. Still it was enough to wet the track and while the rubber portions were ok, the tile portions were slightly slippery. By the 7th lap we were starting to feel it but we soldiered on. Last lap came and I upped the pace little by little until past the 250meter mark when I decided to really push it. I completed the lap in 5:23, and Ronnie finished soon after.

Anyway here is the breakdown of the 8 laps at KLCC:

6:11, 6:01, 5:54, 5:59, 5:57, 5:58, 5:57 and 5:23. Total time: 47:23.28. Ronnie’s time was 47:41.42 So new records for us at the KLCC park! We weren’t intending to do so but the conditions felt right and we were probably running at a decent pace too.

While we were running we did see Julian. Hi Julian! In case we didn’t say hi to you when we were running. And Tey was there too, he took photos of us running. Malu lah hehehe. Presumably he took photos of the gang too.

While Ronnie and I were doing our warm downs and stretching we chatted with Tey and he’s a hardcore fella man! He’s done climbathons, and gone to various events, all self financed. Still his employer Sin Chew gives him a lot of freedom to do so. Apparently he has plenty of leave which he takes advantage of by attending the running/climbing events. He tells us that he’s also an active contributor to the Taiwanese running website. But since I’m a banana I can’t read the contents of the website. Anyway by the time we left it was raining- not too heavy, more like a shower. Another session of running past, looking forward to the next one.