Race Report by PM19,
I came down with a fever on Friday evening. It got pretty bad as I was experiencing a general malaise throughout my body and despite knocking out at 10.30p.m I woke up on Saturday morning not feeling any better. And I also suffered from a bad case of food poisoning. I visited the toilet 7 times on Saturday. Still I resisted going to the doctor and generally stayed in bed throughout the day, and evening. I did force myself to go to the Extreme Park at 6.00p.m to survey the scene and the running route. Yup, the thought of not running never crossed my mind! I checked out what I thought was the running route and as it later transpired, the map on the form turned out to be inaccurate. By about 10.30p.m I felt better but I knew I still had a fever. I went to bed hoping that when the alarm rang to wake me up, I felt fine to race.
Alarm woke me up at 7.00am. Felt ok, but extremely groggy. I still had the fever. And I had to make one visit to the toilet courtesy of my food poisoning. Popped 2 Actifast Panadols and left my house. Anyway staying near Sunway has its advantage- I left the house at 7.25am and arrived in 8 minutes. When I arrived I saw a group of some I dunno, 300 runners, all of whom were converged in a general area. Parked my car and went to that area, and went to the registration desk. All the lady did was to wrap the sticky ends of my florescent yellow wrist band over my wrist. That was it- no t-shirt, no bib number. Having up to that point, survived a day a half of fever and food poisoning I wasn’t expecting much from the race. In any event it is my 2nd cross country ever (the 1st ever being in Form One, and that was a loooong time ago), so I was just running to gain some experience.
The organizers started with the junior boys and then the veteran men before the men’s and women’s open. I realized from the start of those earlier events that the initial route was slightly different from that of the map. Anyway I decided that I’ll just run along the route, check out where the front runners are and just follow them.
Off we went at about 8.05a.m and straightaway we encountered a puddle. I sidestepped it and went as quickly as I could. The ground was not a natural earth colour but a light gray colour with a lot of stones sticking out. I was trying to balance between running as carefully and quickly as I could. There were some pretty muddy spots too and since I couldn’t avoid it, I ran over it and quickly mud was in my shoes and all over my calves. Past the lake, where the ground was more “natural” – i.e. earth coloured and the puddles looked like teh ais. It was very difficult to settle into a consistent pace because the ground was quite uneven, and there were some extreme hills- I would go past them completely out of breath, only to be greeted by a fairly opposite extreme and very slippery downhill (where I recovered my breath)- so I had to be very careful too. I think there were about 4 such hills- all about 50-100 meters in length- but very inclined and uneven. Once past the go-kart track there was a u-turn which was downhill from there, but once again I had to be careful because the path was full of rocks. I almost sprained my ankle on 3 occasions. After that downhill there was some 400 meters left of asphalt to run on- only then could I really run the full pace.
Over the 3.8km course, I finished in a time of 16:52.68, which roughly translates to a 4:25 per km pace or 7:10 per mile pace.
At the finish line, I found out that I finished out of the top 25 (thereby not entitling me to a medal) and I didn’t even know my position because the organizers said that they only handed out the finishing cards to the top 25 finishers.
I felt physically terrible after the run. I sat in my car for a while to rest. Felt better after that and I decided to have breakfast with my folks. Then, went to Sungai Wang, Lot 10 and Metro for some shopping! Got New Balance t-shirts, running shorts and the new Star Wars trilogy DVD. Reached home at 2.30pm and k.oed. Still having the fever and food poisoning (as of Sun night 10pm), hopefully will feel better soon.
All in all another race and more experienced gained. LESSON LEARNT: Cross country definitely makes you tougher because you have to deal with the soft terrain (that works your calf muscles even more than usual), the uphills, and the uneven ground. Forget all about pacing because it is almost impossible to settle into any rhythm. Just as you think you’re comfortable, you’re hit with an uphill or a downhill, forcing you to slow down. Plus, the fact that it was 3.8km meant that you have to push and run hard from the very beginning- but you have to balance it with running carefully too, because the uneven ground makes you more susceptible to injuries.
While you may expect PRs on road races, don’t expect the same in cross country. Your time may be a few seconds (or minutes) off your PRs because of the uneven terrain.
Bring on the FRIM race…
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