SDU Trilogy (The Pledge)

Because it's there – George Mallory

I registered for the Sundown Ultra Marathon way back in Nov 2010, the very first day the organizer opened the official registration. In fact, i registered the Ultra event first before the SD42 Marathon.

Why did i wanna do the Ultra when i haven’t done a single Full Marathon at the time? (my first FM was at SCSM Dec 2010).

I could offer you three names:-

1. Dean Karnazes

2. Haza Zean

3. Zaki Omar

The last name on the list was the most significant, you see i made a pledge to a good friend of mine to support him in his quest for his Sundown Ultra Marathon. I decided last year to be his support crew during the race.

Many runners were stunned when SD organizer decided to up the Ultra distance from 84km to 100km. Most believed that the 100km distance can’t be done in 16 hours, additional 16km plus 1 hour cut off time was believed too demanding (the original 84km Ultra – 15 hours cut off time).

I remembered quite clearly during that period Deo and i were “lambung-ed” Zaki like crazy, it got so crazy until one day, we’re given few warnings SMS from him to stopped bugging him. Deo did stop for a while, but i kept on cheering him to do the Ultra to his dismay. The word Otoromen Zaki came about from these lambung-ed activities.

He said to us at that time, he would not do the Ultra since the distance is now a daunting 100km, and we all believed him (so now you know who really started the drama/telenovela series).

Thinking that our efforts for Zaki to secured that precious Ultra medal gone to ashes, I decided to do the unthinkable….

That’s when i decided to register for the Ultra, i just wanna see what i am made of.

I always had this high self belief that if I put my mind hard enough into anything, i would accomplished it no matter how difficult or impossible the task maybe. In addition, I always have this high tolerance towards pains, i’m the King of Pains. Let see if my limits are high enough for an Ultra Marathon.

Eventually after few days of thinking and consulting with Haza Zean and other Ultra runners, Zaki made up his mind on doing the Ultra after all. Yay rejoice! But i didn’t tell him that I registered until much later.

My reason was to keep it under wraps until race day, plus i would attract negative feedbacks since i haven’t run a single Marathon at the time.

TBC