I was supposed to do MR25 Ultramarathon in SG, since i already committed to 24 Hours Cycling Challenge with my Team Mate – Gus Ghani, i had to give MR25 a miss this year.
MR25 clashed the same date with Newton Challenge 12km/25km, and the Cycling event is happening a day after that. It’s too hectic to travel to SG and return back to do the Cycling event. So, i decided to do the next best thing – register Newton 25km and upgrade it into an Ultra category by doing two loops.
At 2 am, Sunday morning i was the only soul at the start line. I parked my car near the Cendol van. The area was deserted. I put on my Camelbak and Petzl headlight and without hesitation retraced the earlier edition route. I scouted the route yesterday with the help of Fazli – proud resident of Bandar Kinrara Puchong.
The weather was nice, and it gets cooler around 3:00 am. I didn’t push the pace, just cruising around the killer hills to complete my LSD.
I completed the first loop 25km with the timing of 2:28 hours.
By 4:30 am, the starting place was now alive by music and flooded with running peeps. The cars now fully occupied both sides of the road that was vacant earlier.
5:30 am i started my second loops, before that i met many friends including Nick Skechers, Gus Ghani, Aiman, A-bou, TK and others.
I started the run with mild pace with Gus, which later i increased a bit with the intention of doing my Subuh prayer at Petronas.
After tackling few of the killers hills and exactly after the WS around 11km. A runner ran beside me and said hi. I think his name was Lim, he said he read my blog and inspired my blog entries. Thanks a million bro. Even in the dark people can recognised me..hehe.
Lim said that he intend to do his Full Marathon next year. Well Lim if you reading this, i am sure you will do well in your Virgin Marathon if you stick to the Marathon training. Go ahead and chase your dream, because we are all a dreamers. Chasing dreams makes us alive and give us hope.
I arrived the Petronas just a few minutes before 7:00 am, and it’s starting to get brighter.
My friend, Ironman Kam Kasturie arrived at the Petronas soon after that.
Photo: Kam
After completing my Subuh prayer, i decided to pace with Kam for the final 10km.
There’s a lot of camwhoring activities after that because Kam brought along his camera. Yippee!
Fooling around with Gus (Photo: Kam)
I got my second wind 4km to finish line, and decided to cruise along the final kms towards it. I met Sid around 1 km to the finish line, congrats Sid for your maiden Newton 12km.
I completed my second loop in 2:47 hours.
Nearing the finish line. 50km babeh….(Photo: Lim Soon Chung)
The inaugural Newton Ultra Challenge 50km was completed in 5:15 hours, with that my total weekly mileage is at 125km. You could say that my Ultra training for 2013 is just starting.
Now to the next agenda, 24 hours Cycling Challenge with Gus Ghani.
With the other running kakis (Photo: EA)