Race Report: Ipoh International Run 2009

I finally broke the jinx of my half marathon and ran a sub-2 at Ipoh last year. The route was pretty nice (flat and fast, but that's not really my thing) and support on the course was decent. However, MBI could definitely use some improvement in their bib collection and prize money distribution.

It is because I liked the run enough that I returned to Ipoh again this year together with Peck Yee and Kenneth to run the race. Sadly Ribbit had to opt out as her ankle was giving her trouble. I was fresh of my marathon so prior to the race I only ran on Thursday. A short tempo run. I was a bundle of nerves. Would I be able to do it again? Would I be able to run a sub-2 here? The prize money this year was significantly better than last year and I did see the amazing talent in the field when I registered. A lot of big names in running.

I travelled down with Kenneth and Peck Yee on Saturday morning. Upon reaching we went to "Tin Chun" for Ipoh hor fun, popiah and chee cheong fun. I do love the popiah here. It's very different from Penang. The rolls have some awesome filling of crispy little prawn (har mai or heh bee). It is also not drenched in soup like the Penang version.

Then it was off to Stadium Indera Mulia for bib collection. It is here that I met up with Shih Ming and Saya. MBI (not learning a lesson from past year's mistakes) takes AGES to pull up our information. Shih Ming and Saya left in the midst of this to check-in to their hotel and we made plans to sync-up again for lunch. After a century, we finally pay and headed over to collect our racepacks. It was amusing to see the volunteers pull our T-shirts out from those large MBI trashbins. I hope they washed those bins before putting the T-shirts in!

Lesson #1: Prepay for the race entry fees for Ipoh next time. Stupid me for not learning from last year.

We then went to the Heritage Hotel to meet up with Shih Ming and Saya and head on to lunch at Peck Yee's childhood chicken rice stall in town. I was overtly ambitious and ate way too much at the chicken rice stall. I would soon regret this. The chicken rice shop was packed to the brim but sadly I think the taste was average only. I think most of us enjoyed the Funny Mountain tau foo fah and soya milk we had after lunch more than the chicken rice.

We parted ways (sob, sob...) for rest with plans to meet again for dinner at Woolley, which I kid you not is a name of a food court. Not the wooly mammoth! Went home and felt so stuffed that I was pretty uncomfortable and this stomach discomfort will stay with me until dinner time. It is funny that people from Ipoh often tell you that they are going to Woolley to eat except that they almost always end up at the food court across the road from Woolley's. I guess Woolley's name is easier to remember than the Chinese name on the food court. I had lots of popiah again, which frankly is the best thing I have had there. The "mun ee mien" I ordered was so tasteless I didn't finish it and not finishing something is VERY rare for me. It is at dinner where I was introduced to Lai Chee, another superb superb runner who finishes Sundown 84k in just slightly over and hour.

We left pretty early to go back and get ready for the race. I must say I slept early enough in a room that I shared with Peck Yee in her parents' house. It was pretty stuffy so we set the timer and turned on the aircon. However, after the timer shut off the room became stuffy again. According to Peck Yee, I sleep walked my way into turning on the table fan but the fan was too noisy thus she turned it off and turned on the aircon again. She was to leave the room to sleep oin her parents's room. Thanks Peck Yee for letting me freeze to death with the aircon. At around 3am, I was so cold I scrambled to turn it off and continue sleeping until 4.25am.

Oops! I woke up late. I had wanted to awaken at 4am so there was a mad scramble to get ready.
Thanks to the food stuffing adventure the day before, I had multiple toilet adventures that morning. I choked down two pieces of wholemeal bread with peanut butter. Just as we packed up to get going, the skies open up and sheets of rain started to fall. Oh man... bummer. A wet run. Even with the pouring rain, we decided to drive to the start and well, sit in the car and hope the rain lets up.

When we arrived at the stadium, it was still pouring buckets. So we bummed around in the car debating whether to go down to run or not. My mood was seriously low at this point. We bummed until almost 6.30pm when we decided to make a dash for the start. We got out of the car and made our way as quickly as we could towards the starting area. The roads was a mess of puddles and rain was still coming down pretty hard. The gate to get into the runners' pen was flooded and my shoes and self were soak so much by then I couldn't care less what happened at that point. Let the rain come down.

We got our starting bands and huddled underneath the building for shade. Suddenly, I saw throngs of runners moving towards the gate. I guess it is time to line up... or not. Due to some big shot VIP coming late I stood shivering and freezing at the starting line waiting for the flag off. He got some pretty bad boo-ing when he finally arrived. As the gun went off, I was just happy to start moving. My muscles were so frozen just standing there.

The start felt very sluggish. What to expect when you have stood in freezing rain for a good 15minutes? We very soon branch off and I was glad I caught myself instead of following the hoardes of 10k runners. I noticed quick enough and made a sharp right turn. After the race, I would hear of tons of other more unfortunate runners that were lead astray by bad signage.

Lesson #2: Pay attention to the route beforehand so that you know where to run even if organizers have bad signage.

You can read more about poor signage and being lead astray here:
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Monday/Sport/2600498/Article/index_html

I caught a sight of Saya not too long after and tried to keep her in my view until I realized she was running a tad bit too fast for me at the point. I decided to drop her and focus on my own pace. It was an almost 6min/km pace at that point but I told myself I would need to run faster if I wanted to hit a sub-2. The good thing was that the first 5k passed fast enough and I turned into Jalan Gopeng to begin one of the longest straight and flat stretch of the half. Which was from km5 to km8. At this point, I amusingly ran past a guy running with an umbrella. He tried to keep pace with me for a bit but dropped after a few hundred meters.

The next stretch was quite easy, I think the pace was something like 5:50min/km. Still too slow but I did try to keep it at 5:40min/km for most part. After the 11km mark, I started to feel a dip, which sometimes happens to me during races. However, I am better at catching myself, giving myself a mental slap and picked it up. This whole I was pacing this guy with the exact same bib number as me 050. I struggled a bit from 11km to 15km but after I hit 15km things felt really good and I started to pick up my pace and at this point I was running about 5:45min/km. I started to drop Mr. 050 and quite a number of other runners. At this point I was running something like a 5:30min/km and I finally managed to catch up to that one woman ahead of me and passed her at km17. However, after passing her, I got so paranoid that she would pass me back that I started to run pretty hard. At the home stretch I picked up the pace again to about 5:15min/km and at the last 500m I passed another woman.

Total time taken 1:55 but damnit the route was severely underdistanced as my GPS only showed 19.91km. So It may not have been a sub-2 finish had I have to run that extra km. Average pace was 5:47min/km which was much much slower than last year.

It is funny to note that last year I also ran Ipoh after another full marathon, Sundown.

We celebrated by having lunch with Shih Ming, Saya, Ben, Yee Hua at the big tree. I had laksa and yong tau foo. I spent the rest of the afternoon nursing a throbbing headache before heading back to Penang in the evening.

Thank you Uncle Kenneth for driving and Aunty Peck Yee for the free lodging. Your parents were very hospitable.

Darn it! I need a new sub-2 half marathon now!

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