Energizer half marthon race Report

I completed my first half marathon of the year at the weekend and it was, well, shocking. It was without a doubt, the worst organised race i have ever been to. The race was held at night on the formula 1 circuit in Malaysia, Sepang. We got there early, parked and made our way towards the start line. There were no direction signs anywhere and we wandered around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go.

When evenutally  i found a single-wide door leading to a tunnel under the track, I realised that this was the only way to the paddock. Terrible! We filtered through slowly, only to find that there was no water or drinks available, no toilet facilities on that side and the headlamps for participants had run out. All i hoped was that the course was not too dark!

For some reason that organisers kept us corralled away from the start line and off the track. I couldnt figure out why, until i realised that they wanted the band to lead the runners on to the start line. Very ceremonial, but a pain in the a**. All we wanted to do was line up and run. It caused a lot of confusion and everytime someone went on the course to line up, the security guards shouted at them to go back.

When the race started, the route wasnt too bad. There was not a lot of water available on the route and i got quite dehydrated on the course. This meant that my quads and calfs were really cramping by the 18k mark and slowing me down. The last ten km were run on the F1 track which was very cool. It is really impressive when you see it up close. It has the huge sweeping bends that stretch out and give you a great sense of the size of the place. I can see why they run races there at night. It has no shade and would be a nighmare in the heat.

I crossed the line in 2:01 which was fine, given that i am still building base and did not expect anything better than that. I have a lot of work to do to improve my times over the next few months; especially if i am hoping to shave 15mins off my marathon time.

The race organisation got even worse when i crossed the line. There was no water. Only some warm gatorade. The line for the race packs was so bad that people started to riot (literally) and the police closed the area. I was beat and just wanted to go home. My gorgeous wife who was not running that day had come to watch and was happy to hot-foot it out of there and drive me home. I had a stretch, thought about my race and was generally happy. As it was an evening race, i got my hydration and nutrition quite badly wrong, so this is something that i will need to think about for the next couple of races. 18k was really my limit, so i have to start to up my miles in the coming weeks.

Energizer (batteries) have issued a very nice, exceedingly embarrassed apology over the last couple of days and a promise to refund us the entry fee and send out our race packs and medals in the mail. well done them for turning this around. Shame on the events company for putting them in the situation in the first place.