New Balance 15km Race Report

This 15km race was hosted by KL Pacesetters and was held around the town centre of Putrajaya just outside KL. It is a new town, with excellent roads, lots of parking and a nice gentle breeze blowing in from the sea.

It was a really well organised race.

Having had lots of water, and a carb-packed dinner the night before, i got up on Sunday morning feeling pretty good. My legs are a little stiff at the moment, because i am really picking up the miles every week, but all in I felt pretty good. Had a nice hot shower and breakfast and we headed out bright and early. Lauren was running this one too, so it was good to head out together.



thanks to blogger, lifeisxtragreat for the photo



We easily found a space near the start line and i set of for a short warm up jog around a couple of blocks and was surprised to see such few people (these are normally bigger). For some reason I got the time a little wrong and realised i only had a couple of minutes to make it to the start so i jogged down to the line, jumped in the crowd about 10 metres back, checked my trusty Garmin and we were off.

The route was great although climbing a pretty steep hill in the middle was a bit of a surprise as I thought i had read that the race was flat. The roads were really wide and i was sitting relatively close to the front so I had so much space. After about a km, my legs finally started to warm up. It seemed that everyone around me was keeping a 5:15min per km pace so i just sat tight and ran on the shoulders of a small group. I was feeling pretty strong and comfortable and was able to maintain the pace without any real difficulty - something i put down to the cooler temperature that morning.

I hit the 10km mark in 51:30 and was pretty pleased with that as i felt i had quite a lot left in the tank. I struggled a little at the 11-12km mark as we had to cross a long bridge, the ascent of which seem to go on forever. I think i tucked in behind someone who was a strong climber and probably went up a little fast. It kind of knocked the wind out of me, so I didn't descend as quick as I probably could have.

The last 2km was a long open out and back. I was about 500m from the turn when I saw my friend Robin on the other side of me (1km in front) and that gave me a little boost to try to finish strong. As it turns out, Robin is an animal and had a great finish almost 6 minutes ahead of me, but i did the last km in 5:10 which i was happy with. I crossed the line in 1:19.21 which I was really pleased with in the end.

There was plenty of food and other goodies available at the finish line, including a huge supply of Gatorade (which was great!) but sadly, no water. Hopefully this is something that they will think about for next time as there were a lot of people complaining.

All in all a great morning out. My friends Will, Sarah and Robin all had great races and of course my gorgeous wife finished strong in a great time. Will is training for his first half and is relatively new to running and it was awesome to be able to support him for his strong finish.

Just a couple of weeks really until the KL half.