My (26 yr old) brother in law Trey and his girlfriend Maggie also agreed to run and we organised to meet there at 6:30am for the 7:30am start. I decided to run the 6km from the house down to the race line to warm up my legs and get a few extra miles in.
After a couple of PBJs and coffee, i set off in the dark (and cold!) morning to meet the others and immediately started to regret it. As soon as i hit the trails, i realised how dark it was and how much i was not able to see. At one point a bare-chested runner came out of the dark and was about three feet in front of me before i saw or heard his approach. My run was supposed to be a warm up, i certainly didn't expect my heart rate to jump to 180 before the race even started. My anxiety slowly reduced as the sun came up and the run felt great.
When i got to the start area, the others were already there and had registered and picked up numbers and timing chips. The sun was up at that point and my legs felt great. I had half a bottle of Nuun in the 30 minutes that we were waiting, and jogged a couple of hundred metres every few minutes to stay warmed up. Trey has been running 5kms for a while now and is pretty good shape. A little banter on the start line about who would "dominate" who served to get us both in the mood for a race.
Just before the start, we patriotically listened to the National Anthem and heard a few instructions about the race. When the gun went off, we were pretty close to the back of the 500 strong crowd. Trey took off and was 50m ahead of me with a couple of minutes. Maggie and Lauren told me they would stay together and that i should go; so i started to up-the-pace and pick of runners in groups. Sometimes, on a narrow course it can be frustrating to start at the back of the pack, but with wide open space and a relatively small crowd, being able to pick off runners so easily was a rush and kept me alert for the first km.
The sun was up by then and the day was starting to warm, but nothing like it ever gets in Malaysia and I felt great. At the 2km mark i felt my watch buzz and i realised i was sub 9 minutes and feeling pretty strong. I had lost sight of Trey until we got to the half-way point and i realised i was starting to close up on him. At the turn around i was less than 5 seconds behind him. I was not sure that he knew i was there until a couple of hundred metres later the girls coming up behind us were shouting their support for him and then me in quick succession.
One of the things that reading blogs has done is to help me understand the difference between running and racing. I was determined not to let my (younger) brother in law beat me and i needed a racing strategy. Instead of bolting out in front of him i paced myself to run hard, but also to conserve the energy i needed to finish strong.
Within another hundred metres, i had caught Trey and sat on his shoulder pacing off him for about a km. I hit the 4km mark in 18:01 and felt like i still had plenty in the tank. Head up, running strong, I was watching Trey hard and with 700 metres to go, I saw his head starting to go down and his arms swinging a little more wildly. I knew he was struggling and took my opportunity on the only (slight) up-hill of the course. I went by him hard and knew from the sound of his footfall that he wasn't with me. I crossed the line in 22:22. 10th in my age group and 102nd overall. A new PB for the distance. Trey came in about 10 seconds behind me and the girls finished strong a couple of minutes behind him.
The race was great. Beautiful course, well organised and perfect for a PB. Water bottles, fresh from the freezer were available at the end and were a great way to cool down.
My new trainers served me well, my time was a really good confidence boost that my training is not that bad, and my PB was an awesome bonus. I am super impressed that in a field of 500, almost 100 people broke 22 minutes. Impressive stuff. Hats off to the race organisers on a job well done. Great job too to Trey and the girls for their strong races. Trey will probably say he let me win, but that 10 or 12 seconds put a grin on my face that lasted days...
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