So I signed up for just the half distance last year. MWM changed its normal Shah Alam route to PJ. They had enough of Shah Alam authority and wanted something for a change. PJ is good in my definition. Quite close to home. The only big issue was the narrow street and the known would be jam packed heavy traffic. PJ is also not flat and I couldn't imagine how would they pull 42 km within the small city. So I opted for a half instead. Plus I didn't think of pulling an MWM FM too soon after Twincity. Twincity was definitely my target race. Decent route, good organiser.
Long story short, had my Twincity, rather pleased with it although it did fall short of my target and I just realised I had some shot for a breaking 2 MWM. I knew it would be tough and next to impossible task. But I can always train and hope for the best. The race were only 6 weeks apart. I was initially looking forward to recover to months long high mileage, but it changed immediately after the Twincity race. So I took out my trusted running book, and started to devise the training that I could pull within that 5 weeks. 1st week post Twincity was pure recovery with 3 10kms alternately. And I began my sub 2 mission the week after. Used the runsmart project calculator to get the paces in, and I memorised those paces like how you would remember your phone number.
Training has been quite good. Some pain on the legs had made some appearance once a while, when I pushed a bit. Couldn't exactly matched what I planned for in training. The cutback are always on the cooldowns and the midweek long. Just cannot push that additional mileage in due to time. So I worked what I could. So it was not that surprising I fell short of my target as well. But training has been fun definitely.
Come the week of the race day, I got my period. This meant that I would be ending my period come race day, and I wont have to stop for prayer/ I was like, this is it. This might be my moment. And I wanted it so badly, more than what I wanted for Berlin and Twincity. It made me giddy just the thought of it. I had it in my prayer, along with prayer for my kids UPSR, that's how bad I wanted it. Then after, I saw Jen promoting that Jubaque would be the 2 hour HM pacer. It gave me chills. The thought that he had helped Tini to secure her wish of breaking 4, it felt like that sub 2 HM dawned too close on me. As for the training goes, the paces looks more or less there. But you can never tell what's going to happen on race day.
So on race day, all was quite good. I had to park further due to road closure. But it didn't seem too bad as I could use it for warmup. I've always been bad at race warmups. So that compulsory warm up should have been more than welcomed. I had sufficient time to empty my bladder, so everything kind of went perfectly. The race started on time. I might have went a bit faster than I should at the start due to the crowd but mostly because I was trying to get close to the 2 hour balloon. It's such a small race unlike SCKLM, hence, there should not be much net gun time discount. So I tried to stay close, which I think was one of the main reason it got backfired. I could sustain 53x pace until about 12 km, but that was when it started to dwindle. There was a big uphill to tackle and I gave in to some walks. The only good thing was I managed to find myself again right after and get back to where I was supposed to. After that, the stretch was long and way inside PJ area which didn't seem to end. And it wasn't flat. Pace control of utmost importance there. At the point of finishing writing this up, it was 1 month after and I must say that it could have been much worse. My pacing post 12km worked quite well. Didn't fall victim to walks, raced my own race and maximised the effort as much as I could but not to the point of a breakdown. The final stretch only, maybe I could have pushed a bit more.
I've put aside my target of 2 hours, and decided to just give the best I could. I still think that I could push in some seconds off, if not minutes, considering I was just 1 minute plus off target. But blessing comes in many form. There's always some other time for me to beat this. Hope the next one will be it. When you couldn't get the result that you wished for, you get something just as valueable: the lesson. This here serves as my 3rd unsatisfyng execution. When you got bonked halfway, that's when pacing strategy was wrong. Pacing is key in racing. And pacing to your own ability is KING. There's always that grey area of pushing yourself to the borderline, or pushing beyond your limits. The ability to distinguish this, is what determines a racing success. You may not get the time that you wished for, but you will get the most satisfying race that you can ever dream of. It was a big PB still. -ve 2 to 3 mins off the last one. -ve 10secs pace wise. 1st sub 5:50 pace in the books. Alhamdulillah
Date: 3 March 2019
Venue: Padang Timur Petaling Jaya
Distance: 21.1 km
Position: 19
Official Time: 2:01:43
Personal Time: 2:01:43
Pace: 5:44
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