Mizuno Wave Run 2008—Padang Merbuk

I was still training for the Borneo International Marathon (BIM) several weeks ago when my friend, KK Chai, told me about the Mizuno Wave Run on 19 October to be held at Padang Merbuk, KL. It's just a 10K run which I thought would be a good recovery run after the gruesome 21K in the BIM.

And so, the 17 October saw me landing in LCCT-KL and checking in to YMCA near KL Sentral Station. Of course I could have flown in on 18 October, but I decided not to change my plan at the last minute. I had originally planned to hunt in the I-Kwan on the 18th, but that hunt was subsequently postponed to next year. To those of you who're not familiar with this hunter, you should know that I have a strange curse when it comes to treasure hunts. Many of those hunts I want to join would almost magically get postponed somehow.

Anyway, Chai and I went to collect our race kits at Padang Merbuk on Saturday morning. Then Chai showed me the route of the run before dropping me off at YMCA again. Instead of spending the afternoon shopping as I had initially planned, I walked the Brickfields streets, pigging out and observing people and strange things there. That night I went to sleep at around midnight. I woke up at 5:30 am and prepared for the run. The Mizuno running vest, adidas shorts and adizero shoes. Then I packed a towel, a big botttle of mineral water and a power bar. Chai came around at 6:45 am and we went straight to Padang Merbuk.

When we reached Padang Merbuk, there were already so many people there. We had to park the car at quite a distance away from the starting line. While walking to the starting line, I made a detour to a nearby toilet. That's when I got separated from Chai. I followed the crowd and found my way to the starting line. Then a figure came running from amongst the crowd. It was one of the regular readers of this blog. We spoke briefly to each other, and then I made my way further up nearer to the starting line, but without much success because of the large crowd.

A short wait and then it was the starting horn. The crowd began to move slowly. It took about a minute before I finally passed the starting line, and a few more seconds before I was able to start running. At the start of the run, we had to go through quite a long, gentle slope, uphill. And then there were plenty more uphills and downhills throughout the route. The last time I experienced the hills was when I ran the DBKK run earlier this year. But that was only for a distance of about 4km.

Photo courtesy of Tey at pmtey.multiply.com. Obviously not my most handsome pose. To be quite honest, I wasn't even aware that this picture was taken. And I also can't remember where exactly this picture was taken, but probably it was during the second half of the run. As I said, it wasn't amusing running while holding on to the bib which had already (partially) fallen off.

It wasn't long before I started feeling the exhaustion building up in my calves. So punishing were the slopes that I had to walk for a few metres 3 times during the run. I also stopped somewhere at midpoint to have some drink. Anyway, one good thing about the hills was the down-going parts. The hills were tiring no doubt, but nothing like the heat that most runners had to endure the week before in the BIM. I was glad to note that the final stretch of about 1km to the finish line was a gradual downhill slope which I took full advantage of to increase my pace. Very soon, I was happy to see Padang Merbuk, which was the finish line of the run.

I therefore ran full speed, knowing that there's no need to preserve any more energy. And then I came to the biggest disappointment of the run. During my training for the BIM on a flat surface, I usually complete 10K within 55-56 minutes. I set a modest target of no more than 1 hour for Mizuno. I was happy that I could make that 1 hour by a margin of only 1 minute. However, upon reaching the finish line, all of the runners had to queue up and wasted 2-3 minutes before we get to step onto the timing mat. How disappointing! In the end, I missed my target by about 2 minutes, but I am still waiting for the organizer to publish the official time.

More disappointment was to come. The organizer had somehow separated the finish line into 2 sections—one for female runners; and another for male runners. But due to the lesser number of female runners, their lane was more or less free-flow. Whereas the male lane got into a bottleneck situation.

After going through the timing mat, runners passed a small desk where a couple of officials were busily keying in the bib numbers of runners. At the same time, others were passing out small cards containing numbers. I was also given a number, but in the commotion, I can only remember that I had 600+. Apparently that was my position in the entire race, but for the benefit of the organizer, let me tell them that by that time, several of the runners have jumped queue. I held that number for only a few seconds before another official took it away from me. Then we were ushered to get into yet another lane. In fact, I later noticed that there were 3 lanes: Open, Junior Veteran, and Senior Veteran lanes. Of course we were ushered to the wrong lane, until I realised (from the bib number) that the Junior Veteran lane was on my left. Well, I moved over to that lane and eventually got the so-called goodie bag which contained my medal. I spent some minutes detaching the timing chip from my shoe and claimed the RM10 deposit at a nearby desk. A few minutes later, I saw Chai arriving at the finish line.

When I ran the Borneo International Marathon a week earlier, so many regular runners from foreign countries were heaping praises to the organizer for a job well done. To be quite honest, I thought it was well organized, yes, but I failed to understand why such a big compliment. Now I understand why.

The Mizuno Wave Run, despite being the 5th one organized, was a far cry from the BIM. I don't understand what's the purpose of the timing chip when runners got to queue up at the end before the respective finish times were captured by the timing mat. The idea should be to capture the time first, and then followed by the other business of checking and counter-checking; not the other way round!

I am not an expert in organizing this kind of events, but perhaps if any of those good people from the Mizuno Wave Run is reading this, I'd like to share how the BIM folks did it at the finish line.

In the BIM, no segregation was made before the finish line. Male and female runners from all categories ran freely over the timing mat. After crossing the finish line, and the finish times captured by the computer, then the runners were segregated into separate lanes which were clearly labelled under the numerous categories. Pictures were also taken upon crossing the finish line, and as soon as the runners got into their allocated lanes, they were given their finishing time written on a piece of paper for counter-checking purposes. At the same time, those in the half and full marathon categories were presented with the medals, hung over the head; not in the goodie bags. No queue whatsoever before the timing mat. The point is that it is OK to have the queue after crossing the finish line, not before. If we have queues before the finish line, there must be something seriously wrong with how the event is organized.

Apart from the injustice where some runners ended up without medals when they deserved them, others who came in late ended up with nothing at all because the organizer ran out of goodie bags due to improper handling of the distribution, thus resulting in some runners getting more than one goodie bags! According to the entry form, everyone should end up getting a goodie bag each.

Although I got a medal, I was just lucky that they did not mess up before it was my turn to cross the finish line. I would have been extremely disappointed if I ended up without even a goodie bag, having travelled such a long way. It would surely have been a lousy first-time experience running in KL!