Bike : There are many people ahead of me but what the heck, I just need to meet my planned 7 hour target. I knew I have three big hills ahead of me at Lisram highway, followed by three 40k loops and a final stretch of rolling hills. Take it easy, do the right pace, there is still of lot of
distance ahead of me. There were two things that occupied my mind on the bike leg. The first was my left cycling shoe which was behaving oddly with large free-play. After the three big hills at Lisram highway, I decided to stop which on hindsight was a very important decision. I found that my cleat on my left shoe had become loose and if I had pedaled on, I might have lost the whole cleat and the retaining screws. That would have been disastrous. I stopped for a good 7-8 minutes to repair my shoe, surrounded by a bunch of kampung kids. My second pre-occupation was my stomach. Somewhere after about 40km on the bike, I developed a bad stomach cramp. My feed plan was one powergel every 30 to 40 minutes. Because of the stomach cramp, I started to feed at longer intervals and finally around 1500 hr, I stopped the feeds completely. I prayed for my stomach cramp to go away. It was making my breathing difficult and I could not go down on aero position for long. I was not sure what caused the cramp but I suspected it's the electrolyte pills which I was popping two at a time. As our training was always in the early morning, I had never tried out the electrolyte pills.Run : 1630hr. The bike-run transition tent where I changed to my running gear was like an oven over 40 degrees celsius. There were a dozen or so very tired people in the tent, a couple of them flat out on the ground. Most unfortunately, my stomach cramp persisted. How am I going to run with a bad stitch? How am I going to cover 42km without fuel? Chris Oh told me n
ot to give up before he took off for his run. I told Andrew that I might not be able to continue but he offered to walk with me. I was not about to give up at this stage. After a 16 minutes' transition, Andrew and I set off together. Based on my brick session, my original plan was to maintain a pace of 7 km/hour throughout the marathon. I stopped jogging after 200metres and lost the company of Andrew. As I walked into the main run course comprising of four loops of 10km, I was greeted by a busy sight of many tired runners, walkers and many children offering their tiny hands for a high-5. There was a great carnival atmosphere and I was enjoying the walk. My new Polar Rs800 running computer told me that I was walking at a pace of 6km/h. I figured out that if I could do a pace of 6.5km/h, I can finish before the cut-off time. I also noted that when I brisk-walked, my heart rate was around 110, purely in aerobic zone, which means I could get my fuel from my fats store. I was quite happy that my brain was still functioning for me to think of such plan. My theory worked - I survived on water diet for the first 20km. After 11km and earning my first color band, I felt comfortable enough to jog wherever there was a downhill. By 9pm (or 2 hour into the run), my stomach cramp left me and I started to feed on de-carbonated coke at every drink station and even ventured to take two pieces of bananas. By this time, I have gathered speed and with a quick mental calculation, I got ambitious and thought I could
shoot for my original goal of 15 hours. On the last loop, I was doing a pace of 10.5km/h. I caught up with Andrew, Kok Aun, Lee Li, Shuan. I paced Andrew for a distance before he kicked off into darkness on the last 3km mark. The last 1km from Seaview Hotel to the finishing line appeared to last forever, though I was finally running! Emotion was high when I ran up the ramp of the finishing line - hey, they even kept the finishing ribbon for people like us.
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