Men's Health Women's Health Night Run Putrajaya, 30 July

BACKGROUND

The popular Men's Health Women's Health Night Run (MHWHNR) is back this year and promises to be bigger and better than last year (read the report of the inaugural MHWHNR 2015 here) according to the organiser. With title sponsor AIA Vitality, this year's MHWHNR is the biggest Night Run series in Malaysia, and the largest multi-location night run covering Penang, Putrajaya and Johor. The Penang edition was successfully held on April 2 and the one in Johor is scheduled on January 7 next year.

This year there are three categories each location: 12km and 21km competitive running and a 5km fun run. Each location has its unique color theme - orange for Penang, red for Putrajaya and blue for Johor. Runners who have entered the Men's Health runs in the past can expect attractive goodies bags and lots of freebies at the Race Village. Another exciting feature in the MHWHNR this year is the trifecta medal that will come into form after the individual medals have been earned at the three locations and placed together.

The Putrajaya crowd easily outnumbered the 3,500 participants in the Penang edition. I entered the 12km Men's Open category. I ran in the same distance last year.

PREPARATION

Men's Health and Women's Health teamed up with its fitness partner, Fitness First and set up a Run Club since March this year. Named the FF RunClub, the club has been organising sessions which include running clinics and strength and conditioning workshops by highly qualified professionals. This was a great initiative by the organizers to help registrants of different abilities to prepare for the race.

As a member of the club and a registrant for the run, I joined the RunClub and attended a few grueling sessions of dynamic training under Ahmad Fadly. Those 45-minute sessions were the longest 45 minutes of my life as I had to do a series of lunges, planks, crunches, jumping jack, burpees. Seriously, it's hard work! I felt sore all over my body the next day in my butt, thighs and abs..  The running clinic was conducted by one of Malaysia's fastest marathon runners, Edan Syah. Learning to train smart is key to being a good runner was the most valuable tip I got from this talented runner.

Strength and conditioning sessions with coach Fadly

Running tips by coach Edan - running vest courtesy of Fitness First

PRE-RACE MATTERS

Race kit collection was held at Tropicana City Mall Petaling Jaya on 23-24 July for those who registered online at RunnersAsia (formerly HooHA! Asia). According to my sister-in-law, the process went smoothly. Unfortunately, my kit was not ready to be collected on the designated race pack collection days. I was informed by Mongoose Publishing just a day before the weekend for race pack collection that I would not be able to collect my pack at Tropicaa City Mall. This, I was told affected registrants that went through Fitness First for registration (delay by Fitness First which caused a delay in handing registrant name list to the printers was cited as a reason). Understandably, I was anxious as I know that things can go wrong if race packs were handed out on race day. From my experience, major running events do not allow for race pack collection and I can see why. Read on.

RACE DAY

So I arrived early on race day to collect my race pack in the Race Village in Putrajaya Presinct 3. Just as I parked my car in the car park area of Perbadanan Putrajaya (Putrajaya Corporation), the weather took a turn for the worse. The sky was dark and large clouds moved towards me. Before I knew it, rain started falling in chaotic drops. Umbrella in hand, I scampered to the Race Village. I found the race pack collection booth and headed straight to it. Standing in line with raindrops falling from the umbrella of the person onto me was unpleasant, to say the least. When it came to my turn, I presented my identity card to the volunteer. After a quick check, she handed me my race pack. But just as I was about to leave, she asked me to go to the information counter to activate my timer chip. I thought I heard her wrong, but she answered in the affirmative when I repeated what she said by rising my intonation to make it into question. There was a long queue at the information counter and there were other runners who were standing in line because of t-shirt size issues, runner info not found, etc. The queue hardly moved after 5 minutes. The rain showed no signs of relenting and after a few minutes standing in line, the rain started to come in buckets. Pellets of water were spitting on my face, my tee and my socks! I was a little dismayed by this point so I went to the counter for bulk collection and asked the volunteer to "just scan the timer" for me. She obliged. I thanked her and left the scene.

The rain subsided around 7:30 pm and I headed back to my car to change into my race running tee and put on my race bib with the activated timer. Luckily for me, I brought along another pair of socks. It's unthinkable to run with wet feet from the starting line. After wiping myself dry with a face towel, I felt a little better and  was ready to go back to the race village. My running club team mates planned to meet at 7:45 pm for a group photo before the 21km flag-off at 8pm but unfortunately, I reached the meeting point just before flag-off, by which time my running mates had gone to the starting pen.

Meeting point for my running group

Runners coming in droves to the Race Village after the rain

Title sponsor booth

Moongoose tent

Next Women's Health Cover Model

Adidas offered RM30 vouchers for finishers

 
AND THE RACE BEGAN......

The 12km race kicked off a little earlier than 8:30 pm (8:23 pm according to my Garmin). I stood fairly far back in the pen with a total of 4,000 spirited runners. It a difficult to navigate my way through the obstruction of fellow runners. After four minutes, my timer chip was duly activated at the starting line. The weather was nice and cool at 27 degree Celsius after the earlier rain. The breeze from the lakes were grace notes to the normally hot and humid weather in the other night runs I have participated in.

Wefie in the race pen is a must

There were four hydration stations the last of which offered Lucozade. They stations were adequate and evenly spaced. The volunteers very supportive and encouraged to keep going.

I noticed a brass band right after the first kilometer. It was a tune familiar to me but I can faintly remember it. I'll hazard a guess it was "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by the Four Seasons. But what I do remember with astonishing clarity is their sound made the atmosphere alive and I soaked it in.This is what I love about running in events. The atmosphere! And then there was a drum band with the creative way of bring water barrels to life in kilometer two. Boom, boom, boom! If their upbeat tempo and explosive energy did not get one moving, I don't know what would.. I zipped past them and raised my hand to acknowledge their lively presence and sound.

Traffic control was fairly good although at one point there was a motorcycle that came from the opposite direction where the road is closed to traffic. The route is hilly in parts, with a maximum elevation gain of 60m and total elevation gain of 137m.

Some paths were eerily dark. I was worried that I would trip over something and fall. The caution with which one traversed dark paths of the course would have slowed down a runner inadvertently. Perhaps the organizer should have advised to bring along a headlamp.

This time the ramps and hills were my friends, not my enemies. My hill and strength training had paid off; where I was defeated in the past, I managed with a slower pace and smaller strides on  those elevated paths.  Surprisingly, I felt good at the last station (kilometer 11) where I felt completely out of sorts last year - picked up my pace as I approached the finish line. I even managed to do a sprint in the last 500m which was nice as it's a flat course along Persiaran Perdana.

Apart from the niggles in my problem left ankle in the first two kilometers, I generally enjoyed running this route again in Putrajaya.  Overall, I was satisfied with my performance in this year's MHWHNR .

I crossed the finish line at 1:13.

Medal earned - check out the sweat

With Asics Relay teammates Azwan and Noah

Fariz and I have a big goal for next week.. Watch this space

Finisher medal in red for the Putrajaya MHWHNR

Summary

Things I liked about the event:
- Race Village with lots of fun games, challenges, prizes and freebies
- Fitness First instructors leading the warm-up sessions
- Celebrity DJ's (Natalie and Mark)
- Live performance by the brass band and drum boys
- Friendly volunteers
- Goodie bag
- Stylish finisher medal

Things that could have been improved:
-  registration fee (sharp increase compared to last year's)
-  lack of information to registered runners before the event (the race pack collection on race day was a big mistake)
-  poor co-ordination of pre-race events (cancellation of a running clinic which was postponed earlier due to poor weather disappointed many who signed up the FB page)
- use of plastic cups at hydration stations instead of more environment-friendly paper cups
- no medic station noted in the course of the race
- no kilometer marker throughout the race
- insufficient signage to guide runners
- dark paths posed a risk to the safety of runners

Would I run it again next year?
Yes. And I don't have to wait a year to run in the Johor edition in January 2017.

Official results:
Gun time: 1:13:13
Net time: 1:09:51
Rank: 177 out of 2290 (in my category)