My 6th Full Marathon across the strait of Penang

With PBIM Ambassador and Olympic gold medallist ,  Bernard Lagat 

Penang Bridge International marathon 2019 was my fifth Full Marathon on the first Penang Bridge. If I were to include the Full Marathon across the second Penang bridge organised just once then this is my 6th Penang Bridge Full Marathon

PBIM 2019 was special because Kai Yang and 6 of his classmates were also taking part . All of them were running their First Full Marathon except one who took part in half marathon. During collection of running bibs I was quite shock to see very few participants queuing up to collect their goodies bag. It is a great contrast to last year when I had to wait for one hour or so for my running bib to be collected. Perhaps the organiser is more efficient or there is less participation this year. I was lucky to encounter the PBIM ambassador, world olympic champion in Full marathon with a time of 2:12 Bernard Lagat from Kenya but now American citizen.  He was there to take photo with participants and I was there at the right time to have a photo with him. As usual after  collection of goodies bag, my next stop would be at the store selling energy gel. As Kai Yang is running I bought one box of energy gels which contains 20 packets for us to share. We would most probably consume about 6 packets each as the organiser also provide energy food such as banana and energy gel. The box of energy gels cost RM130. I also bought a pack of salt tablets with a price tag of RM 18. I need to take salt tablet because I tend to sweat a lot which requires salt replenishment during the run.

Kai Yang and Seok Wan after collecting their goodies bag

After lunch we straight away proceeded to our hotel at Jalan Burma. The hotel is 13 km from the race venue which is quite far. I would not have stay there if I need not have to use up my hotel time sharing entittlement. Actually it is not wise to stay far from race venue because we lost plenty of resting time travelling between the two sites. Perhaps next year I will just book a hotel near to the race venue to save time and avoid the trouble of looking for parking which is hard to come by.

Met my Ching Ling Schoolmate Chee Hoong who competed in 10 km

The full marathon started at 1:30 am while half marathon at 3:00 am .We started off our journey to the race venue around 12 am and we had to park our car at Taman Pantai Jerjak which is more than 2 km away from the starting line. Really envious of those who stayed at Eastin hotel just 200m from the starting line. I had about 30 minutes to roam around before we were flagged off. I squeezed myself into the middle of the pack or 3 minutes behind the starting line hoping to reduce my gun time finish. As I was standing among those who were faster runners I seemed to have run faster too. But, it looked like my strategy was a mistake because I was totally exhausted after running about 15 km. My pace was very slow when I was on Penang Bridge towards Butterworth. I was feeling sleepy and exhausted and I had to run interchanging with walk and on certain time running with my eyes closed. Just wonder how many run like me in order to catch up with some sleep. Perhaps that is one of the characteristies of a fanatic and extreme marathon runner. Sometimes extremism is just hard to comprehend.

After 25 km and almost reaching butterworth, the 7:15 hours pacers overtook me. That really sent a shockwave through me signalling that I might not be able to reach the finishing line within cut-off time. The pacers were shouting and motivating us to run and that finally spurred me up. I forced myself to keep up with the cut-off time pacers until I overtook them while turning back to Penang Island. I kept running even though at very slow pace. I was so slow that I was overtaken by the pacers again. The pacers were running too fast and in no time I just lost sight of them. As I tried to beat the cut-off time I ran up the elevated section of the bridge which I would normally walk. There were no big crowds of 10 km participants near the end of bridge due their earlier flag-off. Even then I still felt my speed was hindered slightly and when I reached the 200 m to finish line, I was glad to see the 7:15 hour pacers waiting for us making me to think that I would cross the finish line within the cut-off time. I thought I crossed the line before cut off time but later realised that the digital clock was already 7:01:20 meaning I failed to beat the cut-off time.  As I was still in front of the last batch of pacers I was still given my finisher's tee and medal. My nett time was 7:00:30 which is only 30 seconds slower than the cut-off time and very much slower than my 6 hours 38 minutes achieved last year. Last year we ran in heavy rain from Penang to Butterworth and that is the only reason I could think of for me to achieve my PB in full marathon last year. I tend to run faster in the rain which I am yet to find an answer for it.

Kai Yang with his classmates proudly showing off their hard earned medals

Kai Yang's FM result

My poor performance this time could be due to few reasons such as insufficient sleep, staying too far from marathon site and did not recover totally from the 7 hours hiking trip to the peak of Taiping Maxwell hill few days before the marathon. Not enough training for long distance running could be part of the reason too because the longest distance I practised was around 15 km only. Actually my time of 7 hour is exactly similar to the time I achieved in KL Standard Chartered Marathon on 28/9/2019 which has a cut-off time 7:15. 

My slow FM time and only ahead of few who finished

I am quite surprise that Kai Yang could finish his first full marathon in a time of 6 hours 51 minutes even though he hardly trained for the marathon. Seok Wan too managed to finish her half marathon in her usual time of 3 hours 8 minutes. Penang Bridge International marathon was my last marathon in 2019 and my third full marathon for the year.     

7 hours of hiking up and down Maxwell hill

With Siak Poh at the peak of Maxwell hill , 1340 m high few days before PBIM