KOTR 2009

Today's post starts way back in 2001-2002 when I first started going to KL. I had been running sporadically before that, without any commitment or distance. In KL, I asked if there was a MacRitchie equivalent and Nisa drove me over to Lake Gardens (which is really a Botanic Gardens equivalent). I would run the "inner" route - within the gardens up towards the bird park, left turn at the space agency, down Tun Abd Razak memorial on the right, left turn into the police museum, left turn down into Masjid Negara and then up towards Bukit Aman.

Here's what we were then:


The route is as clear to me now as it was then, all 2+km of it. All heart and effort but not much improvement, from run to run. Nisa had heard there were groups of folks running outside Lake Gardens..they were fast too. Knee problems felled me after a while and the running stopped.

Sometime after the Orange Run 2009 I told Nisa I wanted to go back to Lake Gardens for one solitary run, to see if my old route continued to throw its challenge back at me and forced me to succumb like it always had in the past. I was now in much better shape after all and after Kiara, ought no longer to be taunted by the slope from Masjid Negara up Bukit Aman. I ran the route twice that day, ending up slightly winded. We decided to make Lake Gardens our regular weekend jaunt after that.

It was on our third run there, on a Sunday, that we saw the KOTR booth being set up at the Bukit Aman carpark. This must have been way back sometime April 2009 and we signed up there and then, with the early bird discount.

So here we are today. A few days to go before KOTR 2009 this weekend. Nisa and I have been running since our return from holiday and we have both been putting in the miles. One more run tomorrow night and I will be done, to rest until the weekend. Nisa collected our race packs today and she did not complain much, which probably meant there was no 4hr queue like that at the SCKLM. My Lunar Trainers (which were to have made their debut at SCKLM) have braved a full 8k run, a 10k run, and more recently, a 7k last night - I think they are ready. We'll take Jamie out this weekend and scout the route around Shah Alam so if the marshals fail that day, we will not.



I'm so pleased with Jamie. During the time when Nisa and him were in Spore after the trip, my mother told me she gave Jamie some money and he promptly announced he would use it to buy ice-cream for....and he named all his 3 cousins (from Nisa's side of the family), Mak, Tok, Aunt Fara and Mom. When I brought over some drinking straws (my mom told me too), he immediately divided them into 2 piles, handing one to Rayyan. My boy, my champion.