Standard Chartered Half Marathon Run on Feb 12, 2006

I've made it. I have done my 1st half marathon on Feb 12, 2006 in Standard Chartered Marathon. My friends and I had a pre-marathon dinner in the evening before the race. We called it as Carbo-Loading dinner! Good excuse for party, isn't it? heehehee... I have done a lot of training in the CNY week. As I know I could not do too much training in the last week of the race. This was my "strategy". I found that I recovered slower than many people. After all of the training in the week of CNY. I went to see my Chiropractor. He said my legs were so shakey.. yeah.. of course. I also did muscle relaxing theory there, too. Well.. in the other words, I had a massage. AH! so painful!! Please Please.. don't press so hard!!

The big day came! 2 of my sisters, 4 nieces and nephews and a brother-in-law were doing 10K, too. I took the earliest MTR from Kwun Tong station to TST with my niece and met my rest of my family runners there. hahaha.. good and healthy family activities, isn't it? They started 30 mins earlier than I did. I was there early so I had plenty of time to do stretching and warmup. I didn't know why I was a bit nervous in this morning.

I walked towards the starting point with few HKU alumni. The atmosphere was really great!! I joined the HKU marathon runners team. When we passed by the HKU support team, they cheered us. We waved our hands! Thanks for your support!

The half marathon started at 7:25am from Miramar Hotel. I kept running. I was running with Alex, Steve and Vincent. They are HKU alumni. I was thinking to have them to be target as I expected that they would be faster than I. As long as I ran with them, I should not be too slow. Also, I was wondering if I could keep following them in the whole race. We passed by Kowloon Station and then Olympic Station. Wow.. I didn't know 2 stations were so close. We then ran along West Kowloon Highway. There were so many runners. It was not easy to run over people. I spent 45 mins to finish my first 7km. It was still under my schedule. Steven was running besides me at the very beginning. But then, I could not see him anymore. He was behind me. I then had Alex be my target. I could see him 5 to 10m around me in the 1st 8km.

I started to see people came back from the other way. I saw the blind guy etc. Wow. they were so fast. I just finished my 8km. I took 1 hour 4 min to finish 10km. It was faster than I did my 10K run last year. I was happy. I ran faster than Alex. I couldnt see him anymore after 10km. Oh.. I finally saw Paul Cheung, the programme director of ecom/icom. Wah.. He ran so fast in 1st 10K. But then, I ran over him. I didn't see too many people to run over me. But it is getting hard to run faster than people after 12K. Vincent finally ran over me. He ran so fast. I couldn't see him anymore. He was much faster than I. I started to be tired. Even though I have taken the power gel around at my 9K. I was so thirsty. I need to drink water in every water stops. When I saw the Western Harbour Tunnel, I was happy. That means that I only had about 6km to go. But I was exhausted already. I can still manage to run fast when I ran down into the tunnel. Once it was flat or upslope, quite a few people run over me. People were so excited when they ran into the tunnel. They yelled and got echo etc! It was the funiest part. Osh.. I saw some sun light towards the end of the tunnel. Yeah.. less than 5K left. oh no.. upslope.. I was tired already.. I tried my very best to run the upslope. Many runners start to walk. I couldn't walk. I kept telling myself. Even though I ran slow in the upslope, I had to continue running. This part was the hardest part in the race.... a lot of up and down slopes in the last 5km.. all runners were tired. No one would like this bit. I finally reached Admiralty. Very last 1km.. I saw HKU cheering group.. They were hitting the drum, cheering us. Yes.. that helped. I ran faster in front of them..hahaha.. pretended I was not tired. I tried my best to run fast in the last part of the route. I watched my watch. It was almost 2 hours 18 min. I still have last 500m to go. I ran and ran and ran.. I hope that I could finish it within 2 hours 2o mins. I ran over few people. Yes!! I've done it! The offical time was 2 hours 21 mins.. my own chip time was 2 hours 19 mins 11 sec. YEAH!.. I met my target!

Gosh.. it was much harder than 10K. Luckily, I did enough training. I saw many people got cramped. They stopped to do stretching or asked for help along the route. I didn't see that much last year. After I came back home and saw the news, I then knew over 4000 people got cramped and 2 were in coma. That is scarey.. But then I knew that it was worth for me to spend so much time and $$ to prepare the race. I did the checkup at the Sports Performance Co few months ago. Then, I knew how unfit I was. They have tailor-made a training programme for me. Even though I didn't strictly follow the programme, I at least knew how I should do in training.

I really enjoyed the race. I thought that I was quite slow. However, when I saw my result in the website, I realised that I wasn't too bad. I was in position 4710 out of overall 9116 half marathon runners. Over 1789 female runners, I was in position 510. In my own category, I was in 266 out of 770. I guess it was just because of too many 1st time half marathon runners.

I really enjoy the half marathon race. It was harder but was much more fun than 10K. I will do it again next year. Will I do the full marathon race? um.. I still can't tell now. If I can finish the half marathon run within 2 hours, I might want to do the full. But it is still a long way to go. and hahahha. I am not young anymore!! hehehe..