Thursday, February 28, 2008

Ultra Run 63km: Cheras-Hulu Langat

It was meant to be 171km, but stomach cramps, and lack of will power cut it short. Nevertheless, it was a run that saw high humidity and heat. These two killer factors would have stop anyone on their track.

Route is through cheras-ampang hill-hulu langat bt 14-semenyih lake-bt18 and back.

I was nearing the route that starts the 42km to klawang. But looking at my mental preparedness, and lack of willpower, I decided to take a short detour back. And back then I had been battling high humidity and heat. It's so bad at times I had to stop running to catch my breath. To start the route up the hills will mean a lot of sacrifice. The question is, am I willing to go through the suffering. Not quite yet. Running this route means:

1) 100 plus km more on the road
2) Running through the night
3) Running through more heat
4) Not much food stalls


So, I decided that I'll just do a shorter 63km. But the next part prove a little bit harder as I was hitting the roads around noon. Somehow at that moment, I like running in the heat. I don't know why but I just welcomed it.

As I continue running, my mind drifted to friends doing langkawi ironman, whom I believe are suffering the same heat while cycling and running. Now why in the world, we like suffering, I still don't know. Maybe we just want to be different. We want to accomplish something different than others. However, the motivation is intrinsic. You do it because you want to. Nobody is pushing you over the ledge in case you don't do it. And that's the most powerful motivation to keep you moving.

When reaching home, I logged on to the net, and Faris al-sultan has already crossed the finish line as the champion. But it was great to see the others battling out, and eventually most of them will achieve what they had worked so hard for.




At the top of Ampang hill...

Suddenly the air is full with mist...


Humidity is high....


Glorious semenyih lake, it's possible to start an olympic distance triathlon here..


Election fever going high on the road back to hulu langat bt 18

2 comments:

Jamie Pang said...

do you recon the route first? do you know the location of stalls, presence of detours, junctions, etc.... beforehand?

yipwt said...

hi carboman,

I know the route in detail for the path that I had ran. But the route to kampung chenak I have no idea. All i know there's a police station there, which means some community around.

If you start the 42km to klawang, your next pit top will be 30km later. That's why it's hard. You have to run 22km of hilly terrain forest before seeing civilisation.