21 kilometres later...

I nearly fainted. I got through the finish line and almost fell down. A freakishly young first aid boy asked me if I was ok, with a very concerned look on his face. I must have looked a mess, I definitely felt it. But, I managed to get round without walking, and I achieved the impossible and beat my sister! Two goals ticked off makes Lou a very happy runner!

Everything started horribly early in the morning. The alarm went off at 4am, which I obviously snoozed! I did manage to drag myself up and dressed to go sit out in the corridor to eat my breakfast (I was under instructions not to wake up my boyfriend until half an hour before we left), then suddenly it was time to go. Walking from the hotel to the start was kind of cool - it was dark, quiet, no cars, just lots and lots of people all walking in the same direction. Most people were wearing the (quite nasty) race shirt too, which made it extra weirder. At the starting pen people started doing very vigorous warm-up routines (lots of bounding around and bouncing stretches, silly people!), which looked far too energetic, so I just concentrated on standing around for a bit! The first few km were very crowded and slow, but then the race went onto big, very busy roads where everyone was trying to fit in one lane, and also dodge the people stopping randomly all over the place. I've never been in a race where so many people walked, and so early! It felt like most people walked more than they ran, especially at the end. At that point my knees were on fire, my quads had turned to rock and all I wanted to do was stop and have a nice cup of tea. Or a big, cold beer. Seeing all these people running about 100m then stopping to walk made it really hard to keep going, especially when the course merged with the 10k course about 1km towards the end - ALL of those guys were walking! Thankfully, the last stretch was downhill, and I managed to weave (slowly) through the (very slow) walkers to haul myself over the line. The clock said 2:26:something about 20m from the line, but I didn't see it when I crossed, I was concentrating so much on staying upright! I started at 2:24, so my net time should be 2:24:36ish. I realised the next day that I had attached the instructions instead of the timer to my shoe, so I'll never know. Idiot me.

I've had a nice week off giving my legs time to recover, and I'm going to concentrate on short and fast for a while to change things up a bit, and give my knees a rest. Only 4 months to the next one!

I forgot to say

I applied for some more Olympics tickets yesterday in Starbucks at the airport. Everything I was interested in had sold out, but I thought it would be a shame not to see something, so I looked for an event which would either be entertaining, cheap or have a medal ceremony. And I found.....

.... Women's freestyle wrestling. I know nothing about it, but from what a quick Google throws up, it looks like it'll be a very entertaining evening, and it was cheap, AND there are two medal ceremonies. Whoop! I find out if I got them in a day or two. And I can always go watch the marathon by the side of the road. 

12 hours to go!

It's a bit scary! The last three weeks have flown by - I've been really busy, we've had loads of visitors, excuses excuses - and now the race is 12 and a half hours away. So only about 15 (I hope) hours till I can relax!

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur. I cleverly managed to remember to book a place close to the start of the race, quite proud. I dragged the Boyfriend over there this morning for a quick reccie, and they were building the start line and stuff, quite exciting! It's in Merdeka Square, which has the biggest flag I've ever seen (well, the second biggest technically - I've seen the biiiiiiiiiig North Korean one at the town just over the border, but it was far away, so didn't really look that big) right next to some posh mock Tudor houses. Apparently in colonial times it was a cricket pitch (definitely looks like it could have been), and this is where the Hash House Harriers started. Thankfully no beer and songs on the way round the race though!

Here's the other big building on the square - some sort of government building I think. The start line is right in front of it, where the clock tower is. And here's the giant flag. Tudor houses off camera to the right. We walked past the huge building on the left earlier - no idea what it is, but it's a very strange building - there's no real windows, just cut out bits in the walls. And there doesn't seem to be anything in it. Anyway, flag!

After our little explore, we tried to find a museum the Lonely Planet claimed was by the square (from the description, it sounds like the small white building to the left of the flag), but it's a posh restaurant, so failed in that - boo Lonely Planet! Wandered around for a bit and ended up at the aquarium near the Petronas towers, which was wicked. No crappy Sea-Life Centre here! We saw the staff feeding the water rats (they're quite cute, they look more like huge guinea pigs), loads of geckos and lizards, and shed loads of fish. Some very nice, some very yuck! My favourite was a very cute yellow thing called a cow fish. It's body really does look a bit cow-ish, and it kept swimming over to see people. There was a huge tunnel under a big tank with all sorts of cool stuff in. Lots of different types of rays flying around (I love watching them, they look so graceful), a huge turtle, little sharks and lots of random fish I don't know the names of. There were some hideously ugly fish too though - they had a huge Mekong catfish, which is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen (but apparently very tasty. Still don't think that makes me want to eat it), and some massive things from the Amazon. They were also pretty ugly, and had something very pre-historic about them. They looked strangely squashed, a bit like a tube of toothpaste.

We wandered over to the park by the big towers, and then we had some pretty grim food in a posh cafe. Hmph.So the plan tonight is to get some nice food, which should be quite easy, seeing as the hotel is in the middle of Chinatown, on a street with loads of yummy-looking street food. And then sleep, lots of sleep. 

12 hours 5 minutes to go!

Olympics Tickets

Didn't get any. Boo. Applied for nearly £500 worth, maybe should have tried for more. Hopefully we'll get a crack at some in the next round, although I've not received any info about that. Hope there's still some middle-distance running tickets left (I'd pay more for good seats if I know that's all I'm getting), and if not, good view marathon tickets.

But, how did I not get any, and some guy got over £10,000 worth of tickets?? Not exactly fair. Hmph.

Bloody hell, there's only 3 weeks till the race!

 The KL half is three weeks tomorrow. Eek. How did that happen? It was weeks and weeks and weeks away about 5 minutes ago! So, now I'm officially scared. 21k suddenly seems a very very long way. 

This looks like a long way. I doubt the race will be as pretty though. 

I don't usually get scared about races. I felt fine about my first half, and I was pretty unprepared for that, so I should really be feeling better now. Maybe the difference is last time I just wanted to drag myself over that finish line, hopefully not in last place, but now I want to do a semi-decent job of it. And in very bad goal-setting form, I haven't yet decided what this 'semi-decent job of it' is. I would like to run the whole thing, get a PB, beat my sister who's doing a different race on the same day and finally have a good morning run. However, none of these are really feasible, unless I somehow grow little wings out of my heels, which is rather unlikely, and would also probably get me disqualified. I still have a couple of weeks to figure out something more realistic. Maybe I should just go for not being last. 

About my pace :) My sister was the cheetah who finished hours ago. 

As well as this misplaced desire to do something amazing in my race, I'm also feeling pretty under-trained. Since we got back from Thailand various things have conspired to ruin my running plans. I decided to ditch the run-walking, because it didn't really seem to be helping that much any more, which meant I had to cut back on distance a bit for a few weeks to catch up. I've also been pathetic and lazy, had a week of nasty stitches and runs cut very short, and had friends visiting. So, I hadn't done a run longer than 10k in about a month. Not good a month before a half marathon! 

The last week or so has been a bit better though. I've had a proper long run, and done a bit of speed work too, which I definitely need! I did a good interval session on Wednesday last week, then a super-fast 5k (PB!), and a good long slooooooooooow one on Monday. Good run, but quite boring doing endless loops of the same small area, and my sports bra decided to show its disappointment in my performance by rubbing off the skin on my chest. Lovely. And my legs have been aching all week. 

Anyway, here's the geeky data for the last week or so (before then was too pathetic to publicise!).

Wednesday 25th - 6x400 interval session. 5k, 29:03

Friday 27th - 5k, 28:40 PB!!

Monday 30th - 13k, 1:24:49 Furthest ever continuous run!

Thursday 2nd - 4.32k, 24:32. Got monsooned on. Grr. 

Pathetic.

Would be the word to sum up my running week. The running fairies were definitely conspiring against me this week. A ridiculously bad stitch on Tuesday, 7am on Thursday, and central governor on hiatus yesterday. I think I put in a total of about 15k. Pathetic. And this is with 6 weeks till my half. Better pull the stops out this week.

RIP Sammy Wanjiru

Crikey. The first forum post I saw about Sammy Wanjiru's death I thought was a weird, not very funny joke. Or that I was being stupid. Sadly, neither are true. Running really has lost a great athlete today, and I think the sport will be less for it. Sammy really was a fantastic athlete, with so much potential. Rest in peace Sammy.