A Soaking Wet Night LSD

It was during last Tuesday’s Adination Runner Session that Bro Zul, the trainer, mentioned that there’s gonna be a night LSD in Putrajaya tentatively on Saturday night , 23rd January. Though I think it was a great idea to familiarize with night running condition as Putrajaya Night Marathon is inching nearer, I was at first indecisive to join the LSD as I promised my friends to go for a morning run at Lake Garden and Kenny Hills vicinity on Saturday morning.

However, it turned out that the morning run had to be cancelled as my friends had a late night outing that Friday night thus I opted to join the night LSD run and was very looking forward to going for the session. As planned, the meeting point for the night LSD was at Taman Seri Empangan, a recreational area at the feet of spaceship-like Putrajaya International Coventional Center (PICC) and we were to start at 7.45 pm. The meeting point was only 5km away from my home, so l left home at 7.35pm. I reached Taman Seri Empangan 10 mins later and found out eager beaver runner were already there. Some of them were pelari-pelari tegar from Chap Ayam Runners whom I am not well acquainted with much, Adination Putrajaya Runners- Bro Zul, Hafiz, Midun & Nora and blogger-runners – Che, Syah,Yim and Shuk. Altogether there were about 20 runners who thought that they would rather run then watching crappy cerekarama on saturday night. The weather was chilly and breezy, perfect for one to go for a run.

Bro Zul briefed that we were to run towards the round-a-bout infront Putrajaya Holding (PJH) and Jabatan Imigresen and to do a U-Turn and to run straight ahead towards PICC and to take the the route behind PICC and to finish it Taman Seri Empangan. The distance targeted to be completed was around 30km (that is 3 laps of the route). But one could choose whether to run 10km or 20km or to do 30km. We started off around 8.15 pm and it was drizzling and I believe most of us were finger-crossing hoping the drizzle would not develop into a heavy downpour. The finger crossing was proven futile as the rain turned catty and doggy after estimately 5 mins we started running.

Like the famous saying,‘Rain Or Shine.The Show Must Go On’ we went on nevertheless only to find out that we really enjoyed soaking ourselves wet during the run. I felt that I was running with pair of boots as the shoes absorbed water from the rain and from the ditch that I ran into. But it was fun afterall. The route was 80% flat. The only hilly terrains were at the bridge before reaching PICC and the route behind PICC. After almost an hour running in the rain we completed the first lap and made a pit stop at Taman Seri Empangan to wait for the rain to stop or at least lessen in quantity. It was during the pit stop that we realized an Indian lady runner who was with us was nowhere in sight. It is believed that this Indian lady runner was at the back pack that she couldn’t follow the front pack pace and completely lost track of the route.

After about half an hour, the rain kinda dissipate in quantity, and some eager beaver runners wanted to continue with second lap while some decided to call it a night. I went on with the second lap run and only to find that the rain got heavier as we were halfway of the route. About one hour of running in the rain, we finished the 2nd lap and cleaned up ourselves. Surprisingly, as I don’t get to run much in the rain before, I found that I didn’t feel that knackered completing the 2 laps – that’s totaling to 19.8km. Yim told me it was because the cooling effects the rain gave. If it didn’t rain that night, we would have panted, grasping for air, all the way to complete the distance.

It is not unusual for one to feel hungry when the temperature drops especially when it rains. And in our case the hunger feeling was much more intense as we ran in the cold rain. To replenish the lost fuel and energy I joined Che, Yim, Syah and Midun to mamak presint 9 to grab a late nite bite. It is very rare of me to have a late nite supper but I was feeling peckish and felt like having Milo Ais which I haven’t had for quite a while. I asked for crunchy thosai which later I found tasted a bit burned. As exhaustion and sleepiness creeping in, I excused myself and said bye-bye to the rest and drove home.

Overall, this night LSD run was fun, I gotta familiarize myself with condition of night running (which didn’t really serve the purpose as it rained- it is said that normal night running is much more tiring as opposed to running during daytime as the heat felt is stronger than daytime) and also gotta meet fellow blogger-runner which I haven’t met before like Yim and Syah and Shuk (which I didn’t get to say Hi that nite). I am very looking forward to running in next LSD. Jangan lupa ajak, okay! :)

p/s: the indian lady runner finally found her way back to the meeting point. She ran into us as we started to run into our second lap.