Blackmores Sydney Marathon 2004 by Wan Yew Leong

The Run
5.00am, 12th September 2004, the first batch of 5 PACM members running the 21km gathered at the lobby ready to walk to the train station about one km away. The next batch of 9 members; 7 in the 42km and 2 in the 10km shall leave at 5.30am. At 5.00am, the outside temperature was slightly above 10 C, expected to go up to 21 C by mid day. Ang Chee Kiang was obviously not prepared for the cold and came out with just the club’s vest and short. At my advice he went back to his room to bring another T-shirt to put on; still skimpy by my standard. I have T-shirt, vest on top, a disposable wind breaker and a plastic bag with a change of clothes after the run. We walked briskly towards the train station and the starting point Bradfield Park was 3 stations away, outside the Milsons Point station. As expected of the President, I checked out the starting point and how to get there and briefed everyone the night before. The starting point, although with no grandeur like our Dataran Merdeka, is well located with the train service from both side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I believe the intention of the organizer is to have the runners complete the bridge section first such that traffic across the bridge could be opened earlier.

The sequence of the start seems unusual as the half marathon started at 6.30am, followed by marathon at 7.00am and 10km at 7.30am. After the run and having studied the route of all the 3 events again, I realized that they want to avoid having the 42km runners running into the 10km or the 21km runners; good thinking. As we are not used to the cold, we deliberately stayed at the Milson Point station till 15 minutes from the start of the run, enjoying the warm and the use of the toilets. When the starting time is close, we surrendered our plastic bag to the baggage trucks and have the number of the truck written on our arm as identification. I have my RM3.50 disposable wind breaker to protect me, a good decision and kept it on till the count down starts. I took it off and tossed it way just before the start. I ran conservatively and I was having a cough just before I left KL. Shortly after the start, we were on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the runners got a good view of the city from both sides. It was a windy morning and each time a gust of wind blew at us, I shuddered. After a few kms, I realized that all my sweats were dried up by the wind. This is where runners can go wrong if they don’t drink along the stations. Drink stations were provided at every 2.5km; generous considering that the weather is cool. I drank at every station; albeit only one cup each time. Jelly beans were part of the temptation and I munched a mouthful each time I ran past one of those stations manned by volunteers A good section of the 21km route is running through the industrial part of Sydney towards Rodd Point; not such a beautiful sight. I was later told by the Adam Loh that the other portion of the 42km route is more scenic through the Centennial Park. I guess that must be the rewards for a longer run. He told us he took his time and toured Sydney on foot to make his trip worth the while.

After the U-Turn and running through the same way back to the Rocks near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I was close to the finish and saw a mass of the 10km runners. Since the 10km runners start one hour later than the 21km runners, we ended up finishing about the same time. The weather was so dry that I completed the 21km run with my shorts, vest and T-shirt dried! The area allocated for the finish near the famous Sydney Opera House is not too large for the 10,000 runners and we experienced some congestion and a little confusion. When I crossed the finish line I could not see anyone there to give out the medals. I started asking around and a little boy with a bag of medals gave me one. It was a nice sizeable pewter medal and I feel very happy with it. Eight days later when we left Melbourne at the end of our trip at the airport, we took out our medals to pose for some pictures. At that moment, I found out that I was wrongly given a full marathon medal! This mistake demonstrated that such details are overlooked during execution.

Some Analysis
My job as a risk manager requires lots of analysis of data. Ang Chee Kiang sent me the full results of our 14 members taken from the well constructed website. I added on some derived details as attached to this article. We have a total of 10,411 runners with 1,165 (11.2%) marathon runners, 2278 (21.9%) half marathon runners and 6,968 (66.9%) 10km runners. This is a pretty healthy turnout, considering the size and population of Sydney, smaller than the Klang Valley. The very high entrance fees; AUD 120 for full marathon, AUD 60 for half marathon and AUD 40 for the 10km did not seems to have deterred the runners. The participation of the women is very strong, 41% overall; 48% in 10km, 33% in half marathon and 18% in marathon. In Malaysia, the run are male dominated; almost 7 to 1. In our own Nike Pacesetters 15km, it is 4 to 1 due to our strong women member base; 3 to 1 as at November 2004. Another significant observation is the quality of the grass root runners; there are many strong runners even though they may not be elite class. I draw some evidence here from the performance of our own members in their respective age category. Hooi Siew Weng has proven to be our only world class runner achieving a top 8% finish or at the eighth percentile in statistics language. Thomas Ng, although achieving his personal best with a sub-four time, only managed sixty percentile in his age category. Thomas would have achieved top 15% in Malaysian races with that time. Nancy Lai, although did not specifically trained for the event was at seventy sixth percentile. Lim Siew Cheng did well to be at thirty ninth percentile with Wai Mun at the forty one percentile. Yours truly was right at the back; ninety percentile. You could work out the rest to appreciate the quality of the Australian grass root runners. I believe this has a lot to do with the sports culture of Australia.

The Social Side
It is not just the run we were in Australia; we were there for a holiday. Of course having a run make it all the more worth spending our monies and blaming the ringgit peg. We met up with Viviene Kartsounis, our former member and regular Footloose contributor. We had a good yarn catching up in a local café but could not spent more time due to her family and work commitments. She too took part in the run doing the 42km as a recovery run after having done the 100km run in August. The group went to Hunters’ Valley and the Great Ocean Tour but I did not join in, so nothing much to comment here. We spent a night at the Blue Mountains and I was quite disappointed with it; our Mount Kinabalu is much more majestic and scenic. However, the night at Blue Mountain also gave us an opportunity to live as a family at least for one night. We did our own cooking with Mrs Hooi as the master chef assisted by my wife, Clara and Ang’s wife Fanny Siou. We shopped at Coles Supermarket and at AUD 7 per head, we had both dinner and breakfast served.

Melbourne is a much better city for my wife and I, it is orderly with a good public transport system and of course Queen Victoria Market. My wife fell in love with the market and we were there three consecutive mornings. We traveled in trams throughout the 4 days and discovered all the interesting spots of the city. I met up with my niece who was studying in Melbourne. I learnt from her that the Asian students play a big role in the Melbourne economy. The Saturday before we returned, we went to visit Rubern Lee our former member who has migrated to Melbourne with his family. He and his wife, Dr. Nazrin were so courteous and served us a great BBQ lunch with his newly acquired BBQ set; fantastic Malaysian hospitality. That afternoon we drank numerous bottles of red wine and Gary Goh was obviously drunk. On the way back, he offered to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner for a local called John when he comes to KL. We have this episode all recorded in Ang’s video. After that he slept for the remaining portion of the train journey. When we left Melbourne, the retirees like Chan WK, Hooi Siew Weng, Mrs Hooi, John, Wai Mun and Gary left for Tasmania. We are thankful to Tan John Yam for organizing the trip, no hitches all the way. 2005 is round the corner, I suppose there are plans for other overseas runs in the pipeline.

Wan Yew Leong
21st November 2004