The time of the month has arrived! After a long time waiting, BloodRunner 2015 had finally come on the 31st of July. A month earlier, I had chased down the RedRyders in my housing area to get free tickets to the run. Thanks again Red.fm. The werewolf themed night obstacle run was located in Putrajaya and I was going with Lydia, Kayal and Ryan, our usual group.
A week earlier, I went down to the TTDI community hall to collect my race pack and participated in the blood donation that was held in conjunction with it. I also bought a Tikkina head torch there. I met with Lydia and Kayla there by coincidence but they were there earlier so I was alone to collect Ryan and my race packs.
A few days before the night of the run, the four of us arranged so that we would meet up before the race in the afternoon, after little debate and discussion, we decided to go in the afternoon to beat the traffic jam that would take place in the early evening. However I had other agendas to attend to.
In the morning I had to go to The Odyssey preschool to have a half day tour of the place for evaluation if the teaching job is right for me. I spent the morning there with the kids and the teachers there to learn about a day in the preschool. It was nerve wrecking and I had to constantly keep my anxiety with the whole lot of new people in check. After the eye opening event, I headed down to my secondary school after dropping my dad and my sister at The Curve because (I almost forgot that) the troop's Skills Camp was happening. I wasn't able to engage fully for the camp this time round because of my other priorities. About twenty minutes after dropping by to see the scouts, I had to leave to pick Ryan up from 1Utama and then head down to Lydia's house to pick her and Kayla up and we were on our way to Putrajaya.
After the long drive, we located the event location and headed to Alamanda to have an early dinner and to spend the time because we were two hours early (just to avoid the traffic jam). After dinner we walked around the quiet mall and I bought myself a pair of sneakers at Bata because I saw that the model I wanted was on sale compared to other places were it's not. Before we leave to go back to the race location we played a round of bowling, Ryan sure has got a good knowledge of a range of sports. He can really spin the ball but his aim isn't good. As for me, I haven't been playing bowling in a really long time so I totally lost it (I beat Kayla by two points earning third place).
I drove back to the race location and we can see that a lot of people has gathered already. After parking my car and getting our race bibs and equipment ready, we walked over to the gathering point. There were food trucks and stand around. We were kinda worried about having to go to the toilet because of our last run, all of us had to use the bathroom, so we didn't get any food besides the bananas I brought beforehand from home.
After dropping off our bags (and a short panic episode when Ryan left his race tag in my car), we headed out to the starting line and got ready for the exciting run. Before we started, I thought maybe I'd just run ahead and we meet up later but Lydia said it's better for us to run as a group, her reason was that it's an obstacle course and we don't know what obstacles we got ahead of us so it'll be better if we run in a group to help each other out, teamwork; Also, Ryan didn't have any torches to aid him so we had to by his side to support him. I reluctantly agreed to that (I wanted to run fast real badly, like I always do) and we headed for the starting line. We were in the second wave so some time after the first wave started, the horn was blown and we jogged out into the race track.
However, things didn't work out the way Lydia planned. Before reaching the first obstacle, we ended up splitting into two groups, the faster ones and the slower ones, that being Lydia and me, and Ryan and Kayla. Later in the run when we wondered how far Ryan and Kayla were behind us, Lydia commented how Ryan and Kayla has a habit of running together slowly in all the runs we've been to. To respect Lydia's wishes, I slowed my pace down to run with her and we went through all the obstacles together. Neither one of us wanted to do the punishment for not making through an obstacle, that was twenty air squats. Lydia kept saying how air squats make your butt bigger. Hahaha.
The first obstacle was carrying those large Chinese tin biscuit containers full of water for some distance, I don't know how long. The girls got to carry lighter ones. To me it was normal, like working at Hamleys, so Lydia and I got through easily. We then continued to jog together while making small chat. Mostly it was Lydia talking about her Broga Outback camping trip, I just listened most of the time and talked a little about related stuff. The second obstacle was a climbing over a wall, we made through that easily, though I had to give Lydia a boost because she just doesn't know how to jump, like really, she flops when she tries to jump, like a flamingo tangled in it's own legs. The third obstacle were tires followed by the fourth, a window wall thing where we had to swing through a small window atop a wall. After that, the sixth obstacle was the hill. The track goes into the hills of Putrajaya like jungle tracking. It was dark and unlit besides some reflector strips and glow sticks, we had to use our head torch to go through the track safely. Lydia and I worked together to help some of the participants who didn't have light to go through the long, winding dark path. After getting out, the seventh obstacle was wall scaling. It was similar to rock climbing combined with climbing a gate so it was really easy for me. Lydia and I continued to keep the pace and we reached the eighth obstacle which was monkey bars, another obstacle which proved easy for me. It was long stretch before the next obstacle and halfway there, I got muscle cramps in both my calves, which was a surprise to me because I've never gotten leg cramps in the previous runs. Luckily there was an ambulance nearby so I stopped to get some ice to help relax my calf muscles. After my legs got better, we thanked the nurses and we continued to jog to the next obstacle, balance beams. I got through it with slightly some difficulty but we did good. The two of us then continued on to the ninth obstacle, a net crawl over a bus, which was damn cool. The final obstacle was a series of pyramids that we had to run or climb over. This one was scary for me because it was pretty high up and my legs were not long enough to help me. I managed to get past it however and the two of us made it to the finishing line. Here we were handed our finisher medals, refreshments and finisher shirts.
After collecting my bag from the counter, Lydia and I waited for Ryan and Kayla to finish. It didn't take long and after taking photos we headed back to my car. Ryan and I ate supper at the mamak near Lydia's house while Lydia and Kayla took out from the mamak because it was late and they wanted to bath and wash their hair. After dropping Ryan home, I went back to the school to bath and sleep. Suppose I was to help out at the camp but I had to work in the morning. I didn't contribute much to the camp (rather I didn't contribute at all) so I'm not gonna write anything about it. I was very tired however, there was the obstacle run, then I went to work and did the mascot twice and then the camp. I was dead tired and it appears that it was very obvious because the others didn't want to wake me up because I literally knocked out from the moment I went to sleep on Saturday night. So there it is.
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