Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2017

At first I thought that the Tokyo Marathon would be the last of my marathons for a while . The Tokyo Marathon being such an extraordinary race, would have been a perfect race to think back for a while before attempted another.

But how can you miss Malaysia's biggest marathon of the year? The Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2017 is the most popular marathon race event in Malaysia and around the region. Registration for the events gets full really quickly, some category within the first few days of launch.

I did not sign up at first as I wasn't sure I wanted to race but a friend needed to let his registration go and so we transferred the registration to me and I scrambled with the training.


On a cool morning on 21 May 2017, the Standard Chartered KL Marathon started at 4am. Off we went. Started the race at a pace faster than I expected but I continue to pushed on. It all went well until towards the 30km mark where my body started to feel weak. Still I managed to maintain the pace than I planned for as long as I can. But started off too fast and was slow dwindling down. The weather cooled down a bit as it even rained very heavily towards the last 5km of the race.

Finished the marathon in 5:47. Fastest I've done under Malaysian weather. Far from my Tokyo Marathon sub-5 hour race, but that was at dry cold 5C weather with the amazing crowds the entire 42km!

Indeed the Standard Chartered KL Marathon is a very well organized race, by Malaysian standards. Would certainly do it again.

This would mark the 4th marathon I've completed in the span of 7 months. I think my body needs to rest from these long races for a while. Time to focus on some speed work. Maybe the next one is Tokyo Marathon 2018? :)

Finishing the race

KL Towerthon 2017

Have always seen pictures of friends running up towers and it sounds interesting. Always wanted to try it myself and finally got a chance to check off the bucket list for KL Towerthon 2017 on 14 May 2017.

The Kuala Lumpur Tower (Menara  KL) is a communications tower located in the heart of the capital city in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Its construction was completed on 1 March 1995 and stand tall in the city among the other buildings. The top few floors offers a revolving restaurant and a viewing deck. The KL Tower is 1,379 feet tall, which is almost as tall as the tallest building in the country, Petronas Twin Tower at 1,483 feet (452 m).

The race starts with a wave start of 5 person at a time spread by 30 seconds. This is to prevent overloading the stairwell with people, which could potentially be dangerous.

It begins with a 800m steep uphill run. Then to the stairwell door and up the 2058 steps up the tower. The tower might be a little stuffy but they did open as many doors as possible on different landing area to allow air to flow.

Improvement would be to install big fans blowing air into the stairwell to further improve the airflow. The stairwell was not crowded at all and had about 5 water stations along the way. Also, upon finishing, should allow runners to hang around the viewing deck instead of the fire safety room which is all concrete. So we get to enjoy the view of our achievement.

Heart rate was hitting max all the way up. Felt even a little dizzy at certain sections but the railing helps. So upper body strength does help by pulling you up while you run.

Completed the course with a time of 24:31. Ranked 30th place out of 165 in my age group.