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