The Energizer Night Run

For those of you who dont know, The Night Run drew some flack from a bunch of people and I thought I would jump in to help clear the air on some things that went down. It started off like any other run, I got to Sepang's F1 track with my parents (since my friends bailed on me) and found the parking to be ok - guided and aplenty. Though Malaysians being Malaysians we all wanted to park on the road right next to the entrance.

My mother and I walked around and had difficulty locating the damn starting line. There werent very clear signs for this and we had to walk through a tunnel to get to the other side. As we were exiting the tunnel we saw where there had been a bunch of boxes giving out headlights to the runners. I had received one last year and to be honest was not really bothered by the fact that I didnt get one, though a bunch of people were quite irate about it.

Entrance to the starting line was quite packed, but I just held back and waited for the crowd to leave first. It was really pretty running on the track. As you turned a corner you could see waves of red and white lights just moving by. It really did make me smile and think... life is pretty amazing sometimes.

There wasnt a clock located at the starting line, so not only did u not get a chip to measure your time (last year everyone got one) you also had to use your own watch to gauge what time and how long its been. There were supposed to be two water and medical stations on the track, but there was only one and it was located towards the end of the track, so I personally didnt end up drinking until I ran the second round, which meant that I didnt drink until km 9 or so. Not treacherous but if you think about the half and full marathoners not being able to drink inside the track until they were close to the end, you would understand how bad this would be. We were also lucky enough that no one was really hurt or died like in the Std Chartered marathon last year. But we should really do something before anything like that happens again.

(See that pretty wave of lights at the back? pretty spectacular)

At the end of the race there was a lot of confusion. Again, Im not really arsed about the medal or the goodie bag so I just ended up heading home right after I completed. But a lot of people ended up queing for ~1km or so just to be told there werent enough medals or goodie bags. For those who finished the half and the full, there really is no reason why they shouldnt have this acknowledgement. The emcee was also atrocious, yelling out that people were supposed to line up "here". Dear lady, nobody knows where u are and nobody knows where you are referring to, so could you please be professional about it???

It really did seem like Energizer and their event management company Expose were cutting corners on the race which I think was truly not appreciated by people who had trained and came out to run. In return Energizer has agreed to refund all the runners the entrance fee (btw, ~11,000 people ran the race. 5,000 in the 11km category alone) so thats quite a lot.

Well Energizer, you guys did a good job last year, so I really hope things work out better next year. For now, lets get ready for the Standard Chartered half marathon! and hope that their race is also better managed this year