KLCC Park

With all the piled up work and rain this week, I had only time for two short runs so far. Besides my time at the gym on Tuesday, I managed another 6.8k at Taman Rakyat on Wednesday. Yesterday I decided to have a good workout at KLCC Park with the hope of meeting some of our Pacesetters gang there as well.

I reached the parking entrance after 6pm, following the directions Ronnie had given me. It was my first time parking here and I did not realize that I needed coins to slot into the machine. I held up the queue for a few minutes before a parking attendant came and accepted my note.

I had changed in my office, so I parked the car and looked around for the entrance to the park. I spotted a guard and approached him for directions. He pointed me to the entrance, and as I was walking towards it I had a pleasant surprise. A lady who was going to get into her car called out to me and asked if I was ‘Dinesh’. Turned out it was Rachel (pm21). She said I looked different from my picture and much slimmer in person. She may have been right, since the picture was taken 2 months ago when I was a good 5kg heavier.

Rachel said that the regulars were not running that day as they had planned a morning run the next day (today). This meant I would not get to meet everyone once again, but I hope to meet some of you at this Sunday’s practice run. I said my goodbyes and headed towards the park where I did some stretching and started running.

On my first lap as I was passing Exxon Mobil, I saw a familiar face. He was the guy who had run alongside me for a couple of minutes on my first run at KLCC Park. We never introduced ourselves to each other, but if I’m not mistaken I recognize him as ‘Draco’ from some pictures I saw on Ronnie’s blog. This time he was walking the opposite direction and I waved to him and said hi. I don’t think he recognized me.

The park was crowded with more tourists and visitors taking photos than runners. As much as possible I tried running behind the camerapersons but at times it was not possible. I was running at a slow and even pace, and managed to cover 8 laps or 10.4k in 62min. By the time I finished it was almost 7.30pm. I walked one lap the opposite direction as a warm down before heading to the car.

It was too dark for me to try finding the toilet to change in, so I just managed to change in the car. I hope the toilet is near the mosque entrance so I don’t have to keep changing in the car each time I run here. The drive home to Klang was slow as the traffic congestion from Tun Razak all the way to Sri Petaling was bad. I reached home at 8.40pm, quickly showered and took my family out for dinner.

Today I have a colleagues wedding dinner to attend in Seremban. I hope it does not finish too late, since I need to wake up as early as 3.45am tomorrow in order to pick up Lim (going for Singapore marathon) at 4.20am from his house. Peter, Albert and the others would not be coming for the breakfast run tomorrow. I hope another 20k just one week after my first 21k will not prove to be too much for my legs!