The inaugural Putrajaya Night Marathon back in 2010 marked the first time I participated in the half-marathon category, having just ran 10K all the while. It was a well-run race and it was a good thing for newbies like me back then. I don’t know whether it was due to nostalgia, but I signed up for  Putrajaya Night Marathon 2011 despite knowing that it would be just several days after I return from a long holiday in Hong Kong.


As such, I can say I was ill-prepared for the race with just the Adidas King of the Road (16.8KM) a forthnight ago, and a measly 5 KM training run on the slopes of Hong Kong island several days prior to PNM. So imagine my surprise when I crossed the finish line last night with a new personal best for the half marathon, clocking in 2 hours 24 minutes!

Again, this was due to a very nicely organised race and what would I call a really fast route. There were gentle uphill inclines and the downhill portions tend to flatter runners. I also had the benefit of having experienced several parts of the route in other running events like the Shape Run and New Balance 15K. The organisers went out of their way to provide a really cool experience for runners.

There were plenty of water stations, located every 3 KM, and there were taiko drummers, cheerleaders, marching bands, folks blasting music as well as guys dressed up as superheroes and even the silver-coated guys pretending to be statues (usually seen in Bukit Bintang), providing some kind of support/morale boost to runners.

The race did highlight several concerns though. Whose idea was it to print the half marathon distance markers with an unreadable black font over a dark blue background? More importantly, traffic control created a pretty safe race but at the expense of the residents in Putrajaya.

I’m guessing that Saturday night was a really busy night, and there were complaints on the event’s Facebook place about traffic control alienating the entire 5th precinct. Hopefully the organizers and the residents can come up with an amiable solution for the next edition of the run, as it would be a shame if both sides can’t work together.