adiNation Mid Valley Run

Instead of the usual Lake Gardens run, all of us congregated at Mid Valley for the launch of the adiNation as well as Adidas’ spring/summer preview. The original two laps around Mid Valley and Gardens turned into five laps because they underestimated the time we need to complete the run. One loop was probably just above 1 km and we were already running really slow – this must have been a PW for 99% of us! Can you imagine doing 7 min/km???? I could even stay ahead of the pack just by walking. Plus it was extremely tiring going at snail’s pace – I wonder how Ronnie felt throughout the “run”. Anyway, no one said it was a run to begin with; hey it was a photo op/media event. So it was 5.87 km covered in 47 minutes.

The other downside of having to do five laps, apart from inhaling noxious fumes and dodging the occasional traffic, was the lack of water. Since the Adidas guys were anticipating a quick two laps, there wasn’t any need to set up a water station along the route. [sigh] Although they did hand out 500ml water bottles at the end of the run, the long time of this in coming made me wonder if it was due to lack of foresight.

It must have been a nightmare for motorists because the police and Mid Valley outriders had to stop traffic at various points along the route; now doing it twice is fine but five times???? This royal treatment was the extreme end of the downtrodden treatment Octagon dished out for the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon 2009.

Oh let’s just move on to the main event – the media launch which took place in Centre Court Mid Valley City. We were made to run in from Gardens, zipping past shoppers and onto the stage before joining the rest of the guests. That was also when the model came on showcasing the outfits for the different sports – yoga, basketball, footie, tennis, running, gym though the first two were modeled by actual practitioners. The show was hosted by Yasmin Yusuff (I got photos!) and towards the end, she invited more of her celeb friends to join in – Daphne Iking etc.

I was awfully hungry by the time we finished the run but every other appetizer floating around was meat-, milk-, cheese- or seafood-based. In the end, I settled for crackers after my shower at the gym.