Penonton: Ipoh International Run 2011

Monday, July 4, 2011

Ipoh International Run 2011 - Top 20 Result!

Date: 3 Jul 2011
Time: 6:45am
Venue: Ipoh, Perak
Distance: 21km, 10km, 7km and 5km

There are total 14,000 runners participated in this event. Only 500 runners from 21km and mostly are from 5km and 7km students. 21km and 10km runners were quarantined inside the Pejabat Belia dan Sukan before allowing to stand at the starting line, whilst 7km and 5km were inside the stadium. There were havoc inside the stadium while distributing the plastic strap as volunteer insisted to wear and cut the strap personally for each runner but there were only handful of them serving 10,000+ runners. Hopefully next year they would improved in this area by distributing ribbon instead of strap.

As usual, rela was used as human barricade and they have to run as fast as Kenyan when gun-off. Rela might get hurt and was very risky especially when the 7km and 5km students started. Every year the organizer did the same way, wonder is it purposely arranged that way as a special highlight of the event or the idea of using metal barricade has not come into their mind.

First 5km runner Niger Yeap arrived in 16:24, 7km runner Navinraj arrived in 21:39, 10km runner Kartik arrived in 32:05 and 21km runner from Kenyan arrived in 1:01:35. All runners met at the last 2km and the road is narrow. It caused human jammed and the fast runners has to run zigzag cutting through the 5km and 7km runners as most of them were walking. Otherwise the timing would be better. There should be barricade to separate the lane for these 2 groups of runners during entrance to the stadium to avoid jammed.

As expected, Kenyan sapu all top 19 in men open and top 8 in women open. Unfortunately there was no Malaysian in top 20 men open. Kenyan and Thailand runners are too strong. Luckily there was one Malaysian in top 10 women open 21km - Lian Bee Hoon. The organizer should think an idea on how to attract more Malaysian elite runners to join this event, perhaps an additional incentive prize for Malaysian runners who can break the national records.

There are 100+ lucky draw prizes, while waiting for the lucky draw and finalizing the official result, games, singing and dancing shows were arranged to entertain audiences. As there were complaint in 4 categories, the official result has been delayed and subsequently the prizes presentation delayed too. It was like a norm in Ipoh run.

Michelle Yeoh was the ambassador for this event but unfortunately she was not there to cheer and support runners.

More photos here