Date: 30 Oct 2011
Time: 6:30am
Distance: 21km, 10km and 5km
PJ Half Marathon, one of Klang Valley's most popular family fun runs returns for the 24th year in conjuction with The Star's 40th Anneversary and Petaling Jaya 5th City Day celebrations. The marathon is held in Stadium Kelana Jaya.
Organised by The Star, MBPJ and SAAA, the race is open to all running enthusiasts, both Malaysian and foreigners. Around 4.500 runners have signed up for the ran.
The objective of the run are to cultivate the concept of healthy living and nurture a love for sporting activities among Malaysian of all ages and backgrounds. In addition to that, with the theme 'Run For A Greener PJ", the ran hopes to create further awareness of the importance of maintaining and preserving a clean and green environment, despite rapid developments in this busting city. For every runner, a tree will be planted in PJ. After the first tree is planted in conjunction with PJ Half marathon, subsequent plants will be planted by MBPJ in the vicinity of PJ based on the number of runners registered with the run.
After the run, participants were waiting for the lucky draw, which include LCD TVs, Apple iPad, handycom, camera, package stay at Bali/Phuket, Home theatre and etc.
There were few complaints from 5km runners as instead of running 5km, they ran 10km due to unclear signage. Resulted that some fast junior runners lost their top position and unable to get a medal as well. There are room for improvement for the event, where the race should flag-off according to the scheduled and should not start earlier. Understood that the 21km route is a busy road with heavy traffic. Runners safety should be a priority to avoid unnecessary incident happened. Next year should look for alternative route which can closed the entire road for runner, same as Adidas KOTR 2011.
Compare to previous year, the medal design and quality has deteriorated but the Selangor Pewter trophy is awesome. Kenyan has took 8 of them. As anticipated, top 9 in men open 21km, top 4 in women open 21km and top 2 in 10km men open were sapu by Kenyan.
Announcement of official result was fast and prize presentation was efficient and smooth. Only top 3 winners went up to the stage to receive trophy after collecting the cash prize and goods in kind.
Next year, wish the registration fees could be reduced especially for students to encourage more youth to join in healthy event as this year students crowd was very low as compared to Ipoh and Seremban Half marathon.
More photos
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Check your result
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I would like to see less of the Kenyan runners and more Malaysian runners!! But what can the FTAAA do to limit the number of these participants?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they can have a 1st Malaysian runner to complete the race category? Then that will give some motivation. Otherwise more runners will think "aiyah why train so hard?we can never outrun the kenyans!" E.g. if the top 4 women in my category were not Kenyans I would have been in top 5 or 10 and that will really encourage me in my next race. I'm sure a lot of Malaysian runners will agree with me.
ReplyDeleteAiya, if dun allow Kenyans to join then someone will said we are jaguh kampung and SS. So instead 10 prizes, the organizer provide 20 prizes for men open 21km as the category is more competitive. Also for others categories, the prize has increased to 10 instead of 5 as published in their website.
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