Inti Biathlon Open 2007

Yesterday morning was my first ever biathlon experience. Inti's Life Saving Society organized a 1 km swim and 6 km run race for all private colleges around. However, there were only participants from Inti Nilai, IMU, Nilai International College, Inti SJ and of course, Metro.

The biathlon was a team event. I initially had Matt as my swimmer, but he was down with a very persistent flu (Get well soon Matt!) and so i was almost forced to forfeit. I didn't want to, obviously, because I've never done a biathlon before. So i hunted up and down the corridors of Metro (no, seriously) and finally caught sight of someone donning an Arena Shirt out of the corner of my eye. Aha! I got me a swimmer!

Shah (in black), me, some scary looking Kenyans, IMU swimmer...

Clifford Tan Soon Soon Lai (yup, that's honestly his real name!) was a retired swimmer of the Royal Klang Club. He must've told me like a billion times all the way to Nilai that he hasn't been training for years, and that we shouldn't expect to win blablabla. Anyway, race turned out...pretty messed up.

The marshalls were kinda blur. There were swimmers who were doing 1100 m and there were some who were doing 900 m. There were 11 swimmers in an 8 lane pool, and some of the marshalls weren't sure if they were to look at the swimmer number 5 or the lane number 5. Clifford came out 10th place, claiming he had done 2 laps extra. I ran and realised after a while that no one was in sight. No marshalls even. I had actually turned off a wrong junction and was running aimlessly for a while. The silliest thing was where i turned off, there were marshalls, but they decided to just stare at me rather than let me know i was wrong.

I ran the green route....twice....:)

Anyway, after i ran for over 2 km, a marshall on a motorbike flagged me down and told me that i ran on the wrong route. He was speaking to me in mandarin and we all know how excellent my mandarin is. All i knew was he wanted to bring me to the correct route on his bike. i was halfway up when a car pulled up and out popped the Organizing Chairperson. She was trying to explain to me how exactly i had gone wrong and how many kms i've covered and how many more i should cover. With all the mumbo jumbo, i could've easily lost 5 minutes AND my momentum. But she made a decision rather quickly la, she told me to do the same route again because that route was about 2.8 kms in total. And so 2 rounds of that would make 5.6 km. Satisfied, i continued to run. Coming on to my second round, i started seeing the other runners this time. I managed to overtake a few, and finally came in 7th. A security official asked me if i was from China! That's a first...ahaha

Clifford and i after the run

The OC told me they'll deduct 5 mins off my time, was very very apologetic and eventhough i was a little ticked off, i forgave her. She seemed sincerely sorry, and i pretty much know how she felt that moment, when something you've worked so hard for just goes wrong. After many group photos, the OC came to me and asked for a personal picture. And so did this other girl who was on the committee as well i think. It's cool that people are wanting to take photos with me, but i can't help but wonder why they're all girls. ???? haha...

IMU got first, and if i'm not mistaken, 3rd. 2nd place was Inti SJ, duh, because they've got a national swimmer on their team. I'm blissfully happy. =)

There was an anime costume play in the hall after that...