Night Run at Lake Gardens

What do most of us do on a Saturday night? Well here are some of the usual favourites of most Malaysians:

• Go for dinner
• Catch a movie
• Watch a DVD at home
• Go teh tarik with friends
• Grab some drinks at your favourite pub.

Well i have done all of the above and this Saturday all i had was plans for dinner and nothing else after that. So i was intrigued when a friend of mine asked if i wanted to go jogging with him at Lake Gardens at 10pm. Now as you know i am not a huge fan of running and do it just to burn some extra calories and of course maintain a good cardiovascular endurance. So after some thought (and with persuasion from wifey who is a bigger fan of running than me) i decided why the heck not. So i told my friend and he was excited that i would be joining him.

The reason we chose 10pm is because we were waiting for another friend who also wanted to join and could only join us after his Terawih prayers. So i said sure... i got nothing else planned for the rest of the night.

So i went for dinner at about 8pm in Old Town and decided since i was going to go jogging, i decided to keep my dinner light and save it for after when i am done jogging. I don't fancy eating heavy and then doing something physical after that. But i did treat myself to some pre-jogging calries... ie. ice cream at old town about 10 minutes before we left.

Anyway we arrived at Lake Gardens and waited for our friend who would join us after his Terawih prayers. Once he came, we did some quick warm ups and stretching and we were off. Just for the record, i usually only jog for about 3 to 4 km when i do my routine runs, and these guys were planning on 15km. Yikes. I did not do the full 15km unfortunately, but i did complete 6km. The furthest i have done so far and it felt good. So yeah... new milestone in running for me.

Anyway the route we chose was pretty good and had its fair share of uphills and downhills. It was pretty quiet and it was kinda nice to run at night.... yet another thing i have never done before. The temperature was far cooler than my usual evening jogs, so i believe that made a difference in how much i could run. Also, the company. Usually when i jog around my housing area, its either me by myself or just me and my wife. But this time, there were 4 of us and we were just chit chatting non stop, so that made a huge difference.

So after 2 rounds, one of my friends said his leg was hurting and wanted to stop. So i decided i would stop to as i don't want to over push my limits. I was feeling fine, but i thought this is my first run in the past 3 weeks (yes, i have been skipping my jogging sessions lately), so lets not push it. My wife and one more friend continued running for one more lap. So they completed 9km while me and another friend completed 6km.

My friend also introduced me to this Android App called Run Keeper, which tracks your timing and distance via GPS and gives you a full report after that. So you can see the full course you ran. I have downloaded it to my phone, and can't wait to try it out. Will update you on this once i try it out.

After the run, we had to go to a mamak and have teh tarik... after all, we had earned it right. While running, i told myself i would have one Maggi Goreng, but alas, i was destined not to eat that as they were all out. So i just shared a Mee Goreng with a friend.

All in all, it was a fun night and it was very different. I liked it. Not sure if i wanna do this every single weekend, but it sure is a fun thing to do with friends. Sorry, no pictures to share, but i will definitely take my camera for the next one. When? i am not sure yet. So what do you think of night runs? Any of you done anything crazy like this before? As usual, look forward to hearing your comments.