Kenyataan Rasmi Pembatalan Putrajaya Night Marathon 2018

Kenyataan Rasmi di laman FB Putrajaya Night Marathon 2018

[OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT] Dear runners, with a heavy heart we had to CANCEL THE RACE at approximately about 9.20pm. It was due to the heavy rain and lightning, and we couldn’t take any risk with the runner’s safety. It was a very very difficult decision to make and we sincerely apologise for the cancellation.

The Finisher Tshirt booth for Full/Half Marathon is open for collection now. Finisher Medals are also being distributed out. Please do collect your items as you cross the finish line tonight.

Once again, we sincerely apologise for the cancellation of #pnm2018.

Kenyataan dari Pengarah Perlumbaan (Race Director) di laman FB Putrajaya Night Marathon 2018

Hi runners. I am the race director that had to make the challenging decision to cancel the race after the flag offs.
Why I flagged off:
1. during the 42 km flag off the weather was still good
2. during the 21 km flag off it was raining but no signs of thunderstorm yet
3. at the 10 km flag off runners were already gathered at the start point. that’s when I got a report saying rain is getting heavy but the 10km route was still a go-ahead. Right after the flag off the thunderstorm happened. I immediately made the calls to the relevant parties and got the confirmation the that it’s too risky to continue the race. Around 9.20pm I made the decision to cancel the race and call back the runners or push them to shelter areas.
4. 1200 crew, volunteers and officials were on duty yesterday, to send down the cancellation message to all of them takes time. due to the storm, our communication sets were also failing at that time. making it even more difficult to send down the cancellation information to my manpower.
5. by then we sent out 7 buses to shuttle back runners for the 42 km first and shorten the 21 km so that 21 km runners return to the venue faster. due to the storm, even the buses were slow in their movement
6. once the plan was put into full execution, both 21 km and 10 km runners came back to the venue in large numbers that also affected the queue management for the 21 medal and finisher-t. in normal situations 21 km finishers are in the staggered form which would avoid long bottlenecks. my team worked double time to clear the queue.

Challengers we faced:
1. most runners were happy with the decision to cancel but there were runners that was very angry that we did not allow to continue running
2. pulling back 11,500 runners after flag off is really not an easy task (after taking out the 5 km runners). another very very difficult decision to make is not to allow the 11,500 runners to start after driving all the way to Putrajaya
3. we had no choice than to issue the medals and finisher-t as we did not want to disappoint the runners
4. there will be no official winners or results because it is a cancelled race

PNM runners do accept my apology but I had to cancel the race due to the unforeseen weather circumstances.

And finally this a report (not an excuse) of what took place yesterday.

My team and I will come stronger and better next year. (Maybe consider changing the month of the run, to avoid musim hujan)

I thank all the runners who have been following Putrajaya Night Marathon for the last 9 years.