Batu Dam Trail Run

The best thing about running in the jungle is that you'll feel pretty much alive and one with the greens that when you're running on the road, you'd wish that you were back in the jungle. 

These days, running on the road for me is more of a chore (ie training!) than for pleasure. Yet when I'm in the jungle, I forget that I'm supposed to "run" because I'm too busy enjoying the surroundings and I end up dilly dallying. =) 

Our Batu Dam trail run on 3rd March 2012 was inspired by this blog, and we had a pretty OK turn out that day, with 9 of us.

 (picture taken from Andrew's album.)

The 'before' picture.

There were some people fishing.

Honestly, we took the wrong way in. This entrance is usually kept locked as it leads to the National Rowing Club's premises.

We were however granted access by someone (I'm not sure who), who told us that we'll reach another gate where we'd have to find our own way through.

Or across.

Or over.

 (picture from YB's album)

Indeed, we had to do the unexpected - climb over the wall! Argh, I was the slowest because I am hopeless in things like this. I mean, ask me to climb over a fence, I think I can do that. But a brick/cement wall? Heh.

Raymond doing a fancy looking hop over.

When we were finally inside of the Batu Dam area, we were awed by the sight before us. We couldn't help play the part of a tourist and snapped pictures as much as we could.

That quiet morning was probably broken by a bunch of noisy runners. ;D

Once we were in the trail, we thought we might as well run properly.

But we still couldn't help but to stop and enjoy the view.

Seriously.

Would you rather whiz past Nature's beauty in order to complete your run as fast as possible or take it slow to enjoy the view? ;)

We stumbled upon someone's backyard and a man (possibly the landowner?) was walking towards his motorboat in his white briefs (we giggled!) while we oohed and aahed over his turkeys.

They're quite ugly upfront, I must say. Pity them.

Besides swatting leeches off our legs, we had to cross some streams as well. David (on the right) took off his socks and shoes so he could keep them dry as he crossed the stream.

The rocks are slippery and there's no way to avoid getting your feet wet. Andrew slipped and cut his hand!

The 3rd and last stream crossing!

I was running fast to catch up with the others when a branch whipped my bandanna off my head so quickly that it caught me by surprise.

The leech on David's ankle was the fattest of the day.

Leeches were aplenty that day. Everyone would stop to check their shoes and calves every now and then and shriek, "AAAAAHHHHH LEECH! LEEEEECH!!!!!!!" that I couldn't help but to laugh at them.

And then I'd shriek when I find some wriggling up my shoes or calves. Ugh.

I brought a small tub of salt but unfortunately it fell out of my bag during the last 1/3 of the run. Everyone looked so dejected when they heard the news.

I had to tell them to hurry up and not stop in the middle of the jungle for goodness sake, or they'll come after us.

We finally came out of the jungle and headed towards Riverstone Eco Resort. Boy, were we glad to be out of the leech-infested jungle! ;D

Leech counting began. We were trying to keep a statistics but eventually lost count. David won the Fattest Leech of the Day award and the Most Leeches of the Day ward went to Yloon.

Coming out of the jungle and to run back to our car was not a pleasant journey. With the roads so narrow and the cars whizzing by, we had to make sure we were out of harm's way.

And it was a 4km run back to our cars.

David's pet leech.

Check out the size of its mouth. Ugh!!!

(picture from Wei Li's album)

We thought we could clean up and take a dip in the lake/dam but the National Rowing Club weren't too pleased to see us.

Oh well, we decided to call it day and went back to Batu Caves area to look for some food!

With our casual pace, the run took slightly less than 2 hours for 11.5km. On map, our route looked like this.

We may just go back there for another run as some of the DR peeps missed this.