With the start of our exciting new three-part competition from the following week, the "Festival of Speed", PPAC athletes joined in a more leisurely event carrying the club’s golden baton from the Olympic Stadium, over the bridge to Chruoy Changvar, Sokha and back to Riverside, passing all the locations the club has held events over the past year and a half, tracing the club's journey so far and covering approximately 14km across the city.
Athletes carried the baton for different sections of the course and we stopped at all the significant PPAC locations to handover the baton and share memorable PPAC moments. In the end most of the athletes joined from the start at Olympic, with others joining the group at the Chruoy Changvar carnival.
We were accompanied by two support bicycles plus one motorbike with supplies to keep the athletes hydrated for around 2 hours of running.
Start - Olympic stadium
The location of the club’s first ever event on 5 Jan 2020, and a total of 8 track events including CNTR 2020, and other sprint events. The club’s last event on the track was a 600 m race on 5 April 2020, unfortunately just 12 events into PPAC’s journey, 8 of which had been on the track and 2 around the outside of the stadium (stadium lap races). Luckily by then CNTR 2020 was already completed. In addition to standard sprint distances and the 600 m race the club also held a 1000 m and 3000 m race on the track and two very high standard 100m and 200m wheelchair races.
The club then did more events around the Stadium, reaching eleven stadium lap events in total with the last stadium event on 24 Jan 2021, before the stadium complex closed indefinitely. Most stadium events were 1, 2, 3 or 4 lap races but we also had a memorably brutal hill interval race on 4 October 2020.
Stand-out performances include some world standard wheelchair sprints by Vun Van and Savoeun Heng, strong runs by Kenya Abe and Hong Bong in the 100 and 200 m, Neil's 4:05 single lap stadium record & 600m race result, and Bunthorn's 52 second 400 m.
Carnival
The carnival is one of our most recent event locations since the Koh Pich Event Area became unavailable. We've held three events here including two elimination races and the recent new medley relay event.
Standout performances include Andarge holding off a strong challenge from Nicolas in the first elimination race, Hugo's elimination race victory that included strong performances by Muyngim and Matt forcing the issue in the sprints, and a very closely fought Medley relay, with Matt again, outsprinting Muyngim at the line to grab victory for the Blue team by just 2 seconds over the Gold team after more than 6 km of team relay racing.
Sokha
Sokha is PPAC's main event location with 37 events held including 6 x 10km, 17 x 5km, 10 x 3km races, two 2km races, Fastest Sokha Lap and all the CNTR 2021 sprint events, as well as 4x100 m relays and a Bike& Run event.
The Sokha lap record is held by Andarge with 7:02.57 ahead of Neil and Bunthorn's 7:06 and 7:08 respectively in 2nd & 3rd place. The top 10 includes 5 Cambodians and 5 non-Cambodian athletes. The female record is held by Meyjou with 8:53.52 (32nd overall) but set during the CNTR2020 5km race, ahead of Samnang (8:59) and Summer (9:07) also set during 5km races in 2020.
Standout performances include Pheara's 5km PPAC record of 16:42 on 25 October 2020 scoring 942.8 points and Andarge's 17:03 worth 884 points on 11 April this year (which incidentally included our first ever virtual participation from Alexander in Kuala Lumpur).
The average 'fastest Sokha lap' across all competitors is 11:23, and the range is 19:45 between fastest and least fast from a total of 166 athletes who have recorded at least one Sokha lap time. There have been a total of 385 qualifying participations in races that included timing of the Sokha Lap.
The top 10 race participations including a timed Sokha lap are Neil with 23, Martin with 19, Paul with 18, Jack with 15, Matt, Hugo and Andarge all on 13, Jacob 10, and Meyjou and Jeremy with 9 each.
Koh Pich
At Koh Pich, two team relays have taken place on the road, as well as a 2 km +3 km duo event, the first elimination race and a team 10 km challenge on our specially created 3/400 m track. The relays in teams of two were won by Neil/Meyjou and Hugo/Jack. In the 10km relay, the team of 5 athletes were on course for most of the race, but just missed out on going sub-30 with a time of 30:34.
Koh Pich riverbank was the setting for PPAC’s first trail race, in this case an urban trail race, taking place below the city’s vast construction sites. It was an eventful race and more urban trail events might be on the menu in the future.
Finish - Riverside
We wrapped up this Tour de PPAC with another of our most recent new event locations, the Riverside running track, scene of the Riverside Relay, another event for teams of two. This was slightly different as it has an out-and-back course as opposed to loops, and Andarge and Hugo took home the spoils.
Thanks for joining us on our Tour de PPAC, thanks to helpers (support & media) Meyjou, Seavmey, Sevleang and Elaine and we’ll see you all soon at the next event!
© PPAC 2021
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