When I first met Yayasan TM Director, En. Abdul Hamid back in 14th July 2019 on French National Day celebration at French Ambassador Residence.
We spoke and came across that they are going to organise a 5km Charity Run to celebrate Yayasan TM 25th Anniversary. The run will be starting from TM Tower to UM and back to TM Tower. At that point of time, they haven’t started to progress about the planning of the run. I shared with them about the idea on organising a Tower Run and it’s much easier to organise and work towards it since the race course is only require the stairs in the TM Tower. I asked for their name card and I will come to their office and do a presentation about the run.
On 1st August, I did the first presentation and present the idea to them at their office, facing each and everyone of the Yayasan TM Team including the director. After convincing them, doing my best to get all of them to visualise on how the execution part, the race day like and how the safety of the race are being ensure and as the top priority. Even coming out with calculation on how individual flag off works from 1000 to 2000 participants.
As TM is a big corporate company with too many departments handling different roles of it. I got the contact of TM Management Unit (TMU) from them to get the approval of using the stairs. Another meeting have been scheduled to convince the TMU on a later date. I spoke to JomRun and happy to have them support the tower run idea and eventually they became the Event Organiser for this tower run.
While I was traveling to Da Nang for participating in Da Nang International Marathon 10KM, I was carrying my iPad with me and at the night time, I was preparing all the presentation, a more detailed plan for the tower run. More and more meeting being scheduled to TM Communication and Branding Department about the tower run, then come back to Yayasan TM department on setting up each and everyone about their role on this event.
I am also manage to get some of my junior from Sport Management in UM to come and assist Yayasan TM on this and they are able to learn to work with corporate staff and gain real life experience on the journey to host an international event.
Soon or later, Malaysia Towerrunning Association got approved by Pesuruhjaya Sukan on the 23rd of Aug 2019 and it was just a day before Ostankino Tower Run, a 200-point factor race in Moscow, Russia. I became the President of the Association and the real challenge begin. I was in Moscow that time and I spoke to the TWA President right away about this good news and looking forward on more international race are being held in Malaysia in the future. I want to build a towerrunning community in Malaysia and produce a strong team to bring up Malaysia Ranking in the National Ranking under TWA.
Tonnes of whatsapp call with person in charge from Yayasan TM and JomRun and my team while I was in Moscow and Italy for races. Definitely the most challenging oversea trip I ever had. Racing, sightseeing, moving from place to place, and still have to deal with the whole race planning. It was a tough one as I am the one that understand fully on each and every details of hosting a tower run plus with many new elements were being introduced to this race (first individual flag off event for all participants, competitive and non-competitive mode, water station setup outside the stairs, marshall placing and their duty, evacuation plan, the flow of the event, even sponsorship).
I prepared the sponsorship slide as well to get more sponsors onboard for this event in less than 2 months time. Initially the event was going to schedule on October, thankfully we managed to postponed it to 10th Nov with an extra month to prepare for it. We were also in a pretty last minute to get the race sanction by Towerrunning World Association under 120 point factor and manage to get the World Top Ranking Towerrunner come and take part in the race and make the race an International one.
Throughout the journey, whenever I was having meeting with new and upcoming potential sponsors for myself, I told them about the TM Tower Run as well. I am glad to have them support the race first before they decide to sponsor me, but some of them decided to support me first and support on Towerrunning sport as well. I am also glad to have my team to replace me for the meeting and to assist on leading the trial run while I was in oversea for Towerrunning race. I would also like to thank Pn. Zulitha from Yayasan TM on putting in tremendous effort on making this event a success. Without her, I will not dare to imagine how the race going to be on the race day.
Long story short, I am satisfied with the whole event and giving a rating of 7/10 leading up the race. I believe it can be much better with a longer time of planning and definitely the 2nd edition going to be much better and well planning. I have learn and gain so much experience on this 3 months journey.
Being the athlete who took part in the race, and also being part of the organising team on making sure the event smooth, follow what have been planned, participants’ safety, and want them to have a good experience in the tower run and come back again next year are one of the most challenging task I ever had in my life.
People asked me, why you want to make your life harder, busy by doing all these when your goal is just to be World No. 1 in Towerrunning sport? I told them I can choose not to be part of all these and fully focus in training and achieve my goal to be World No. 1 but what I want is the sport to grow, hoping that one day the sport can be including in Olympic Sport. I am not just wanting personal success but I see the potential of towerrunning sport can be grow into something big, grand, and international level event due to it’s beauty of sport and the modern urban buildings or towers that the world is building up in the future.
To me, I love Towerrunning Sport and it’s my passion on doing all these, contributing back to the community. To be honest, I didn’t get any payment on contributing all my effort, time on organising this event. I would risk everything to ensure the sport grow, just like how I risk everything to do full-time training as I am a strong believer that I will achieve it with the right planning, effort I put in and of course the support from my family and friends.
“Ask not what your sport ministry can do for you for your sport but what you can do for your sport to grow the sport eventually one day without needing any help from them and able to grow with all the other support you have.”
Thank you once again for reading the long story here. I hope I can inspire you to chase your dream and willing to put in the effort for it.
