Fat Old Man Running: World Heart Day 2013

World Heart Day

Walk A Mile

Kuching, Sarawak

While many of my friends were running Standard Chartered KL Marathon I was in Kuching participating in the World Heart Day Walk-A-Mile event. It meant I had to be at the State Library grounds by 5.30am to register. Trust me it is hard to wake up just to walk 1.6km. The motivation was just not there. I did manage to force myself to go and was parked by 5.45am. Two kindly ladies helped with my registration and I chose a yellow t-shirt. They also gave me a lucky draw stub and a food coupon and a heart-shaped balloon. Since I was early, yes the rest of the crowd would only start trickling in after 6am, I wondered the library grounds and took pics. The Nescafe van was the most popular at that time and am guilty of taking two paper cups full. In my defence the cups are small, much smaller than the Milo ones, which would only open later. It's nice to see that the queue for the Milo was much longer than for the Nescafe. Later when the coffee was finished they served milk. No guesses on how short that queue was. The longest queue was for the Nestle cereal.

Lets get to the objective of this event - "Take the road to a healthy heart." We runners do that all the time. The day before I had run long. Now I was prepared to walk short. The event was graced by the Chief Minister of Sarawak, Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud and his wife, Puan Sri Ragad Kurdi Taib. Pehin Sri is also Sarawak Heart Foundation (SHF) Chairman. We learned that 26,000 cardiovascular disease cases were reported in the state last year, and about 18,000 patients were given outpatient treatment. In fact heart disease continues to rise with 24,000 cases reported in the first eight months of this year! The disease is the nation's number one killer and is the second leading cause of deaths in the state. What's more two of every three patients who die from heart disease are men. These are alarming statistics. It's through charity events like World Heart Day that the public can become more aware of cardiovascular disease and how to avoid them.

Life style change plays a big part in avoiding heart disease. That means physical activities like exercise can play a major part in preventing cardiovascular disease. So it was nice to see over 700 people participate in the Walk-A-Mile. Many brought their kids with them, and school children could be seen almost everywhere. The aerobics sessions were well received. There were 48 lucky draw hampers. Unfortunately in took awhile for the announcers to find a winner. There was a big possibility that many of the participants had rushed over to the Jom Heboh road show nearby. What was also nice to see were the long queues for the free health screening for body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose level. There were also equally long queue for the 500ml bottle of water and butter bun. The fact that I didn't breakfast before I came over meant that I ate and drank whatever was available too. There was a fashion show and games. All told everyone had lots of fun.