Adobo Run - My First Official Night Race

Last October 29, Saturday, I officially ran my first night race at the Adobo Run After Dark race event. I did not consider Nike We Run Manila as a night race because a.) the gunstart was at 5pm and b.) I finished 10k even before sunset. (Can you just feel I'm such a Nike Run hater? :p)

I thought Team Alpha 1 would be well-represented in this race but it turned out that only myself and Bryan FFS ran the 15k category. Barefoot Daves participated in the 5k category but he had to continue on his 25-kilometer LSD so I wasn't able to see him post-race.

We met KB and Mish - they did a competitive 5k run with Mish having a 6-minute head start. (Mish eventually won.)
The gunstart was crazy - it was announced in posters and Facebook posts earlier that 3k gunstart was at 8:10pm, 5k gunstart at 8:20pm and 15k gunstart at 8:30pm. Well guess what happened on race night? It was completely reversed and on different times! 3k costume runners were surprised to have been given the go signal to run 7:50pm. 5k runners were released around 8:20pm and 15k runners were the last to start at around 8:50pm. None of the original gunstart times were followed. I wonder what caused this but it definitely pissed-off a number of runners. I saw a lot of confused runners' faces.

Still, I enjoyed the race. The route was nice even though 15k runners had to bear doing 3 loops. The route was vehicle-free, much to runners' delight, hydration was ample, and lighting was satisfactory. I still haven't recovered fully from sickness, but after recovering from the initial feeling of heaviness of my legs, I began enjoying the cool breeze and increased my running pace. While running, all I'm thinking about is making it to the first 500 finishers since I really wanted to receive one of the limited finishers' medals.

During the last loop, I felt I passed a lot of 15k runners and I was excited that I'm going to have a strong race finish. Here's a pic take just before I reached the finish line. Triumphant!
I got the medal! Yay! (Photo courtesy of Adobo Run After Dark Official FB Page)
Surprisingly, I placed 50th among 400+ 15k runners when the results were released:
BUT (there's always a but) - here's the catch: Race Director Edward Kho released an official statement:

To all adobo Run participants. All the 3 race categories were indeed short as there was a considerable distance that were truncated in favor of the safety of all runners and consideration of motorists (the run was originally supposed to go out to Macapagal, pass along EDSA and cross the intersections of Coral and Bradco). All of that were scrapped in view of a major traffic flow because of the long weekend rush. I will own up to that shortcoming. It was a decision I had to make. Runners' safety (which includes provision for hydration and marshaling) and enjoyment of running and consideration of other road users are my utmost concerns in putting executing a race. If anybody felt cheated I am conveying my apologies to them.

So in effect, I just ran 13.5 kilometers. I'm still happy though because with my time, I managed to maintain an average of 5:30 pace which is the fastest I've ran this year. I'm gradually building up speed again. Yeah!