Run BGC: My 3rd 21k Run

November 28, 2010 - One week before the BIG Marathon Singapore day - one more long distance run. This time, I've decided to pace someone else doing 21k - my good friend Rap. Target is for him to get a new PR. We'll do a Galloway, alternating 7 minute runs and 1 minute rest. Hopefully, we'll have a better time than the 2:47 time Rap got during his previous 21k event (that was in Adidas KOTR).

The start/finish arch

Me and Rap before gunstart

It was my responsibility as pacer to keep pushing Rap to his limits, and after a lot of bullying (LOL!), we finally finished the race at a time of 2 hours, 40 minutes and 28 seconds, beating Rap's previous PR by 7 minutes! Woohoo! That's quite a feat!

Ivo, Ying, Rap, Me, Char-char, Tita Celeth, Geoff - after the race

21k Finishers - Proud Medalists :p

Superposition - Junar, Rap, Me, Geoff, Ying

Time to Blog Again: Unilab Run 2 2010

Yes, you read that right. Unilab Run 2 2010. Yes, that's how delayed this blog post is. It's July 2011, the event was last November 2010. Haha!

A lot has happened with my career the last few months, making me decide to give running a temporary rest and prioritize work. Of course, blogging had to stop as well. T_T

Joining the 32k category of the Unilab Run 2 last November 21, 2010 was supposedly part of my full marathon training. This will be my longest run before the big Singapore event, and it'll let me gauge if my body can withstand the long distance before reaching the dreaded marathon "wall."

Earl and Me - 32k, baby!

The early parts of the race I was pacing Earl (no pun intended) and taking it slowly. I keep reminding myself not to push myself as I have a full marathon in a couple of weeks - getting injured is not an option. Earl let me go ahead at the latter part, where I tried to keep a steady pace til the finish line.

Almost at the finish line!

Tey's Girl Friends, Me and Eugene

Proudly wearing our 32k finisher's medal

The 32k Finishers

Group shot

I SURVIVED 32KM

Runner #501 finished in 4 hours, 2 minutes and 19 seconds, placing 865th out of 1301 32k runners. To a new PR next time!

25k LSD with takbo.ph

Wow, it's been like two months since my last blog post! A lot of things have been happening lately at work which have kept me busy. Unfortunately, it affected not only my blogging, but my workouts and runs as well.

My last long distance run was the 25k LSD at MoA with the takbo.ph folks, last September 19. This run was supposedly aligned with my marathon program for Singapore. I just read about the run at the takbo.net forum and found out that my friend Jinoe (Mr. Takbo.ph) was joining, so I decided to participate as well. We did 4 loops of a simple 6.25k route.

Here's me and Jinoe at the early part of the run:

Good thing we had pit-stops at the 711 convenience store during every loop.

And of course, we wouldn't miss the group pictures after the run.

I had an "instant celebrity" moment when Jinoe mentioned me when he wrote about this 25k LSD on takbo.ph. You may read that article here.

Fort Strider's Run: My First 16k

It was a last minute decision to run this race - I didn't even invite my usual running companions to join. The only reason I registered for this event was that it matches the 16k requirement on my marathon training program for September 12. Of course I tagged Eugene along.

Race Pros:

• Registration center at Paranaque - After my practice run at Manila Memorial Park, had a 5-minute drive to Nelson Auto Repair Shop in front of Paranaque Medical Center to register. Yes, you read that right - an auto repair shop that accepts race registration.
• Cheap Registration Fee - 300 pesos only with a free singlet! I didn't like the fit though, so I didn't wear it on the race day.
• Manual barcode timing system but guess what? The results were released at the same day! Big wow!
• Ample water stations (and Pocari Sweat stations too).
• Hyper race marshalls cheering racers on. I love hyper race marshalls!

Now on to the cons:

• Race Route map was released 2 days before the actual race day. When we arrived at the venue, we found out that they scrapped the initial released route and just used the usual Runrio map, modified a bit for 16k.
• Late gunstart with no warm-up. Everyone was surprised when the gun fired to signal the race start without any heads-up whatsover.
• The event name is FS marathon - why the hell are they using the word "marathon" for an event with only 16k as the farthest category?

My legs felt very heavy at the start but after a few kilometers, I felt the leg muscles loosening up. I was really grateful Eugene paced with me until the finish line. We did a steady pace of around 6 minutes per kilometer - just the right pace we're aiming for our upcoming SG marathon. We finished in 1 hour, 34 minutes and 46 seconds.

And since we didn't have our usual running photographers with us, we had to settle on only a few shots from my celphone camera. Here's a pic of the start/finish line before the 16k gunstart:

And here's a post-race picture of me and Eugene from the race village stage:

12 weeks to go before the BIG day. I need more training!

UP ERG's Activate! Run and Pump it UP!

The University of the Philippines Engineering Radio Guild (UP ERG), my college organization, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. One of their activities is "Activate! Run and Pump it UP!", a race event held last August 29th at the UP campus. I was one of the first to register on this event, which was my 2nd race event in UP. Again, I opted to join the 10k category (plus 2 rounds at the academic oval for a total of 14.4k as part of my marathon training).

I would have to say, in the most unbiased way (hehe!), that the race singlet is one of the best as far as material quality and design are concerned. I remember being one of the first few people who saw the design, and gave the thumbs up for the black instead of the white version. The design was released a month before the actual event, and I doubted they'll be able to release the singlets on time due to their complicated side cut design. There was a slight delay on the delivery, but participants were able to claim their singlets a few days before race day. Whew!

One of the race freebies is the UP-ERG baller id. The color's orange, since it was sponsored by Enervon. Here's a pic (this is not my arm though):

Another race plus for me is we had new company, and hopefully, future regular running buddies. On pic below (from L-R): the "oldies" - me, BA, Dada, Nic and the "newbies" - Jing, Egay and Mike.

Here are the 10k runners wearing white (and yes, recycled) bibs...

... and the 5k runners, wearing their red (printed on paper and covered with plastic) bibs:

Maco is my orgmate from UP ERG. This is his first 10k run (and first running event too!).

Jing's, Egay's and Mike's first superposition shot! Weeee!

Aside from the recycled (and improvised) bibs, there are still a few more improvement areas for the race, in case UP ERG decides to do this again next year. Being an electronics organization, people were expecting them to make use of the RFID timing system, used during the Engineering Student Council's Eng'gfinity Run. I was quite alarmed at how the race marshalls (org members) were manually recording the racers' times; they were panicking! Another is that they should have double-checked the accuracy of the race route distance - the 10k was actually 10.7k! It was a challenging route nevertheless, and I enjoyed it a lot!

The race results are still not released as I write this, but I timed myself during the run so I have no problem. I clocked in at 1 hour, 4 minutes and 24 seconds, failing my sub-1 hour goal, but this was a 10.7km race anyway so I'd take it.

I normally don't write about the post-race happenings, but since we had our breakfast at Chocolate Kiss, I need to post some pics! I had the best tapsilog ever, with bottomless iced tea! And carrot cake for dessert too! Bottomline, I gained back the lost calories. LOL!

Here's a picture of us enjoying our breakfast while listening to "good" music:

We heard mass at the UP chapel afterwards, thankful again for another injury-free run.

I'm Running My First Full Marathon on December...

... and its in Singapore!

I and three running buddies - Eugene, Chrissie and Mils, have all signed-up for the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon which will happen on December 5, 2010. Eugene and I will be doing the full marathon; the ladies will be doing a half-mary.

The decision was quite impulsive - I always had this dream of doing a full marathon somewhere else, somewhere special. I was very fortunate my running friends were game to the sudden idea; of course I wanted to have people to share the experience with.

• May 20 - SCMS opened the registration for all race categories (42k/21k/10k)
• June 2 - I was browsing the web and the idea of joining a full marathon came to mind (Inception level). I told my friends about it and we decided to register the next day.
• June 3 - Eugene and I registered for 42.195km; Chrissie and Mils registered for 21.097km. We were ecstatic!
• June 4 - Registration for the full marathon closed.
• June 7 - Registration for the half marathon closed.
• June 8 - Registration for the 10k category closed.

That's how lucky we were. Everything seemed meant to be. We also got last-minute flight promo fares from Philippine Airlines. Sweet.

Here's the proof (I advertently omitted some of the fields):

I'm now on the 3rd week of Runners World's 16-week marathon training program. Thanks to The Bull Runner for the training tip!

Booboo Alert! Run to Read No Show

I've heavily promoted the Run to Read race event. I've registered early for the 15k category, excited to get my hands on that cute, purple singlet. The race was scheduled for the 15th of August. All the while, I was highly anticipating running on this event. What's wrong then?

Schedule conflict! Me and some officemates booked a very cheap flight to Jakarta, Indonesia way, way before (I think it was last year). Our vacation date: August 11 to 19! Can you believe I seriously considered cancelling my vacation just to run on Run to Read? Talk about running addiction. Haha!

But since I share the same passion for both running and travelling, the trip did push through. Besides, I miss my travelmates (they're the same people I've been with in my Beijing trip last year).

Instead of posting the usual running pics, superposition and all, let me deviate from that for once and post some travel pictures here.

Borobudur
perfecting the art of a jumpshot

nice solo shot

Borobudur is a UNESCO heritage site

Prambanan

Brahma statue inside one of the Prambanan temples

I definitely had a blast! Next time, I'm going to combine running with travel. :) Find out how on my future posts!

Lazy-blogging the Rexona Run

I've been too lazy to blog lately; I've noticed a lot of running blogsites I'm following have no updates too. Must be the weather or something.

Almost a month has passed since the highly-anticipated Rexona Run. This was Coach Rio's first attempt to organize a race at the Mall of Asia grounds. New innovations were introduced: paperless registration - using iPad on registration centers, Runrio cards which can be used on future Runrio race registrations and D-tags replacing the plastic timing chips racers normally wear on their shoes.

I fought the urge to register for the 21k category on this event. I knew it was still too early for me to declare full recovery from my previous ankle injury so I just settled for 10k.

I enjoyed the race with only one complaint: There were a lot of walkers. I'm fine with people just walking on the race route, but if they're all lined-up and blocking the path of runners, it gets quite unnerving. I hope these people observe proper running etiquette and just stay at the right side of the road. And please, stop the cam-whoring sessions at the middle of the road; there's plenty of photo opportunities at the race village area anyway.

Oh well, that's too much ranting already. Since I'm lazy blogging, I'll just post a lot of pics. Haha!

Me and Rap at the 10k starting line (taken from my celphone camera - shaky hand i got)

Me and my sister (she did 3k again)
Me and William (he's also from HP and I think this was his first race) With the band

Superposition (missing Early and Tey)

TGIBFFMKTBZ

Bumped into Char-char and her friend Kristine

Oh and by the way, I finished in 55 minutes and 15 seconds - top 4.4% of all 10k runners. Great, eh?