FAME rUn

"Buhay Marino"

Well i got a taste of what it's like to live a life of a mariner when I had an assignment to shoot for an oil company. Good thing it only lasted for a 2 weeks. Going out of the the vessel and you'll just see an endless horizon of ocean water it does take a lot of courage and well a lot more courage to work on such a place. I salute all the Filipino Sailors for having such quality.

5:42am

A sea of mariners (im not sure if they were trainees or full time employees already) were gathered at the starting grid already. All I heard was the warm up drill going on. So I skipped it and just looked for the h@ppyFeet members that I had registered for the event. I guess John Pembroke (a UK based runner visiting the PI) was already getting worried that he might not be able to get his race packet from me. I saw him already in line for the on-site registration table. :D Gave him the race packet and looked for the other runners. When all of a sudden I heard the race gun fire! It was only 5:56 on my watch. I guess they were really serious when they said that the race will promptly start at 6am.

Good thing Mon(our senior h@ppyFeet member) gladly took all the remaining race packets from me. I ran as fast as I can manage and just avoided all the traffic by going on the wrong side of the street. Good thing was that by the 1st km the runners were already spaced out. That's when I returned to the race course.

1st Turn around point

I felt that I pushed a bit too much so I decided to slow down and just maintain a good pace for the next 3km. The course also had some good incline parts. So I decided to apply my previous race strategy. Run fast as I can on the flats and just maintain a good pace on the incline.

2nd Turn around point

I still felt good and I was still very conscious on my running form. If there was something that I learned from Milo Legazpi race, it was to CONSTANTLY REMIND myself of my RUNNING FORM during a race.

I got a chance to run along with Joms and Lala by the 4th km. What surprised me was that Joms wasn't pacing for his 5km event. He only pushed harder when he asked for the time which was already nearing 19mins and we were still about 1km away from the finish line.

2nd lap

Passing by the Start/Finish line for my second lap, I was still feeling good and still very conscious again of my running form. Again I tried to push every 300meters checking if I can maintain it longer. Well I wanted to play safe this time so I reserved some for the last 2~3km of the race. I was pacing alongside a runner from mariners running club. I tried to hold on to his pace for almost a kilometer. After a good 4+minutes I felt that I still can push my pace, I did a good 2meter push and it was just in time before the slight incline which I needed to pace back a bit.

Last 2km

I knew the distance, I also knew that John and Totoy was a good 4 minutes ahead of me. I just needed to maintain my fast pace for another 1.5km and still have some left for a good push at the very last minute. Last turn, West side stretch of Mall of Asia. I did my final push. Straightened back, a little lean forward, changed my breathing and full strides. I saw the clock hitting 49:55 I pushed and again I jumped for a 49:59 finish. I just hope they did record it as a sub 50min finish. I was a bit dazed at the finish but I held on. I hope this is how I always finish a race. And hopefully I wont forget what I've learned from the last 2 races.

- h@ppyFeet moment -

After the race Doc and I planned on doing a trail run back at the San Mateo Mountains.


The mountain scene changed a bit since the last time I went there. We were greeted with this very nice view. We tackled the shortest trail there Roxas trail. We met a couple of MTB groups along the way and most of them and the locals where asking Doc and I where we had parked our bikes??? hehehehe But we did overtake them at the climbs and even on the single track section of the trail. I think they were really surprised to see that we were also going fast. Well we were just doing a nice and fun run. :)

We took the paved Halo-Halo trail going to our rest stop Giant. We were then greeted by a sudden downpour just about 500meters away from the sari sari store. We were just hoping by this time that the Instant Noodles will be instant enough for our already severe hunger. Ok so we did have the instant pancit canton...... and some rice.... and some luncheon meat..... :D hahaha we were stuffed that I was getting worried on how will we be running back to the car. It took us until 2pm for our run. The way back was full of power walks and a lot of talking.

I hope next time more h@ppyFeet members would join in the fun of trail running.

Paging RENZ, JOMS, JUDAH, CHAIA and the others! Let's go trail running again!