I was not prepared for this race. For the past months, my mind was occupied with several things (job,business,family) and these three wreak havoc into my training plan. My weight goal was not achieved due to stress. I just treated this race to get rid of negative vibes, as a favor for a friend to attend this race, and to check for myself if I still have some “mojo” left into my running.
I reached the area 20 minutes before the gun start, boy it was so difficult to find a parking lot in BGC unlike before. I parked about 500 meters from the starting line. I didn’t do any warm-up exercise, I went straight into game and try to run a consistent pace. Well, I think I did a good part on that one for the first 8km until things started falling apart approaching the dreaded Kalayaan flyover. For some reason, my body is already conditioned to walk all uphills and run flat roads. I know it was a bad habit but, as my body really can’t handle it, the spirit gave in and I ended up walking all uphills in this event. Gone are the days when I would attack uphills, not minding how my quads would react and still manage to end with a nice PR. I will start working on it and hopefully, I will be able to achieve it within the year. Going back to the race, I noticed a lot of runners joining the 16.8 event. As usual, I saw the Kenyans leading the way. I believe it was Bertek I saw after the Kenyan on their way back to BGC. Then I saw Cris Sabal walking on the sideline going back to BGC (did he run this event or just a pacer?). I also saw this guy being moved to a stretcher. I saw a bloodied forehead and it look like his head hit the pavement. FB comments would later reveal that he might have an electrolyte imbalance, which caused his legs to simply give up, then he fell. I hope we get to know what really happened soon.

The route is nothing unusual, its the same old road I’m familiar with. Only this time, there were a bunch of cheerers along the road, encouraging runners and dancing along with music. I was informed beforehand that it was actually a competition between running groups, and I was suppose to judge who should win*laughs*. Anyway, who ever thought of this deserved an increase. I hope races in the future will start introducing this “add-on” feature.

Anyway, here are my scores:

Hydration (4 our of 5): Long tables that served cold water and electrolytes (100 Plus). I’m sure majority of the runners would prefer non-carbonated electrolyte drinks (e.g Pocari, Gatorade) but I’m still glad this race didn’t fail on this area. However, I noticed that when I passed some stations, the servers are still putting water into water cups than having us runners just picked one from the table. I think I passed 2 stations that I have to wait for the server to fill up a cup with water. I hope this part will be improved.

Marshalls/security (4 out of 5): Traffic was handled properly, the marshals were able to direct traffic correctly giving more priorities to runners.

After I crossed the finish line, I found myself in a very long queue waiting for my finishers bag. If I didn’t look around, I would have been stuck in there queue for more than 20 minutes waiting for my stuff. I went into another tent with no queue, hence, I got my finishers lootbag in less than 5 minutes. I hope in the future, race organizer will delegate a group to direct runners where to fall in line, direct runners to another tent if necessary etc. Best case scenario, give the medal and lootbag right after crossing the finish line.

If there’s one thing I’m glad about this race, it was that I was able to validate that I should be running on neutral shoes and not on stability shoes. I’ve been running on stability shoes for more than a year now, and it gave me pain in the heel area after each race. For this race, I used my Mizuno Aero racing flat just for kicks. I’m happy that after the run, I didn’t feel any pain at all. Finishing this race in 1:50 (unofficial), it will take me several months to gain back my speed but I need to address one thing first….my weight!

My over-all score for this race (4 out of 5)