Friday, March 8, 2013

Run for Your Life

It's been two weeks since I last updated, thanks to life in general aka Med School. Good news is, I haven't been slacking off. In fact, I've been doing the Insanity Workout, albeit inconsistently, as well as running longer distances with high-intensity intervals. I'm also proud to announce that after three years, I have finished my second ever 15k. I'd give myself a round of applause, but my alter egos are already worn out from this week's academic madness. I guess a few snaps will do, plus a pat on the back. Good job, self!

Here's the race I ran this weekend:


I honestly wasn't supposed to join this, given how little training I've had this past month and how swamped I am with school. However, a friend of mine in the Army (who was recently assigned here in Davao) was running and decided to sign me up. I wanted to go for the 10k, but Mister Military Man insisted I do the 15k with him and his friend. I figured an extra 5k wouldn't hurt, so I decided to give it a shot.

I have this weird habit when it comes to races. Regardless of distance, I see to it that I run from start to finish. When my dad and I used to run together, we would set distances and made sure that we saved the walking for cooling down. I guess the practice stuck, because no matter how tired I am, I don't stop. 

Now, imagine how I felt halfway through.

If my legs could talk, I swear they would have been cursing me to the high heavens. I started out pretty good; we did a good 5 minute stretch (which wasn't enough, I know, but we arrived just in time for the gun start) and weren't going full-speed. We kept a steady pace all throughout. However, 8 kilometers into the race I started to feel my feet getting heavy. I shook it off by putting my go-to hype songs on replay (Flo Rida's "Wild Ones" and Avicii's "Levels" get me pumped like crazy) up until the race ended. We decided to sprint the last 100 meters to the finish line and clocked in at 1 hour and 55 minutes. 

The race was generally well-organized. We started on time, water stations were spread out evenly, and even though plastic cups were used, the marshals made sure that we threw the paper cups in specific trash bins located near the water areas. No cups were scattered along the street, which was awesome. We were also given Pocari Sweat by a sweeper on our way back from the turn-around; that kept us hydrated in our last few meters. Breakfast consisting of cinnamon bread, a hard-boiled egg, and a banana was served as well.

Neither of my friends placed, since they were running at my pace. (Sorry, boys!) I do think they could have won though, had they left me behind. Of course, I didn't place either. I did, however, win a cellphone during the raffle! Good thing we were patient enough to wait for the program to end.  Well, I was really just still too tired to move. One of those rare moments where something good comes out of being lazy, eh?

I got to take home this baby:


It's a T29 TV Duo MyPhone. It can house two SIM cards. Plus, it has a TV. Pwede na!

Also, a few pictures post-race:

My friend James and I. I'm clearly worn out, while he's still up and running.

With the rest of the group. Yay, cellphone! 

In fairness, the run kept me up pretty much the whole day. I didn't feel tired, save for a few moments of zoning out. I'm not thinking of running another 15k anytime soon, though. I still think it's best that I work on my endurance more for now before doing anything past 10k.  

All in all, it was a great experience, though! Here's to doing more runs this year!