Sunday, March 29, 2009

Running With Friends

The runners at the parking lot sans Karen. She was still at the booths getting some stuff.
 Hey, Rej! Why're you hiding back there?
The runners at Bona MOA waiting for  food and drink orders to arrive.  Hungry!
It was a beautiful day for for the Pinay In Action fun run at the SM Mall of Asia grounds. The race for the 10k and 5k participants started at 6:14am (behind schedule for both, by the way). The sun was out but it wasn't too hot. and there were LOTS of runners. Although it was an "all-women run" there were actually more than a handful of men who ran with us. Also children and pet dogs.

We [Karen (382), Oneal (511), Paul (512), Rej (510), and I (556)] have been looking forward to this fun run for more than a month and have been diligent in training for the event --- well, at least half of us, anyway. Like the others I was also supposed to run the 10K, unfortunately, I am still recovering from bronchitis and the doc advised me not to push myself too hard or I will suffer a relapse. 5k it is then.

In my opinion, we all did well today. We may not have been the fastest runners, but we all made it all the way to the finish line. Since I only did the 5k I finished first among us at 41 minutes and some change. The Yalies and Karen (who all did the 10k) finished almost 15 minutes apart from each other, with Paul in the lead at 1 hour fifteen minutes and some change. The PIA organizers told us to check the website for our actual times in a few days. I wasn't sure how they planned to do it so I just checked the big timer above the finish line as I was approaching it, hehehe.I took a peek at the tally sheet and I think I came in at the 300s. I didn't even realize there were that many people running the 5k! Perhaps that was a compiled list of all the runners for all 3 events.

At first the thought of running either the 5 or 10k sounded daunting but I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, I used to be in varsity track and field in DLSU (albeit a sprinter and jumper, not a long distance runner) so at least, I had some stock knowledge on running techniques. Those distant memories served me well. I knew not to push myself too hard, but not to relax so much that I forget that it is a race. It helped that I had an MP3 player strapped on my arm playing songs by Daft Punk, Missy Elliot, PCD, etc., to help me keep to a fast pace (whether walking or running).

I can't help but dream that someday more of our NWA friends would join us pursuing a healthy lifestyle. I know, I know ... baby steps! At least it is good to know that, for starters, there are 5 of us who are already practicing it, to this degree.

And while the race is over, this is not the end of our running days. We have decided to keep on running daily (if possible). Who knows? We may just join another fun run before the summer is over.

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