It seems that running venues in the Philippines are mostly in Fort Bonifacio area. This is evident with the latest run held last April 20, 2008 but this time, it is actually organized by Global City and Anta Sportswear. Anta, by the way, is the biggest sports enterprise in China having opened its branches there in 1994. It has only two branches in Philippines with one being at High Street and a second branch at Trinoma mall. The Php 150 fee payment came with the normal race number (bib number 580 for me), a white cotton tee shirt with design similar to the poster above. Back of shirt had 4th Global Run written on top part of it as well as repeating the same design. Anta logo is also featured somewhere on the shirt. They also included race map for this route and upon reading it, I found out that the route will just be around Fort Bonifacio area. So course will pass through the International Schools, Speedzone, High Street, S&R, Market Market, etc. This time there will be no uphill climbs (unless I mistaken the International Schools for flat area). There is also coupon given once you finish the race for 20 -30% discount at Anta clothes at their branch here.
The route was one of the best I have done in this area (Fort Bonifacio) as it was relatively flat all the way so no uphill struggles and not much jeepneys or cars here so we mostly had the roads to ourselves. The 10KM runners started promptly at 6:00AM, followed by the 5KM and lastly, by the 3KM. I actually felt good throughout the entire race and it was pretty well organized too with lots of water (Per and I were right in thinking that they do not want it to be another Mizuno Run...sorry guys but that was really bad), lots of signs pointing to the right directions for 5 and 10K runners, and marshals and ambulances constantly on guard for emergency back-ups. Only bad thing I can think of here is that there was no measurement on the kilometers we have already covered or how many KM we still had to cover. On a personal note, I got a new PR here (by just 5 seconds) to get a finish time of 58 minutes and 33 seconds. Still a long way to go for me but quite happy as target for this year was to try and go down an hour (this is third time to do so) from first run of 1 hour 12 minutes at start of January. Per also got a new PR of 35 minutes, a big improvement from her average finish time of 38 - 40 minutes so we were both in high spirits and very good mood that our work out at the gym seem to be paying off. Some personal changes I made to this race were wearing an Adidas blue singlet which I purchased the day before at Trinoma Mall and also cycling shorts underneath my running shorts to keep me dry and remove chafing, which I had a lot of in the previous race (also at Fort). Biggest change for me was not using my Mini IPOD and just focused on my running more. Instead, I lent the device to Per so that she can have more upbeat songs and also since she hadn’t charged her Ipod for this race (this actually turned bad for her as after about running for 10 minutes, my Ipod conked out eventhough I had it charged for a good 15 hours the previous days). She was also sporting new Nike running shirt and shorts for this race so maybe that also helped motivate and influence her run for this race. My sister, two brother-in-laws and nieces and nephews all joined this race too with the kids running the 3KM event. All in all, a good run for all of us here (except for my one niece who vomited mid-race but thank goodness, normal again at end of the run).
Group getting bigger already (runners of all ages)
my running nieces. I'm sure their parents are proud of them!
For Art's Sake!
Our youngest Runner who finished 3K at 45 minutes. Not bad!
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