Condura Skyway Marathon 21k event

(At the starting line - 21km Wave A)

This serves as my first Half Marathon for 2011, and therefore an automatic PR for the year. I know it will take some time before I could be fast enough to ever beat my all time PR but decided instead to do yearly PR records to be able to push myself to improve but at the same time, not to push myself too much that would injure me some more.

Sadly, after doing this year's Condura race, I realize I am not yet fully healed but it is a big improvement from before as I hardly limped this time around when I finished the race. Just a few months ago, it will take me at least 24 hours to be able to walk properly again. So hopefully, I was able to get the right shoes (and shoe size) from Runnr Store in Fort Bonifacio.

But the foot pain was still there (from 10km onwards) and it gave me a hard time to be able to fully enjoy the race. I definitely need to do more stretching and use more weights for my legs this week.

Other than that, this was a great race! The route was different this time for the 21km runners as we started on Ayala Avenue and headed towards the Skyway, made the U turn there (after passing the U Turn areas for the 10km and 16km runners) before going down to Buendia Avenue, and going to Fort Bonifacio via Kalayaan Bridge for the finish line. A lot of hill (or bridge/skyway) climbs, which were painful for my knees but it was still a great experience.

There were so many runners! From what I read in the newspaper, they expected about 15,000 runners! And Per, who waited for me at the finish line, mentioned that the finish line resembled that of the STARTING LINE (in terms of the number of people crossing it)! Wow, how crazy is that?

There were a lot of sports drink and ice cold water and I even got a banana at one of the stations along Buendia Avenue (excuse to walk to as I happily gobbled it away). Takbo.ph members were there too in one of the support stations and Takbo.ph founder Jinoe screamed at the top of this lungs to make me run again!!!! Boy, I was scared so I had to run.... away from him.... before I stopped to walk again! Hahaha! But seriously, thanks for that push!

The Skyway route was longer that what I expected (as thought that we would go down the same way we came up from) but there were regular road markers indicating how far I am from the exit: Buendia Exit 2km; Buendia Exit 400 meters; so in a way, it's pretty cool that road signs meant for cars were used this day for the 15,000 runners!

Yes, we runners for one morning owned the SKYWAY!


Picture picture!!!!
21km finisher!

As evidenced by these photos, a good thing about running a race as popular as this one is that you would see a lot of familiar faces on the road. Whether they are your friends or family members, you all have one common goal: to meet the challenge of running a race and to finish it! A hearty congratulation to all runners!

Kudos to race organizers (TonTon and Patrick C.) for an awesome event! Can't wait for Condura Year 5!

3rd 2011 race = 3rd Finisher Medal!

Race results are out and can be found here: http://www.pinoyfitness.com

I ranked 1158th place out of 1,733 runners (top 66%) with a time of 2:43:51.

My Garmin time was at 2:43:26, a 2011 21km PR. Hahaha!!!