Two Races in One Day's Time!

near finish line

In my previous blog entry, I started off with statements such as:

"This could be my final race for the year.";

"But as of now, my race schedule is FREE!  Not a single race registered or booked for the future!  It's off season for this RFB!"

And yet here I am writing again (and eating my words) about doing two races in one day's time, something which I have never done before in my life!  So how did these races came to be?  Read on...

RACE NO. 1 - RESCUE RUN 

When Alvin and I ran together Friday morning, I told him that this was a race we could do as it is for a worthy cause and that cause was to help the people in Visayas Region affected by Typhoon Yolanda.

Bullrunner also had a similar run in BGC for Saturday morning but I preferred to do this because of the race bib (making race more official).  My siblings chose Bullrunner's run as they needed to do a long run that day.  Both races look good to do as proceeds from both runs will go to charity.

I invited Alvin and Janine for this.  Both confirmed for it the night before but only one showed up (the other overslept... guess who!).

The race had a gun start of 5:45am but we started 5 minutes later, which was okay for all of us.  We registered on the site and did some stretches and warm ups before the 10km race.  I was still tired from previous day's 10km run so wasn't in race mode here.  I was thinking of just doing it at a slow 8-minute pace and be done with it.

The route was from the starting line to Kalyaan Bridge and back again.  Repeat and rinse!  Haha.

So this was my first time to run on Kalayaan Bridge twice for a 10km race!  That was UP HELL for me but I kinda enjoyed it and got into the zone.

I took water breaks and walk breaks on Kalayaan Bridge and would run off again.

The picture above was me near the finish line (Thank God!).  I grabbed a cup of water and bag of chips (and not letting that go!) from the last water station before I sped to the last 300 meters to the finish line.

It was a great run and I had a great time.  Congrats Greentennial Run!

amount contributed for Yolanda! Congrats guys!

I finished at a time of 1:11:30 with a distance of 10.48km (Garmin based distance) and pace of 6:49.  Woo hoo!  Happy with my time considering I set a much lower standard for my performance here :)


RACE NO. 2 - OUTBREAK MISSIONS!

Then, there's the second race.  Another run which I hadn't signed up for.  Luckily, Janine won 10 free slots via an online contest and I got to be part of her team PAWS.

I couldn't decide though whether I had time to do it and only confirmed early evening that I was okay for it.  It was held in Filinvest, Alabang and we were part of Wave 2.

Our wave schedule was supposed to be at 11:00pm but due to some delays made, we started at 11:30pm.

This is different from regular Outbreak Races in that although there are still zombies involved here, there is also a task that you need to accomplish, which in essence was trying to find a cure for the zombie infestation.

Our group of 10 became 9 as we literally lost a team member and couldn't find her in the first zombie attack.  Janine lost all three of her lives in that zombie attack.  Another team member fell with four other people and got some deep cuts on her hands.  Another team member fell in the bushes but otherwise came out unscathed.  I lost one of my lives here too.  It was quick, brutal and a lot got injured in that darkened road as zombies started running from your front and rear at the same time!  We heard stories about a girl fainting while another guy fell and landed on his ribs.  Man, this was hardcore.

Thankfully it wasn't like this most of the way as we slowly walked to Filinvest Mall and tried to complete the three tasks inside.  There were zombies in the stairs, zombies in the mall, and a lot of "scientists" and "soldiers" giving clues to our mission.

It was a long race but quite a fun experience for a lot of us.  We finished in 1 hour and 30 minutes.  I had two lives intact and got a souvenir dogtag. Our team ended up being "infected" as we chose poorly on one of the key moments in this race involving a crazy guy in orange jumpsuit.

Our missing team member was waiting for us at the finish line (she got sprained when she fell in the first wave of Zombie attack) but was still happy for her loot bag (nice shirt and bag).

Congrats Outbreak Manila for one cool race!  You guys rock!

In my official Zombie race shirt

 

Team PAWS!

That was one heck of a Saturday!

Finally, here are some scary pictures to haunt you in your dreams (you can imagine our fears that night when we had to face them in reality!)