Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Took the Plunge!



Registration is easy.  Now comes the hard part:  training and finishing this race at a good time.

To GOD be all the Glory!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Race Review: Batman vs Superman 10km

Now, this is a race that doesn't happen often. In line with the new movie starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (oopps sorry, wrong flick), there is a race around Mall of Asia grounds with distances of 3km, 5km and 10km.

I was registered for 10km along with friends Janine, Kerwin and Abby and rode in Kerwin's car to head to the event.  But due to unforeseen circumstances (road work on the Pasay flyover), we got to the venue pretty late. 

So late that both the 5km and 10km runners had already started.  So late that even the 3km runners started a few minutes ahead of us reaching the starting line.  But there wasn't anything else for us to do but run.

By that time, I could see the sunlight filling up the morning sky. My strategy was simple: maintain a sub-6 minute pace for each kilometer. That would lead to a sub-60 finish time.

Other than that, there were no other goals for this race.  No new PR, no faster pace than the last one.  

I was comfortable throughout the race.  What also helped me here was the relatively flat route in the entire 10km distance.  No hills or flyovers to climb over.

I did miss a turn somewhere as whenever I see a km marker, distance in my Garmin was shorter by about 1km. 

As I crossed the finish line, I saw that the distance was at 8.8km.  Rather than stop running, I decided to keep on going for the next 600 meters before making the U turn back to the finish line.  Having done that, I had completed the full 10km distance.

Note: After crossing the finish line, I stopped my Garmin watch to check the distance.  And once I decided I wanted to run some more, I walked for a few meters away so that road can be lighter from the crowd, unpaused the Garmin and ran again.  So that was a few seconds of getting a break and not recorded in my Garmin.  It is for this reason I don't consider this as a PR race (although it should have been for the distance).  Funny thing here was that my average pace was exactly the same as the PF Sub-60 10km run a month ago!  But effort was a lot easier so that's something.

Thank God for this and letting us all finish injury-free! Thank YOU LORD for my 3rd sub one hour 10km race for the year. y goal was just one sub-60 race but YOU have blessed me with two more. :)

The finisher medal was awesome and got a Goldilocks loot bag too, which had its own caramel pop corn among other things.

Pre-run nutrition: one cup of black coffee and one pineapple cake

Gu gels: none

Taken in race: water 

Pace: 1km: 5:51, 2km: 5:39, 3km: 5:48, 4km: 5:47, 5km: 5:56, 6km: 5:50, 7km: 5:50, 8km: 5:54, 9km: 5:47, 10km: 5:30