Last Sunday, I joined the Condura Skyway Marathon, where thousands of participants ran for the mangroves. It was my first 21km run, and needless to say, the experience was nothing short of remarkable. Prior to this event, I had done 8 runs with distances ranging from 5km to 16.8km.
It's not that simple to physically prepare for a run. For a half-marathon, you need to train for a couple of months. I started practicing after Christmas, which was timely since I immediately burned the excess calories from the bountiful food during the holiday season. I ran around our village and the loop at the Madrigal Business Park, just behind our office in Alabang.
On race day, I planned to wake up at 2am since the assembly time for 21km runners was at 3am. At 10pm the previous day, I was forcing myself to get some shut-eye, coz I figured that a decent 4-hour sleep would be enough. However, since it was earlier than my usual bed time, and probably out of excitement about the run, I only had around 30 minutes of sleep! I was in bed, but I was mentally awake most of the time. Left without a choice, I took a shower, geared up and left the house at 2:30am.
A familiar sight greeted me at the assembly area - a sea of runners getting ready for the race early in the morning. But this was way earlier than my other runs.
At the starting point with the Wave A runners, I ran into Jerry, one of my running buddies at Anxa. He's a hardcore runner who has done several half-marathons before. I told him that my target finishing time was 2 hours and 30 minutes, based on my record for the 16.8km run at the Adidas King of Road last year, where I finished in 1 hour and 57 minutes. I thought it was a safe estimate, and it was a pretty decent finishing time because the Milo races would only give medals to 21km runners who make it in 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Jerry said it was highly possible for me to meet my objective. He had an important warning though - the last 5kms of a 21km run is very different. That's when you feel the soreness of your leg muscles, especially for first-time runners of this distance.
He couldn't have been more right. Found that out for myself a couple of hours after.
For the first half of the run along the skyway, I was cruising with a steady pace of 6 to 7 minutes per kilometer. In 1 hour and 7 mins, I was already at the 10.5km U-turn spot, and I thought to myself, I could even finish faster than I had anticipated. The runner's discipline really paid off, because even if a lot of runners had overtaken me at the beginning, I maintained my pace and I was not tempted to follow theirs. True enough, I eventually caught up with them somewhere along the way.
It is really nice to run on the skyway which is usually just traversed by vehicles, and due to its high elevation, the breeze of a cold sunday morning made it even more exhilirating.
The challenge came past the 14km mark when I started to feel pain in my left leg. Jerry's warning started to resonate in my head. It threw me off my pace, and I had to pause and stretch at the side so as not to disturb the other runners. I thought stretching was gonna do the trick, but the pain kept coming back. Every stride resulted in a cringe, and I did my best to bear and grin it. I stopped 5 times just to stretch, and I breathed a sigh of disappointment every time I did because I knew it was hurting my chances to reach my goal.
At the 17km mark, my left knee was starting to give. I resorted to a combination of walking and jogging from that point forward, for I felt that I could suffer a more serious injury if I pushed myself to the limit. I was closely watching the time, and fortunately, eventhough I slowed down on the home stretch, I accomplished my objective. I reached the finish line in 2 hours, 28 minutes and 22 seconds.
At the end of it all, I still felt like a winner. I wasn't one of the fastest runners in the 21km category, but I beat the finishing time that I set for myself. I was limping after the run, but my heart was swelling with pride because of my accomplishment.
