Monday, September 6, 2010

Missed Coffee, but went to a Hospital

The bedside clock displayed 5:35am as I woke up Saturday morning.

Ugh! I woke up late!

The previous night's race preparations for Saturday's Figaro 10k went all for naught as I overslept, due to the long drive from QC to Nasugbu and back to attend the wake of my officemate's Dad there. I had no driver-reliever so I drove 3hrs to Nasugbu, then 5 hours back (because of the traffic and stopovers).

It might've been good as well since my body was obviously not conditioned to race that Saturday. Still dead tired and groggy, I went back to sleep.

I found out later in the day thru my batchmate that the 5km loop of the race only measured 4.44km according to his miCoach. Tsk tsk...

***

Thanks to takbo.ph's List of Races, I was able to find a race for the next day: The St. Luke's Hospital QC Urology Alumni 3k/5k for P300.00. Knowing the pros and cons of a cheap reg-fee, I still decided to sign up since these legs were aching to race (my last race was the Aug.1 Rexona Run 5k). A sub-30 5k dream must be achieved. Further, this race was just a 5-minute drive from home so even if I wake up at 5:35am, I can still make it to the the 6:10am gun-time.

Sunday morning I was relaxed as I arrived in St. Luke's QC. I felt that sub-30 was imminent, despite being awestruck by the presence of the mighty Kenyans warming up (yes, even for a small race such as this, they were THERE!).

The attendance was around less than 300 combined for the 3k and 5k runners. The gun went off a few minutes late, but that was ok.

By the middle of the 2nd kilometer I felt that sub-30 was going to be impossible at this point due to two reasons. One, the race course was laid with calf-killers: hills. It was like Botak Baguio without the cool breeze and elevation. I started with 5:30 on km1 and succumbed to 6:20 by km4. Hill-training is still my achilles' heel (hehe).

The second reason was that the race distance, similar to Figaro Run the day before, was short. My 305 measured it at a measly 4.21km. Despite my finish time of 25:33, the 6:05/km average pace made me conclude that even if the race was exactly 5km, I won't be able to reach sub-30.

Yup, I'll have to make hill-training mandatory in my training from here on in.

***

So what's up with these two races (Figaro and St. Lukes) and their route-distances (4.44km and 4.21km), right? I feel that it's an essential part of each race that the distance should be damn accurate. Be it a P550.00 or P300.00 registration fee, the distance MUST be accurate.

Am I right or am I right?

So please do better next time and, for my part, I will do better with the hills, too.

Deal?

1 comment:

  1. haha I initially thought of coffee and hospital's relevance! but anyway, I agree with you, for fees that high, the participants deserve to race with more or less accurate category distances. nevertheless, hope you still enjoyed your runs. nice post! :)

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