RUNew - Great Route - Walk Don't Run

It was an early wake-up call today February 22, 2009 for the RUNew (Run For New, Active and Healthy Lifestyle and Save Lives) as sponsored by Asian Hospital and Medical Center and organized by RunRio held at McKinley Hills at Taguig City.

At 4:45am I, my son Dax and daughter-in-law Pam where already entering the parking building. Lucky for us we were just a couple of minutes ahead before the queue of cars started to built up at the entry booth of the parking building as participants have started arriving one after the other. Nice Parking Building, but, for a fixed P50.00 parking fee it was a bit expensive on local standards. But, why fret for the place was well secured and safe for your car and valuables to give you a peace of mind during the race.

At the assembly area there was a big projection screen, tents, booth, and a number of marshals and ushers of the event and the MC was already making some announcement. What I saw at the grounds when I arrived was a feeling of a well organized race event at hand. While waiting for the start for the start of the race, I tried to look for some familiar faces and saw only Alex and Elaine. My mind was set for a 5:30 am start, however, as the time came nearer, the announcer was mentioning a 5:45am start or a 15 minutes delay (this is my only negative comment of the event).

At 5:45am the 15K event started. The route went to a new twist, turn, up and down the McKinley Hill complex which was not used before. This is definitely a much better route inside the McKinley grounds compared to those used on previous events. At the 1Km distance marker, Jay (Prometheus Cometh) overtook and greeted me and boy was he flying. All along the route there were enough water stations and marshals to guide the participants.



At the Bayani Road about 400meters before entering the Heritage West Cemetery there was an accident involving two motorcycles colliding head on. Fortunate for the victims there was a ready ambulance with paramedics at hand supposedly for the race event who were more than kind and willing to assist them.

Again, as a new innovation, the route turned to Heritage West Cemetery for a round-about before proceeding to the East Heritage Cemetery’s usual round-about. This innovation is great as the race was confined to a private road free of vehicles. Just before exiting West Heritage I overtook Jinoe (Manokan Express) and Queenie. They were a sight to behold, love birds running together. Why did I not do this one when I was young?

My greatest high of the event was from 11th to the 14th Km distance markers as this was the hilly part of the Bayani Road and I was overtaking those that were running as against my Race Walking. By the 14Km it was back to a downhill route that some of those that I overtook gained on me. Race Walking on downhill is very difficult. Then finally the finish line was on sight and I saw Bards (Banana Running) and her friends were with my son Dax and in-law Pam cheering me. It was a nice feeling, thank you guys.

I crossed the finish line in 01h51m34s for the 15Km on full race walking style placing 339 out of 389 finishers. It was 8 minutes faster than my simulated run last 15Feb09 which was done lonesome. The crowd and the runners were the contributing factor to gain speed. As a summary, my walking was 50 ranks better than the others who were running. Next in sight is the CONDURA 21K Skyway Run For The Whale Shark scheduled for March 22, 2009 this one will also have anexciting rout, a first time locally a race will be using the skyway. It will be another Walk Don’t Run for me.

Congratulations to my daughter-in-law Pamela who was 6th Place in the 5K Female non-MD category with a time of 00h 28m 24s. She out run her husband Dax by exactly 6 minutes flat.

In my vocabulary, RUNew was a great and well organized event. Kudos to Rio Dela Cruz for another job well done. Complete offcial results of the race can be seen at http://runrio.com/ This is where I think the organizers are best ... results are posted in shortest possible time after the race.