"Airspeed - Runs For A Cause" - A 9 Star Rating

AIRSPEED – Runs For A Cause was held today April 5, 2009 at the SM Mall of Asia at the Manila Bay.

It has been more than eight months since I have taken the running route at the SM Mall of Asia. Fearing that I might find myself in a difficulty for a parking space and not knowing the side streets at the MOA, I have to wake-up my “running family” early. With heavy eyes, we left Paragon Plaza in Mandaluyong at 4:45am.

In the van Pamela, my daughter-in-law was in high spirit for this will be her very first 10K run. It was not easy to convince her to finally let go of her usual 5K run which I believe she should have long elevated herself to a longer distance particularly having been on two occasions on podium finishes for the 5K and a PR of 28m30s. Pamela’s target for the 10K is a “sub one hour”. For my son Dax, he will still be doing the 5K and signified his target of 35min for his satisfaction. On my part, I have decided to run the first 5K and race walk the last 5K hopefully to attain a time of sub 01h10m. These were the goals for the day.






There was no traffic as expected and finding a parking was a breeze with MOA security guards guiding vehicles to available parking areas. Surprisingly by 5:10am we have already parked and on our way to the starting area. As this race is organized by Coach Rio Dela Cruz through http://finishline.ph/ my expectations were high. True to my mind set, the starting chute was already in place, there were eight portalets on both sides of the starting area, a great number of booths for exhibits, the registration booth was very busy as last minute runners were still registering and those who have registered on-line were collecting their race bib and singlet. Then the sound systrem was crisp and clear with a designated MC having pleasant voice. All in place and just awaiting for the starting gun.





While awaiting the starting gun, I had an opportunity to have a chit chat with Tony Meloto the man behind the “Gawad Kalinga”, Coach Rio, the President of Airspeed (sorry I didn’t get the name), my Ultra running buddies Mark and Lala and even had photo ops with Leo Valdez the “engineer” of the play Miss Saigon.






At exactly 5:45 the starting gun sounded. There were no surprises expected as the route is fairly flat which is to take the 10K runners on a double lap on the course mapped below;





There were markers all the way and water station every 2km which fully satisfy the requirement of a road race. After the first 3km of the race my personal lapse in judgement was eminent, SHADES or SUN GLASSES. Having been used to run in the Fort and experiencing a clear sky today, the sun was so visible and glaring after just being 5 degrees above the horizon. I did not bring my shades and for the remainder of race was greatly inconvenienced by glare of the sun.

After hitting the 5km marker, as planned I started to do race walking to protect my knee as I cannot afford any injury with the LA marathon just a month over away. The remainder of the race was uneventful and I crossed the finish line at 01h08m42s a goal for the day achieved. As for my daughter-in-law Pamela she completed the 10K at 01h02m37s which was over the sub 1 hrour target. It was still fast as she was 15th in the female category. Pamela now is officially a “10K devirginized mother”.

I am posting hereunder some photos taken after my crossing the finish line to show the crowd and the systematic handling of photovendo for the free souvenir photo of participants in hard and soft copies, very thoughtful of the organizers.





Despite the economy crisis that the world is into, we in the Philippines are lucky to have generous companies like AIRSPEED who have given the "running community" the much needed road races to support our love in running. Furthermore, these corporate organizations have a big heart in sharing their proceeds to worthy organizations as beneficiaries. Thank you to all of you and in this particular case ... AIRSPEED.

To the organizers my audit findings for “Airspeed – Runs For A Cause” 9 stars out of 10. Race results are already posted at http://runrio.com/