Rain. That was the key difference between this year’s edition of the Men’s Health & Shape Night Run and the previous years. I’ve ran in the past two editions of the race and they were hot and humid affairs. The 2013 race featured the same route but as the announcer mentioned at right before the start, the light drizzle and cool night air are pretty ideal for running personal best times. I wasn’t sure about that though, having not trained after suffering an bad ankle sprain at the start of Ramadan.
Like previous years, we started this 12 KM race from the Palace of Justice heading towards the PICC before making a left turn into parts unknown (I’m still not familiar with the place), and like previous years, the start was a mess with every single competitive category starting off at the same time. I wonder when will the organizers create a staggered start to reduce the congestion….after all these are competitive categories that we are talking about.
There were a diverse bunch running this year, running must have really caught on in 2013 (I didn’t run as much this year since Natalia is around). But it was still strange to see people joining a competitive race only to stop running at the 1 kilometer mark. The crowd cleared at about the 3 kilometer mark where the 1st water station was.
Anyways, I manage to proceed at a brisk clip after that but it was hard to relearn how to run in the Adizero as previously before the enforced break I was running in trail running shoes on tarmac (there’s a reason for this, there’s a lot of debris and stones on my regular route). Being a 12 KM race, and having experienced running in marathons (42KM), the kilometers seem to pass really quickly. I was running on empty for this race and I ended up doing something that I don’t do on short distance events…I had a Gu each at the 6 KM and 9 KM water stations. They helped…a lot.
The course was the same as last year’s…. I honestly believe that the couple of nasty inclines at the end were meant to keep everyone awake. I didn’t have my brother to push me this year (he gave the event a miss), but I managed to hit the finish line in 1:13, over 3 minutes longer than the personal best I got last year. It was still good enough for a medal though, it was a lucky thing that the organizers decided to expand the medal pool to 1,000 in the Men’s Open, but as it is, I’m quite satisfied to finish in 519th place.
The goodies bag that I received at the end of the race was a mix bag as usual. No cornflakes this time, more useless vouchers but I did see several Juiceworks vouchers that can be of use, along with a copy of Men’s Health Magazine, several knick-knacks…and a condom.
