First half marathon - QCIM 2010

I had been looking forward to doing my first half marathon since Sept of this year. I registered the very day my friend told me about the Quezon City International Marathon to be held on Dec 5th. Since then I spent many sleepless nights thinking about it. I planned to go with two friends - Bles, whose goal was to finish her 42K within 5 hours and Jon - an ultra-runner, was to be her pacer.

The gun start for 21K was at 5am in Quezon City, Manila which is about a 1.5 hrs drive, south of Clark. I tried to sleep at 9:30 pm the previous night but could not sleep a wink. Just when I started feeling sleepy at 1 am, the alarm went off (at 1:15 am, grrrr)!! How I hated myself at that moment for signing up for it. The bed was too tempting but my friends were to pick me up at 1:45 am so I got going. We were among the first few to reach the venue at 3:30 am, which worked very well. It gave us enough time to look around, click pictures and relax.

Bles introduced me to a friend of hers - Mai, we decided to run together, after discussing our paces. The organizers made us do some stretching exercises but I was too overwhelmed to do any. We stood in line with "2 hours 30 mins" pacers as that's the target we had decided for ourselves. There were about 1,100 runners for the 21K category and about 10,000 runners overall (mostly for 5K and 10K category).

The first 4K was brilliant as we passed through some beautiful stretches in the University of Philippines, Diliman campus area. Within the first 1K, I saw the University's flagship Oblation statue. The breeze was cool with trees all around (at least 2,000 if not more), I was elated by the ambience and felt spirited to run well.

After the first 4K, I found myself on the North Edsa highway (too bad I had not bothered to see the race map before the race). One side of the highway was blocked for the marathon. The highway had its share of uphill and downhill which wasn't very pleasant. On most occasions in the past, we've simply zipped by this highway in our car, but now I had all the time to look around. Alas! all I saw was concrete and more concrete (come to think of it, trail runs are tougher than road runs but they are certainly more pleasing to the eyes!).

The turn around was at 10.5K and I was still feeling good. The first low point was that all the water stations had this sports drink - Powerade, which doesn't agree with my stomach, so had to settle for plain water only. The second low point was at around 11K when my iPod froze. I didn't feel great without music and the increasing temperature.

There was a big traffic jam on the other side of highway. Most people had some or the other expression on their face ranging from "wow, i wish i could run like that" to "crazy runners" to "damn you guys for causing the jam". At 15K my knees started hurting a bit, Mai and I decided to walk some distance. At around 17K, we entered the campus area once again which was the much needed change and I started running till I finished at 2 hours 51 minutes along with Mai. It was way off from the target I had set for myself but it didn't matter. I was too delighted to have crossed the finish line. I hydrated, stretched and let the feeling of having done it, sink in.

Bles achieved her target of sub 5 hours along with Jon by her side. The joy, elation and the sense of achievement that I saw on the faces of full marathon finishers was twice as much and understandably so. And I can't wait to start training for one!