Mukhang Guilty’s BLOG

FOR SOME PEOPLE, Sundays are reserved for rest and relaxation, unwinding, recharging, and maybe detoxifying after nights wanton inebriation.  BUT NOT FOR ME my Sundays are never relaxing… I am an adrenaline junkie, I always have to be doing something….staying idle on Sundays will drive me insane. Such was the case yesterday, I was set to go diving with Hernel but I got an SMS from Joy early Saturday that the Sunday dive will not push through.  That got me scouring through my phonebook smsing people what their running plans were for Sunday.  Mars and Jenny didn’t have any plans.  Bards and Mesh were in Fuego for the Mizuno Fuego Run.  Hubert.. the person that i least expected to ask me to go Sunday running asked me if I wanted to do TRAIL RUNNING somewhere in TIMBERLAND HEIGHTS… apparently he has a secret stash of CYCLING FRIENDS who are also in to running.  

The trail run in Tmberland Heights that my brother was referring to is actually the Men’s Health All Terrain Race.  The MHATR was something that i’ve read about from The Bullrunner’s Race Schedules, or from the adverts in Men’s Health Magazine, and Fitness First.  I never really took a lot of interest to it because Trail Running wasn’t really my “thing”.  But given that it was the only available option on Sunday, I agreed to do it.  

You have three options for the race, 1) Do the Trail Run, 2) Do the Mountain Bike Race, or 3) Do BOTH.  The 12km trail run precedes the 20km Mountain Bike Race.  I did option one, and as a precaution, I checked out the website, and briefly skimmed through it to see if there were any special requirements for the race…..

These following were the things that i remembered reading off the website:

1. BLA BLA BLA
2. COURSE LENGTH OF 12 km
3. ROUTE MIXTURE OF DIRT, GRAVEL ROADS, and CEMENT ROADS.
4. SPECTACULAR VIEWS

The following were the things that CARELESSLY MISSED OUT.. more on these later:

1. SINGLE TRACK TRAIL
2. THE COURSE FEATURES A LOT OF CLIMBING

In my mind, the course was gonna be a piece of cake, 12km is easy, and running on DIRT and GRAVEL roads should not be TOO HARD, i could just do an EASY RUN and enjoy the scenery.. sabi nila spectacular daw yung view eh

Hubert and I met up with Averyl and her husband on race day.  Both Averyl and her husband are hardcore cyclists who decided to cross train that weekend by joining the trail run.  Them being cyclists got me really really interested, I started asking them questions about cycling… like what how often to they train, when they train, where they train, and what’s a good brand of bike etc etc… It seems like I’ve found people who i could go cycling with

The sun was already up when the race started at 6:30… thank God i brought my sunnies and my running cap.  Hubert, and I were somewhere in the middle of the pack when the race started… so being competitive brothers, we started trying to pass everyone. It was when we encountered the first hill after 100 meters, that our gap started to widen.  The first hill was ok, it was like running the hills in Corinthians.  I completed the first hill without much trouble, but with one hill came another… then another… then another… SHIT, i don’t recall reading that there were lots of HILLS!!! (siempre naman the website never said that there were lots of hill, it said.. IT FEATURES A LOT OF CLIMBING… climbing normally is not synonymous with running so OBVIOUSLY I NEVER PAID ATTENTION TO IT.. hehehe).  

The first two kilometers were on paved roads, after the cement road.. followed the dirt road… what wasn’t clear on the website was that DIRT ROAD could also mean MUDDY ROAD with ZERO TRACTION… you’d be crazy to run it coz you’d just slip and prolly break a bone or something.  There was this 10 meter stretch of MUD between kilometer 2 to kilometer 7 that I had to LITERALLY WALK WITH MY ARMS STRETCHED OUT TRYING TO HOLD ON TO SOMETHING IN CASE I SLIPPED!!!… so much for my race time:).  One thing that I liked about the race, was that even though the race was PURELY HILLS, I was able to hydrate myself properly as they had more than enough water in all their hydration stations. 

There were also kilometer markers at the last 5 kilometers of the trail… although sometimes, I wished they’d warn us of what’s up ahead as well.  When I reached the last 5 KM marker, I looked at my time, i was doing 27 minutes… ooh, I could go SUB hr for this run :)…. NOT!!!… It was in the last 5 kilometers that my run went really CRAZY.  From kilometers 8 till 9, dirt road became SINGLE TRACK TRAIL… I never really knew what SINGLE TRACK TRAIL meant till i RAN it.. you literally had to run on a SINGLE NARROW TRACK, the track was so bumpy and partially covered with grass that you spend more time looking at the trail path than enjoying the view.

The HIGHLIGHT of my run occurred at around KM 9.  As i completed my single trail section, I passed one of the manong MH staffers monitoring the race.  He saw me, had this pleasant smile on his face, and said… SIR konti nalang yan… pataas na po yan.  I wasn’t quite sure that I HEARD his second statement correctly, I thought I heard PATAAS instead of PATAPOS but i figured with his smile, he must have said PATAPOS.  So moving along for another couple of meters, as I turned around the corner… lo and behold… I saw the ULTIMATE HILL, the hill length was prolly just 150 to 200 meters, but it was steep… damn steep… I could already see people giving up and walking the hill.  I felt challenged, I didn’t wana stop, so I went ahead, took a couple of deep breaths and went for it… first I ran, then jogged, and then hopped the hill, my heart rate went from  160 to 180 to 204 BPM… it was the first time that i’ve ever gone over 195 for my heart rate…. so I guess manong said PATAAS instead of PATAPOS

What goes up must eventually come down, so the last few kilometers of the race were all downhill, it was hard on my knees but I did manage to complete little to no pain…  I crossed the finish line at 1:02:xx, I’m still waiting for the official results from the MH website.