Team JRunning: We men ran for our women at PIA

Monday, March 30, 2009

We men ran for our women at PIA

Last Sunday was a day for women in running at the Pinay In Action Run organized by Senator Pia Cayetano. It was an annual event giving importance on the role of Filipino women in our society. Our agency, NAMRIA, supported the event by sending about 50 runners from our running club with our officials involved in Gender and Development (GAD). Our delegate was headed by OIC Deputy Administrator and Information Management Department Director Linda SD Papa, Head Executive Assistant Georgia Ventura and Chief of Staff Lorelie Peralta. The event being an all women run was also supported by men. They were there either as pacers to their wives, as photographers, or simply to give support to the advocacy. We also saw familiar faces of blogger/runners participating in the event.

at the starting line (Picture courtesy of JunC)

The women in our team with DA Papa

I was at the event not only for our team but also to give support to Swthrt as she ran her 2nd 10K race. We arrived at the venue, Mall of Asia at around 5:30am. We immediately met with the rest of our group. Swthrt and I had a short warm-up run and stretching before the race. Swthrt was quite apprehensive in running the race because of her 2 week side line brought about by shin splints. In fact, she was not able to ran at the recently concluded Condura race. The race started a little over than the scheduled time of 6:00 am because of some ceremonial and photo ops which understandably for the purpose of having publicity. Anyway, the runners were released at the same time for all categories. 10K runners will have to run 4 loops (2.5K each) of the designated course.

running the first lap

running the 2nd lap

During the first lap, I had to remind Swthrt to run at her comfortable pace as this would be her first long run after a long rest. We had a short 3K run prior to this race which I posted last week On our second lap, Swthrt was steadily running at her pace but was bothered by the heat of the sun. It was really hot specially on the front side of the mall. We managed to ran the first 5K at 34:44 min. It was on the third lap that Swthrt started to feel pain on her shin. We slowed down a bit and had to make short walk breaks. It was also a good decision on our part to bring hydration belt as support because there was already a shortage of water at the aid station in front of the mall. The problem was immediately acted upon by the organizers as they were able to have bottled water on our 4th and final lap. We ran the second 5K at 38:44min and finishing with a time of 1:13:29.