A family that races together...

.....finishes together and of course...stays forever!

So, me, hubby and our 2 girls - Danielle and Julia together with my sister, Bam with her friend, Gemma, and my niece, Erika woke up at 3:30 a.m., Sunday to prepare for the SGV run at MOA.

It will be our (me and hubby) second 5K race and first 3K race for the girls.  I told them to drink milk and  eat some boiled bananas.  Anyway, gun time for 3K and 5K races are still around 6 AM so we still have time to digest them.

Very early pre-breakfast meal.

I was having some hesitation on whether the fun run will proceed since the weather was not cooperating.  It had been raining the day before and hopefully, the rains are good sign for those who took the 2011 bar examinations last Sunday.  You see, it was the first time that bar examination will be conducted using Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and the barristers this year are the guinea pigs!

On our drive going to MOA, we were guessing that since this fun run collided with a big gun, the Chevrolet-NB Power Run, may be runners joining the event will be only around 2 to 3 thousand.  Alas, when we arrived at the race site, our estimate further went down to 1 thousand.  It seems that most of the participants are auditors just by looking at the profiles of those we met (nerd-looking, wearing eyeglasses most of the time...sorry for typecasting..I'm also an auditor once).   May be they were being required by their bosses...lol.

Realizing that we will indeed run under the rain, we decided to ditch the umbrella during the warm up exercises.  Julia seemed to enjoy the scattered shower while doing the warm up.

Doing warm up under the cold morning rains!

Oh, the lady host was wearing the same shorts as mine...well, except for the size of course!  Nice taste=D

That green Adidas shorts are nice!

At exactly 6AM, the 10K runners (around 100 more or less) went off first.  Then us, the 5K runners were called.  I noticed a couple of runners who will run barefoot but they still carry some sandals (or may be the Vibram five fingers?) just in case they pass by some rough surfaces.  Gun was fired and we took off.

To be honest, I was targetting a sub 35 for this 5K run but I'm sure I wasn't able to do it.  I even performed worse than my maiden run.

Is it because of the five games of badminton I played last Friday during the PMSEA tournament?

Me playing hard at the PMSEA Tournament.

 Or may be because I have my first day of monthly period ?  Grr, I'm too conscious to run, especially because it's raining!  I could not take off my jacket for there might be some blood stain in my shorts!  And worse, in my jacket's pocket there is a digital camera and 2 cellphones!  Why?  Because even if we already told all the girls to leave their cellphones at the car, Gemma and Kikay still brought theirs.  And since they don't have pockets where they could hide their phone in order not to get wet, they left them all to me.  Grrr!

Anyway, hubby sprinted early on the race so I was left to run by myself.  And by golly, it seems that most of the auditors may be still tired from their work hence, could not continuously run past the 1K.  A lot were just walking...and they were chatting and laughing...lol.

Around 200 meters to the finish line, I saw two girls chatting while walking.  Recognizing that they are Julia and Kikay, I called them up from behind.  Then, when they saw me they immediately sprinted for fear that i will get ahead of them.  They ran 3K but it looked like we will be finishing altogether..so I took up their challenge and also sprinted.  I beat them ...hahaha.

So, we finished the race.

The proud finishers!

And we have a picture taken with the cute host...but sorry, I don't know his name.  He's a celebrity, I'm sure.

Posing with Mr. Cute Host

We inadvertently skipped the after run party (where according to my officemate who ran for 3K) had plenty of free cotton candies and popcorn!  Oh, how nice!  But, then our big breakfast at home is waiting and we could not wait to feed our grumbling stomachs!

'till next run!

Day Before My First 5K!

Ever since I signed up for the 5K fun run of the AKOR, there’s this excitement I could not contain.  My 5k training plan entails a five-week workout plan consisting of 4x a week run/walk for certain number of minutes.

To say that I religiously followed the training plan is a mis-assessment (if there’s such a word).  Around half of the plan was all did I succeed in pursuing. 

A lot of factors (some alibis!) contributed to half-success, half-failure – hubby’s dad died when I was on the start of my second week.  And, there were days when it was really nicer to curl up in bed and enjoy few minutes of snoozing prior to preparing for office.  Add to that, the start of our badminton training.  We hired a badass coach who seems to enjoy torturing us by letting us run here and there just to slam that shuttlecock!

Nevertheless, I am confident that I can do the 5k tomorrow (*sheepish grin).  In fact, a couple of nights ago I already had my singlet and running paraphernalia laid out in bed due to excitement!

*nice color especially for a morena like me hehehe.

So what happened today?

Definitely, no running but I am planning for some short swim later in the afternoon.  Just so I can relax my leg muscles.   Then, for dinner at home we’re having some grilled….is that t-bone?  YUM.  May be I’ll just have small serving and eat more rice?

I saw some sweet potato and ripe bananas for boiling. Will surely have more of those tonight.

Too excited ‘no?

running and badminton

can i play badminton while i'm in the middle of training for my first ever 5k marathon?

badminton is a fun sports!  and it delivers a lot of promise to all those who are bent on losing weight, definitely me included.  you move a lot...run a lot....sweat a lot.  fantastic, right?

i plan doing it on some of my rest days (may be twice a week).  though i'm not sure if this will affect or help me with my running.

according to bluefootrunner, running and badminton complements each other as running helps build stamina.  however, she did not have a nice experience due to some muscle pain she experienced when she played badminton after some hiatus.

in a couple of hours, i will be playing badminton.  and early tomorrow morning, i intend to run around 3k. and in between these two sports, another physical activity might take place!

wish me luck =D