Back-To-Back Weekend

After the long holiday season I was back in training for the upcoming 2nd Bataan Death March 102km Ultramarathon. I intentionally dropped my mileage for a couple of week to brace-up for an intense weekly training program. My stats indicate that january and february is at the peak of my training session, which includes back-to-back long, lung-busting runs on saturdays and sundays, aside from 3 weekday runs of 15km at the most. Every week suggests a hard, daunting task of 90 to 120 kilometer runs. It wasn't a pushover since it requires a lot of discipline, sacrifice and hardwork, including the mental toughness that is associated with such.

01-09-10, saturday
04h05m09, 36km

Last saturday I was able to run 36km that lead me to four different cities of manila. I started at home in quezon city and took the new manila route to san juan before heading to santolan road and ortigas area to reach pasig city. I made a loop at tiendesitas in pasig before going back to qc via ortigas avenue, white plains avenue and katipunan road. Upon reaching katipunan flyover, I made a right turn at santos dizon and headed to marikina riverbanks.

The riverbank is evident of the wrath that typhoon ondoy brought to the country at the last quarter of the previous year. Tons of mud covered parts of the jogging trail, pontoon bridges were damaged as well as the floating restaurant and other landmarks. I was contemplating about the ordeal that the residents have had during the flood as I ran atop the ridge of the east side of the riverbank. The ridge is about four stories high from the waterline, yet the river swelled and reached the community that lined the riverbank. Many people perished here, but it was a sight to see people rise again. The muds were turned into greens as the people went back to plant vegetables. I was delighted to see people watering plants, selling harvests, kids playing and others jogging and biking. Reminiscent of a natural pinoy way of life, rising up after falling down.

Upon reaching tumana bridge, I headed to balara via katipunan avenue extension and capitol hills and made myself to up diliman before heading home. The route was long and daunting, considering I was running alone during this lsd. But, it's good to be back, I was never bored and felt strong allthroughout the run and reached home satisfied. Click here to view my route.

01-10-10, sunday
03h05m48, 27km

Sunday came for another 3-hour long run to back-up my weekend schedule. Xty and I started from home early and headed to up diliman. The temperature was quite humid along the busy thoroughfares but went to favorable as we reached the playgrounds of up diliman. The two of us covered our favorite route before runners filled the acad oval. This was the second sunday in a row that upd was filled with runners for there is no scheduled race in manila. After 01h30m, xty was finished and I continued my running alone. After another 01h35m, I called it a day. A good 27km was added to my weekend back-to-back run. Went home tired but still managed to sneak a sunday church schedule and a family birthday party late in the afternoon.

It's a good jumpstart for a fruitful running year and my blogging as well. Happy new year everyone, see you on the roads.