Drenched: A Speedo and Brooks Weekend

I was at the ace water spa facility in pasig city as early as 7:00am saturday for the speedo novice swim carnival. An hour later I was warming-up in the 8-lane pool. The pool was full to the gutters as participants made their way to the water. I made 20x25 of freestyle swim and 2 sets of 4x25 individual medleys. I felt I was burning when I exited the pool just after the warm-up, but after the event, I felt I was more drained. The competition was challenging and exhausting. I was with the company of strong swimmers from different schools, nationwide, and boy, they all "swim". They're in it to win it! With hardwork and determination and with a stroke of luck, I was able to break my records from my previous swim a week ago.

On the next day, a sunday, was my usual long run. I did the 15km distance of brooks run happy. The start time was supposedly at 5:30am but the race started 20mins late. In road races that's a big NO. However, this sort of thing is not an issue to me anymore, I was in this kind of situation many times before. I guess it's the newbies that were greatly affected. I always see to it that stuffs like these will not affect my performance or be it my reason for not doing well.

I was in a good rhythm from the start up to the british school after the gun start. I was relatively pacing well and was closing-out to my desired finish time when reality struck, the summer heat was overwhelming that it drained me inside and out. I always wanted to be near a water station just to satisfy my thirst and drench myself. My usual pace came slower and my walks became frequent. I ran with two cups of water in both hands, just to have a reserve. I was running wet from head down to my socks for the remainder of the route which I never do more often in short distances like this. The long open stretches of bonifacio global city seem to be a deserted path, heat's from up and down. The walks cooled me down and brought me to the finish unscathed, but I finished 9 minutes behind my target time. I had no recourse but to blame myself, I was not training well on my runs nowadays. One good reason to bounce back. Although it was a not so good run, result-wise, I had a great chance to share the road again among friends. I'm glad to be back into the races again.

See you (again) at the starting line.