Condura Race Report 21km @ my first race in philippines

All pictures taken from Canon EOS club site member's postings (thanks, I did not copy all the names, but these are among the best photos)

Condura Run was my first run in Philippines.  I have been there for almost 6 weeks on a work assignment, and on the 4th week, I was itching to run in Philippines.

Condura Run was the first 21km event on the Skyway.  Along the way, I found out that the Skyway was actually a big highway... leading somewhere... I never found out where.  But the photos will show it is a big highway.  Apparently the locals were all very excited to be running on the skyway... well I guess I was fortunate to be the "first" to run on the skyway, but seriously, it is like Adidad king of the road running on NPE... 

It was a very hot morning.  The race started at around 6am (but seriously, 6am = 7am in malaysia, as the sun is up earlier in philippines).  Thus, daylight was peeking out when we started off.  We started off at the fort (Fort Bonifacio), this was the place where I found is a runner's haven for training.  Apparently they run there every night.  I broke my own routine by running there on the friday night before the race!   

I had very little training for Condura, and as such I was a bit anxious before the race.  I only ran a couple of times on a gym, and twice at the Fort, all in maybe less than 20kms within the few weeks leading to the race.  As it is, I was a non-starter in the GE 20km I signed up due to work.  It would seem, I was committing runner's suicide... 

The day before the race, I hydrated myself and got plenty of rest.  On race day, I got there on taxi on when it was still night (the apartment security guy gave me a stare...).  When I got there, I saw there were a lot of people, but 5 mins before the starting, I started to realise how little people were running the 21k,.... wait a minute, there is something not right here... and there were only hardly a handful of ladies....

One of the realisation that had dawned on me way before the race (it happened during our first leisure run at Fort) was that the running community here is smaller, but growing fast, and the cater for many different people factor is serving the masses - ie. the races were 2k, 5k, 10k, and only a handful 21k, and maybe a handful, marathon.  But they called all the races marathons... and seems to have a more family environment, and the middle tier people were more keen on competing and those who competed, some had not run 21k even.  This was a big surprise, though no different from Malaysia, the runners in Malaysia were quite competitive and the turnout to races were quite high, for 21k races, you would find most of them were seasoned veterans and newbies had the guts to take on 21k after one or two races... 

The race ran one loop around the fort and then onto Kalayaan flyover and to Buendia avenue, all the way past my apartment area (Makati Avenue), and cutting through Ayala Avenue and finally to the skyway.  The skyway was around 7 km off the start.  The route was very friendly - very flat, the only steep part it seems was the Kalayaan flyover coming back, probably because everyone was tired.

The route was also pretty simple, 10km to some midpoint on the skyway, then 10km back, the same route.  By the time we were coming back, it was really really hot.  I reckon it was almost equivalent to running at 9am on a highway, when I got to 3km left on the Kalayaan flyover coming back.  The rest of the route was pretty ok, and I surprised myself, I think I ran almost the entire distance, except for 4 drink stops and probably a short 50m walk on the Kalayaan flyover.  I felt uncomfortable when I stopped - this was indeed a new feeling.  

The other thing which helped I believed was the friendly manner with runners - I was at ease to chat up other runners, though I only chatted up 2 persons along the way seriously.  One guy I paced with for almost 30 minutes, and I was pretty proud that he gave up at around 13km, and said he had to walk!!!  Wow, I've never paced faster than a guy before... but then, this fella, and I think probably a handful of people I said hi to have never run a 21km race before (what to do, my pace is so slow, I get all the newbies...).

All in, a great simple race.  The surprise was the results were on the website a few days after the race.  The race signup in philippines is pretty cool, most of the time, you can do it and collect the number on the spot at nike shops.  I liked that as you do not have to go back on the day before to collect the bibs.  The race timing was done via scanning of a barcode torn from the bib (no shoe tag).  Condura was one of the best races of the year, apparently, and true to form, the results as well as the publicity was in one of the newspapers a week after that (shock! - my name was in the newspapers!!!).

One interesting thing when I was surfing for photos - there was not many photographers.  The photos taken by the Canon Eos club members (stolen and pasted here some of them), were the only ones which was interesting, but even that, there was a pattern of cutting off the head of the runners.. and also a habit of taking only photos of the celebrities... what's up philippines photogs?  What happened to your Tey equivalent? Well, I did see a big fella with a big lens all along the way, but I don't know the website.  Oh well...