Run Early Run: Me Vs Myself :Safeguard 2XU International Half-Marathon

This race had taken me by surprise; I was so dumbstruck that it took me 3 months to write about it! :P

Despite being super-delayed (which is an understatement), I believe this race deserves an additional footnote to its already good review.

It was a very humid morning. My wife and I were sweating profusely even before the race started. And it was only 3 AM! We could have sweated a lot more if the race had not been limited to around a thousand runners.

Yes, there were only a little more than a thousand - as in one thousand - runners that morning. The registration fee had been high of course. At Php 2500.00 regular registration, it was easily 3 to 4 times the usual races.

In relation to the registration, I've read a lot of angst from many runners about how absurd joining races was turning into and how the organizers were very much capitalizing on running which they believe should be free.

I have two words for you guys - Running is free; joining races is not. Fine, that's more than two words, but who's counting? If you want some fun, take o-bla-di-bla-da. Makes sense, doesn't it? Nobody is stopping you from running for free on your favorite routes, but don't expect every organized race to be free.

Back to topic. I'd had no doubt that the race would be very organized. Runrio after all had already executed races for more than ten thousand souls with more or less twenty thousand soles (ha, see what I did there?), so it was a nice, clean run.

Speaking of clean, this race did not use plastic cups, which was nice. Saved a lot of material and also a lot of man-hours that the volunteers would have needed to clean up. Just like our very own HP Fun Run 2012! :P Although Safeguard did include water bottles in their race kit, and we did not, so, er, well... anyway, let's proceed.

In terms of my performance, I know that I did not waste any opportunity inherent to the splendid racing conditions. I got a new personal best again for my 21K at a finish time of around 2 hrs 39 mins, which was 5 mins faster than my last one and 13 mins faster than my average! I feel that I'm slowly inching my way to that sub-2:30 I had targeted on my first ever 21K (silly me).

Eighteen pounds matter after all. On race day, I was at around 140 lbs, compared to my Condura Skyway weight of 158 lbs! Thanks to my company then that had required me to lose 25 lbs. :))

I was obviously very happy with the race and my results of course. I had planned to join Leg 2, but we were not able to save enough for the registration fee. At the time of writing this, late registration has already started which brings up the fee to Php 3,500.00. But I'll definitely try for that Leg 3! I hope I can get my hands on - or rather my feet in - the running shoes that would be part of the race kit.

See photos below, including the Superposition of course. :))