running nanay: Adidas King of the Road 2011

October 23, 2011 - Bonifacio Global City

The Adidas KOTR has been one of my dream runs for the longest time. When I started running back in 2003-2005, their shortest distance category was 10k. I could not join because I was still doing 5k at that time. Then things happened and I had to stop running for several years. When I resumed early this year, I swore I would join the KOTR no matter what.

The details for this year's race was released around April or May and to my disappointment, there was no 10k category! And the registration fees were so steep! So do I want a cheaper run and do a 5k? Or do I want to level up to 16.8k but have to shell out a whooping P1,300 for the registration fee? I didn't consider the 21k category even though it was cheaper than the 16.8k because I felt it was too soon for a half-mary. So after a month or so of thinking, I decided to challenge myself - physically and financially - and registered for the 16.8k category as early as June.

Around August, Adidas started a weekly KOTR Royalty Rewards contest where various giveaways were given to lucky registered KOTR participants. I joined the Week 5 Royalty Rewards which was exclusive to 16.8k participants.

My entry was:

and was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the ten winners of an original Adidas eyewear! So cool!

Race kits were distributed during the 2011 KOTR Kick-Off Assembly from Oct. 10-12, 11am to 11pm at the NBC Tent, Bonifacio Global City. My sister met up after office hours on the first day of the kick-off. It was a disaster! We did get our race kits but a series of unfortunate events surrounded it. One of which was we got lost going to the venue. We rode the BGC bus expecting that it will drop off passengers right in front of the NBC Tent. And so there we were waiting patiently for the driver to shout, "NBC Tent!" but it never came. The next thing we know we reached Market! Market, the last stop, and we had no choice but to go down. We decided to take a cab but the first two cab drivers were as clueless as we were. The third one was not that familiar with the area either but he had the brains to ask a traffic enforcer for directions.

Except for a little glitch in the race bib number where we didn't get our personalized race bib as it has not been delivered yet, we got our race kits in a breeze. Coach Rio was there and for a moment I just lost myself and called him, "Hi Rio." matched with a smile and a wave. He looked at us, smiled and replied, "Hi. How are you doing?". Oh, I love Coach Rio, he's so friendly.

From www.adidaskingoftheroad.com

D-Day was blessed with good sunny weather. It was a well organized run. The race started as scheduled, there were enough hydration stations serving water and Powerade, and the race route was perfect. My sister and I had a great time. By the last 3kms, we were starting to feel hungry and so we changed our running mantra to "Breakfast! Breakfast!". That kept us going despite the fact that we were really starting to feel tired and cramps in our legs.