may nag rerepeat ba sa mizuno run clinic?

yes, i have to admit. i have, and i am a repeater.

yesterday was our "graduation day" from the Mizuno Run Club Clinic.

and it was my second time to "graduate" again. for some, they can call it being a "repeater" because i also joined the sessions last time around. even at the start of the run clinic, i was already stating that it's my second time, as most of the people i was with were first timers in the run clinic, so with regards to knowing and doing the drills, i must say that i've mastered them already.

last night's graduation was unique because we had were grouped into 4 (shempre choose your own groupmates) for a relay. after the PIM Team Logan relay, Mizuno Relay naman. the mechanics were given last week, 4 members, 1 round each, pabilisan. so sige, choose lang. after much deliberations, here are my groupmates for Takbo.ph #1:


bryan "planet trumania" rivera
- bad boy ng BLC season 1; desperate times call for desperate measures, nagpabunot ng ipin para pumayat
sam "the running ninja" delena
- another strong contender fro BLC season 1; anchor ng team for the relay with his immense training regimen, we were confident with the speed that we will be banking on him to make the finish
alejandro "zMarvs" opulencia
- one of the original photogs ng group since march LSD, da who #s _ and _ and _ ; initially tried to negative split, but in the end found out that knee highs and being positive was the way to go for him
timmy "the kenkoy runner" sebastian
- the comeback kid; after semi-retiring due to slight injury which caused me to take things slow, decided to comeback to running seriously; once touted as a halimaw-in-the-making, but is still in the recovery phase, training for condura full marathon

just like my first "graduation" the weather was not that cooperative as it was raining also when we got to BHS for the last session. some were even asking coach ige if we can just have a lecture/ q & a portion just like the last time. after waiting for a few minutes, the rain slowly stopped and we were again pounding the pavement with 1 round of warm up (pero dapat 2 pa rin, pero prior to that i did 1 round na on my own ahahaha) and our staple set of drills namely: skipping, heel-butt, grapevine and our favorite, lunges.

sabi ni coach ige: hay naku, tong mga to last day na nga tinatamad pa
pero seriously, sabi nya mag drills para ma warm up ung muscles and iwas injuries din.

after the drills, coach ige proceeded to discuss the mechanics for the relay. just like last week's explanation, 1 round per member, all out karipas, and then tag your teammate. the clincher here was the "sponsored" segment na, while running eh you have your bottle of gatorade with your team #, tapos no drinking of the said gatorade while running. you have to get back to the starting point infront of the mizuno tent, and gobble all the gatorade up before your teammate can proceed with his run. all the while i thought that was easy, sus, i'll just have to swallow everything up, and then the next person goes zoom! tapos! :) pero hindi pala as i found out when it was my turn came up and i had to hurriedly drink up all the gatorade. PR na sa bilis tumakbo, pati sa pag ubos ng gatorade. (BONGZ! dito ata pumapasok ung training natin na isa pa eh, ung LCLP bottoms up!)

prior to the start of the race, the teams to beat were Team Jonas (puro classmates ko sa previous sessions AND all well-known fast runners) and the notorious bunch of kiddoes aptly named Team Milo (these are the speedsters with their devil-may-care attitude in running, as if the whole place was their personal playground, and we were all just hanging out in their area). with these teams in mind, we said to ourselves na 'it's just a fun run, no pressure to win or something" hehehe or so we thought.

to cut the long story short, AND for some weird reason, takbo.ph #1 was the 2nd team overall to finish the relay! WAHOOO!!!!!!!

we knew naman that this relay was just for fun, and at the same time, a test to try our limitations, to check if we were able to improve our speed na rin (compared to previous time trials na rin siguro) and i guess this "win" was a testament to the success of the program. i do believe no one thought that we would be second overall, even outrunning the milo kids, but what the heck, this was for fun right? and as i've said numerous times before, i love to run because its fun. the worrying for the PRs and the placing just, in a way, hampens my speed etc, so i just threw it away last night, and just ran as fast (and as safe) as i can to finish the task at hand.


after all the hullabaloo (na wala man lang award or something, paging marianne & jai, wala talagang prize?), we had the usual walang kamatayang group picture taking:

with takbo.ph peeps & other mizuno classmates for the traditional class picture-taking

after the picture-taking, we were even interviewed by RunnerSpeak, a running oriented TV program shown every Sunday, 2:45PM at QTV and asked us our thoughts on the Mizuno Run Clinic sessions.we actually practiced to say something serious such as "Our Thursday nights will never be the same again without the Mizuno Run Clinic, as it has been like a second home to us. It helped us improve on our running skills and at the same time spend time with our friends in the running community." but knowing us, you can base on the pictures how things went by:i think bry here was sayin something about his weight loss, naging self promotions for the BLC season 1 hahaha

rj ledesma,rovilson fernandez, hayden kho , & john lloyd cruz?

so there. ang saya saya ng mizuno run clinic! (parang paid advertisement? wahaha)

this is something i wouldn't mind repeating again the next time :)

thanks again to Jai & Marianne, and Coach Ige (and to the friendly staff of Mizuno BHS nax special mention)

see you around classmates! :)