Race Review: Mizuno 10k

After days of rain, the sun had greeted all the racers yesterday morning at the starting gate of the Mizuno 10k. The 15k racers had left a little before 5:30am since I saw the lead pack when I was heading for the BHS parking lot.


I pinned my racebib and headed to the corral where I met Obet, an old football buddy in DBTI. He was running the 5k and said he usually averages below 30mins which has improved his game. He encouraged me to come back and play every Saturday again but since I live far from Makati now, I told him I'll just try one of these Saturdays.


There were a lot of 10k runners compared to the Autoreview 10k I joined 2 weeks ago. Each of them stretching and warming up to the leader at the podium giving instructions as I entered the corral. Being a Japanese company, it was only right that the starting gun be triggered by one of their nationals (and probably big bosses here).



It was 5:55am when the gun fired. Wow, so far so good.


My learnings from the Autoreview 10k have been put into this Mizuno 10k. First, I went to the CR twice before heading to the starting gate so as not to embarass myself from going to a resto helplessly looking for a place to pee. Second, I adjusted my playlist such that the first 5k will play slow to middle tempo songs while the second half would play my usual upbeat tunes. This coincides with my strategy to have a good pace throughout the race.


Time to beat: 69mins.


The race route is similar to the BOTAK 10k last month except that on the way back from the Buendia flyover, we turned right towards Rizal avenue and traced the route back. BOTAK 10k went straight from Buendia flyover towards Serendra past Market2x.


I felt I ran better this time since I learned to maintain my pace past the 5k. Further, the slow elevating incline of the Buendia flyover was "panis" this time since I slowed my pace on the way up, passing by panting walking runners who might've not considered the killer incline on their way back (which was the case for me during Botak 10k).


I accelerated my pace on the last 500meters since I saw my watch at 1:07. Damn! That meant I won't be able to beat my 69mins PR. But still I sprinted since at least I could stay within my current PR of 69mins.


I made it to the finish line at 69mins 40secs. Well, to please my efforts, the NSTB app recorded the distance at 11.13kms at an average pace of 6:15. So, if I were to proportion that to a 10k exact distance, my time would be 62mins. Ok na rin yung 69mins if you look at it that way. Hehe.


I think one downside of this race was that the Gatorade booth was mayhem. There was no queue to get a bottle of Gatorade so you have to squeeze in to get one. This was opposed to the finisher shirts booth which had queues for different mens and womens sizes. Nice shirt btw!


I uploaded my race stats to the Nokia Sports Tracker Beta website which you can see here. It was nice to see that my pace is improving so I hope in my next 10k I'll be able to beat my PR.


My next race? It'll be a company run hosted by JG Summit for all JG companies. It's gonna be on June 28 in Mckinley Hill (another hilly route) and I'll be running the 10k. A week after that, it's another 10k company run (sportsfest) at Mckinley Hill again.

For now, I'll be thinking of playing football in the next raceless two weeks.