The 1st Alleycat Race

Sunday, and it’s yet again another race event. But this one is different. Well, a lot different than all the other races that I’ve ever joined. This time around, It’ll be a combination of 3 things: Run, Bike, and mental ability. Yes if you are fond of watching The Amazing race, this race is quite similar. The difference is, it’s a one day activity, and it’s more physical. That is, you can’t ride a cab to reach certain control points. You have to make use of two things: your running skill and biking skill. I’m a little bit confident with the former, and definitely uncertain with the latter. For one, I didn’t have enough training with bike, nor do I own a bike. I was only able to borrow a modified mountain bike just the night before the race, and I was only able to get a helmet the morning before the race.
The rule of the race is to get as much points from different control points and be the first to finish the race with the most points. You are given a map of Fort Bonificacio with the different location of the control points. In some control points, you have to accomplish certain mental tasks in order to get points. The players are by teams of 2. In my case, my team mate is Glenn Romualdo who happens to be my running buddy.
The race starts by a run until the transition area where you will get your bike. When the race started, it was a great feeling at last to be part of the lead pack. Me and Glenn were the first to reach our bike where Glenn was the first to reach it and I was 3rd of all the other participants. At this point I thought that this was enough an achievement even if we don’t win the whole race.
But everything came smoothly after. We made a different route where Glenn lead the whole trail. We actually got to the control points that could earn the most points. There was a task that asks us to count the number of trees in the circle, and then followed by completing one side of a rubik’s cube. The Rubik’s was kind of a blessing for me since I could actually finish completing one whole cube if given enough time. Since we were only asked to finish one side, we finished the cube for less than a minute. Everything else went smoothly, and we finish the race in 52 minutes.
The amazing part was, we won the race 1st place in the executive category. At last, a race where I won a medal. This was a great race event and I’ll definitely be back next year. I hope there would be many adventure races such as this here in Manila where I could join.