7th Animo Run

Again for the 3rd time, I've decided to join the Animo Run 2009 in its 7th season. Despite my bad experiences before, I still opted to trust that the organizers will continue to improve their races as they are doing this running event yearly.

3 Years ago, I had a very frustrating experience at the race because of the way it was horribly organized. I sent the organizers an email giving my suggestions to help improve the race. They promised they would improve it on the next race. The year after, it was again horribly managed. This year for crying out loud I had my hopes that the Animo run race organizers have learned their lesson.

So here I am again doing the 5KM race. Perhaps the reason I opted to join was the fact that I thought that I had a legitimate chance of winning the alumni category again after winning it last year (which took like a month for me to claim my prize). My goal was to run at the utmost intensity that I can.

As we approached the first turning point I could see that there were only around 20 people ahead of me. After that I started overtaking a couple more. I knew that there were 3 fast DLSU category runners ahead of me. However one was the College of St. Benilde librarian, the other was Carranto the CSB's track and field athlete and the other was a DLSU taft swimmer. Other than those 3, I wasn't aware of another alumni who would be ahead of me.

I arrived at the finish line, got my shirt and gatorade water. However 2 minutes after crossing the finish, one of the organizers saw that my barcode is still attached to my race bib. I was so frustrated after seeing it there. How in the world could someone forget to get the barcode when it is the single most important thing a person assigned at the finish line should do? They should have just forgotten to give me the shirt or the gatorade (as I can get them myself), but to think that they forgot to get my barcode? I took the barcode off and gave it to them. But I knew from then on that my time will be 2 minutes or more off from my actual time.

I'm not sure if I should have won my category or not. I'm anticipating to see the winners and their finishing time. I just hope that the actual winner for the alumni category is faster than my finish time of 21:50. Knowing this would make me feel more at ease. But at least I want to know where I actually ranked.

If my experience was bad, the experience of the other runners was worse. A couple of minutes later, a 50-meter line to the finish had build up. This can be too frustrating to the runners who wants to know their true finish times. To top it all, there were no kilometer markers and very few water station. And, the race bib colors for both 5K and 10K were the same. You can actually blend with the 10K and run early during the race even if you plan to just run 5K.

I hope this post could be constructive to the race organizers to help them improve the next race. But knowing their resume, I'm not even expectant next year. In fact this year's Animo race seems to be my last.

After the race my frustration kinda subsided after meeting some friends like Mike and Nora the Golden girl. Everything was even cooler after watching Manny Pacquiao beat Miguel Cotto. As frustrating as the race was, I'm still glad the God blessed the Philippines with a wonderful day.