While most runners ran in green at Milo Marathon yesterday morning, I ran a blissful 14km in shaded, asphalted roads in Makati with the hubby and friends Harvie and Mike. Oh, to commemorate one of the biggest race days in the country, I wore green too.

Our pace ranged from 6:15 to 6:45 most of the time. Heart rate stayed happily at zone 3. Conversation revolved around marathons, Camsur, supplements, business, family, and everything else under the sun for the entire hour and a half. Time flew with non-stop conversation. Aaah, I’m telling you, I’m falling more and more in love with my long, slow runs.

Aside from the talk, what made the run most enjoyable was the absence of niggles in the knee or tightness in the ITB at all. Running at my usual concrete training grounds, I’ve gotten used to feeling minor, innocuous pains in the knee or ITB during each run. I’ve always known about the importance of choosing asphalt over concrete, grass or the track over asphalt, but I always prioritized convenience over the ground I ran on.

However, as I spent the past two weekends running long on asphalt, I’ve noticed the significant difference in my legs. I end each asphalt road run feeling like I could run another 10km. But, my usual training runs on concrete—whether a fast 5k or a slow 15k—leaves me feeling like Pinocchio on stilts. It doesn’t take a genius runner to decide which types of roads I should be running on next time.

We ended the run at around 8:30am just when the sun started beating down on us. While the hubby and I did our post-run stretches and as I sipped my iced chocolate with mint from Starbucks (heaven!), a foreign runner approached us with this as his intro line: “This is too hot for those Milo runners.” That initiated a long conversation about Milo, marathons, Rudy Biscocho, ultramarathons, PSC, and more (we runners can just go on and on about our beloved sport, can’t we?) Turns out, this runner is Peter Parcell, an Australian who was based here in the 80′s and 90′s and was very much involved in the local running scene.

– with Peter -

Peter had such great stories to tell: the time he ran 80+ km a day across Japan and when the press greeted him at the end of the journey to ask what he would do next, he announced “I’m running to Seoul!” or the time he and other Filipino runners stood their ground against a controversial issue, or how his grandfather and father were all top runners in Australia, and how his all three daughters now are all runners like him. Funny how you learn a lot from one man you meet by accident.

It was a wonderful morning for us. Not as great as those who finished the full marathon at Milo—especially Jay (Prometheus Cometh) who PR’d at 3: 38 or Dindo (runningdat.com) who conquered his first full, but definitely a good one.

Posted on 07.06.09 to 01 Bullish Insights. Tags: long run. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. 7 comments. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.