13 days to go until TBR ULAH Dream Marathon 2015! We’ve been busy with race preparations while our runners have been pounding the road training for the race.
To our Dreamers, you’re Official Race Handbook is ready for downloading. Please browse through it before race day to get you all set for the big day!
Happy New Year to my dearest Dream Marathoners! Hope you enjoyed the holidays with your loved ones. I hope you also had a grand time running those long runs during the long break. We have 7 more weeks to go until the big day so it’s time we get back to business!
As you know already, all TBR ULAH Dream Marathon participants are required to submit a medical certificate from a licensed physician to certify that you are fit to participate in the marathon. This is for your own safety and this was announced in your Welcome Kit.
The medical certificate must be dated from JANUARY 1 TO FEBRUARY 6, 2014. This means you can start getting your medical certificate from your doctors already.
To download a sample of the medical certificate, click on this LINK. A medical certificate in a different format from the TBRDM standard will still be accepted.
Medical certificates will be collected upon claiming of your RACE KIT during the Send Off Party on February 6, 2014, Thursday at Unilab Bayanihan Center, Brgy. Kapitolyo, Pasig City. The event starts at 7:00PM, but Race Kit redemption will open starting 6:00PM and will end at 9:00PM. NO MEDICAL CERTIFICATE, NO RACE KIT.
We will not accept any medical certificate submissions prior to the Send Off Party.
SPECIAL PROMO WITH HI-PRECISION DIAGNOSTICS
We are pleased to inform you that Hi-Precision Diagnostics, our official laboratory partner, is offering a special package for TBR ULAH Dream Marathoners. This package is optional for participants.
The package was recommended by Hi-Precision’s In-House Doctor, Dra. Lalaine Macatangay who suggests the tests below to ensure that your body is fit for long distance running or any high endurance sport. Included in the package is the medical certificate for the marathon, which we require for participation in the marathon. Total savings amounts to P750.
Runners who avail of the package must present their TBR ULAH Dream Card. Package is non-transferable and not convertible to cash. Offer expires on February 6, 2014.
For a complete list of the branches of Hi Precision, click HERE to download a PDF file. Or visit their website: www.hi-precision.com.ph
For inquiries, please email Macel at tbrdream@gmail.com or contact our hotline 0942-477-6099
It’s not very often that I get to play cupid. So, when I received an email from runner, Gerry Lita, requesting me to post a surprise greeting for his wife, Rasselle, who he paced during the last TBR Dream Marathon, I gladly obliged.
His note follows below. To Rasselle, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (And, congratulations for having a hubby who was willing to run 42k for you and tell the world—or at least our running community—how much he loves you!)
Hi Miss Jaymie,
My wife ran in your race (The Bull Run Dream Marathon) and in days she will be celebrating her birthday (April 17).
I plan to give her a surprise greeting if this will be feasible with you. My plan is if its okay if you post the attached teaser in your Blog.
I want to tell her how much I love her and also the kids. Without her care, passion and tender love for us we will be at lost. I want also to tell her even if we seldom go out just the two of us, she is always in my heart… being treasured every day of my life.
thanks again and best regards,
Gerry Lita
As is the tradition of TBR Dream Marathon, after the race, I post anecdotes about the marathon that I receive in my Inbox from our new marathoners. My inbox gets inundated with stories of triumph, love, gratitude, passion, and empowerment that it’s too much of a waste if only I read it. Through this series of stories (one every week for the next couple of months), may you all be inspired to run a marathon or dream big in your own lives.
I’d like to share with you Fernando’s letter to me. It teaches us that we can try our best to prepare for a marathon, but we never really know what will happen at any point before we cross that finish line. A lot of things can go wrong and a lot of things can go right. What matters most is how we choose to react to the situation and how we let it affect us. Good thing Fernando decided to run even after he stumbled.
TBR DREAMERS 2013: Fernando Hernandez
Bib Nos. 334
Hi Jaymie,
You can’t imagine, how thankful I am to be a part of this great experience. I actually came very close to not showing up last Sunday.
About a week before the marathon, during my daughter’s sportsfest, I took a bad fall during one of the events. I joined a relay race and ended up with two very large wounds on my knees – as in kneecaps.
Looking back it might not have been very prudent of me to join the sportsfest in the first place, but I entered the marathon with the mindset that it would never interfere with family activities. Anyway, my daughter asked me to join the relay race and I didn’t want to disappoint.
So there I was, the day before the race with two very large wounds on my knees. I thought long and hard about how I was going to do the 42K with injuries to both legs. The thought of even just the salt on the wounds was just as painful as the thought of the knees bending every time I’d take a step forward. Anyway, the defining moment was when I just accepted the fact that the pain was going to be there from the start and it would be a matter of me being able to grin and bear it. I kept “fooling myself” that my left leg was fine and that I could just drag my right leg towards the finish. The added incentive was the fact that I knew I would be miserable waiting for an entire year to have the chance to do The Bull Runner Dream Marathon again and all that training just being thrown out the window.
No doubt the pain was there, but the encouragement I had from my co-TBR Dreamers (alot of them I don’t know personally but they could tell I was in pain) and Dream Chasers really helped. I really wish I could thank each of them personally because, they really helped me carry on even when I was in a lot of pain and quite miserable during the whole ordeal.
Anyway, through sheer will, (I can’t even call it skill, I just grit my teeth) I managed (somehow) to cross the line at around 7:30, really far off from the sub six / sub 5:30 goal that I really wanted but it was an even sweeter win for me nonetheless, that I managed to even show up and finish this race.
Thanks again Jaymie for doing this. I’m sure you hear it alot but this event has really showed me how deep inside myself I can dig and just what I am capable of. When I first signed up for this race, I did it because I needed a win for my 40th birthday. I didn’t realize how big a win it was until I crossed that finish line last Sunday.
As is the tradition of TBR Dream Marathon, after the race, I post anecdotes about the marathon that I receive in my Inbox from our new marathoners. My inbox gets inundated with stories of triumph, love, gratitude, passion, and empowerment that it’s too much of a waste if only I read it. Through this series of stories (one every week for the next couple of months), may you all be inspired to run a marathon or dream big in your own lives.
TBR DREAMERS 2013: Efren & Vangie Gregorio
Bib Nos. 322 & 323
By Efren Gregorio
I’m a MILO 42K finisher with traumatic experience and once said to myself “I will not repeat this insanity, ever.” And in my wife’s case, she cannot hide her fear to go the full distance. But when I heard from a colleague (a TBR alumni) about TBR and started visiting its blog, I said to myself “we will join this running family.” Unfortunately, we missed the 2012 batch and I started to lose hope. Luckily, during RU1 last July 2012, I chanced upon Jaymie (I don’t know if she can recall it) at a water station in front of PICC and I said: “Hi Jaymie, good morning! I and my wife wanted to join your Dream Marathon but we don’t know how.” She replied: “Yes sir we will be glad to welcome both of you” and she whispered “Just visit my blog and I will have an announcement, MAYBE in September. Okay sir, let’s run to the finish line.” True to her words, in September we were able to register but not without a hitch and I know everybody in batch 2013 knows what that hitch is all about. Ha ha ha!
Our preparation started like this, from all Bull Circles and Bull Sessions we attended, we eagerly and enthusiastically absorbed every pieces of advice from coaches Lit, Jun and the two Jims (Lafferty and Saret). From doctors who explained the relation of medicine during training and, to avoid injuries and life threatening illnesses that a marathoner can get. And from other TBR alums who shares their experiences and spares some tips to all next dreamers wannabe. So, when the penultimate D-Day came (February 24, 2013) we’re ready!
We could say that our TBR Dream Marathon is a once-in-a-life-time and unforgettable experience in our running career. Only in this foot race that we didn’t feel the atmosphere of competition and time pressure but rather feels like participating in a big family gathering wherein all participants are all familiar faces. During the race we are overwhelmed by the support of TBR organization, like the never-ending supplies of everything a runner could want and more. You name it, over-flowing water and Gatorade in 3 flavors, the expensive GU Power Gel, salt supplement in capsule that when you missed it a piece or two of Chippy will be offered for the pickings, chocolates, gummy bears, oranges, apples, bananas, massage, singing bands and many more. But the most “supply” we can say that you can’t buy is the unselfish and dedicated expression of TBR’s motto: “pay it forward” by the TBR Alumnae. A heart-felt thanks to Joseph Nebrida and Philip of Batch 2012 who paced my wife and her co-running pace during the last part of the second loop. Also thanks to Craig Logan (Batch 2010) for his gummy bears. Ha ha ha!
– Efren running steady-
– Vangie all smiles! –
We knew from the beginning that our family will be there to support us. We also knew about the Dream Bus wherein our family will be carried to the running course. But we didn’t know the real effect of that encounter with our family during those times when you feel down and out of strength and suddenly seeing our son 10 feet away giving me a power bar, OMG! I want to cry! For both of us, it is like a second wind and that we wanted to finish strong. But the most memorable and incomparable one is when we crossed the finish line. Yes our two sons were there, but my brother? My two eldest sisters and my nephew with his wife in tow were there too? Inside of me it’s just a BIG BIG WOW! On my wife’s part she didn’t expected them too to be there, and to add more tearful feeling, she and my sisters had this indescribable friction that is very normal and standard to every Filipino family, that when she crossed the finish line she was hugged, kissed and congratulated by her long lost in-laws. Whew that is the most nerve wreaking feeling we savored on that D-Day! After all was said and done (the greetings, the picture takings and congratulatory words), it was known that our eldest son was the culprit to all these beautiful happenings. He said he used the FB and the text medium. Ang galing!
– Efren flashes his TBRDM medal –
Now as both alumnae (naks!), we learned also to respect not just other runners but also the course’s conditions and its landscape offerings. TBR, you really made us wiser as a runner and instill in our minds that nothing is impossible if you really do it the right way.
Again, to Jaymie and the TBR Dream Team THANK YOU for the journey!
