...we did it...

Last night, I lie restless in bed. I prepped myself to turn in early and I readied my T-shirt( with the bib number attached already) and other stuff. While staring at the dark ceiling, a myriad of thoughts raced through my mind. Most of it were about the race. What if I overslept? What if I can't hear my alarm? What if my foot hurts? What if I chickened out at the last minute? A lot of what ifs. I intended to sleep early but it turned out I wasn't able to until it was already past 11 PM and to make matters worst, I kept waking up in the middle of the night, at every hour. I was like, of all time to be restless, why it has to be now, pre-race jitters I supposed--for a first timer, it was hell. At last, I drifted off to sleep and for what it seemed like a very short time, my alarm buzzed. I was reluctant to get out of bed. My eyes were still heavy with sleep. It felt good to linger in bed and snuggled deep under the warmth of my blanket. After a few minutes, I got up and drank a half glass of water. I took a shower and got dressed. I consumed my usual grub of "Gatorade and banana" combo. I watched a little bit of TV while I munched on my banana. Then afterwards, I went down to Joy's room to woke her up. I was not sure about the exact time the race will start, so headed out early. When we got to the designated starting line, it was crazy( too harsh a word to use?) People were milling around mostly garbed in green- the Milo Marathon T-shirt. Then I heard someone announced where the 5K participants will check in. Joy and I got into a slight argument as to how to get there at the least possible time. ( not the time to argue). A large crowd met us, mostly students from different universities. I was worried for a moment that there might be a stampede because of the huge crowd. We were standing on the sides while waiting for the race to start. Then Joy needed to go to the bathroom, good thing, we were nearby CNU and the guard allowed her to use the CR inside the school campus. While waiting for her, I was doing some light stretches. I was silently praying that my right foot won't be bothering me during the race.

...at the finish line..at last...

To make my narrative short, the starting gun was fired for the 5K race. The crowd was slowly easing forward. Some were shouting cheers. Others were raising their hands. For the first few minutes of the race, some of the participants were just walking. There was no room for you to start jogging. I was slightly annoyed with the people around me. We have to squeezed in between groups who opted to just saunter along. Some students would run past by then stopped suddenly. We had to maneuver hard in order not to bump with someone. Joy and I agreed to jog side by side but it was not possible. Most of the time, we had to make room by passing over those who just walked. Twice, I lost sight of her in the sea of green moving figures. Halfway through the race we managed to find a space where we can jog at a comfortable pace. ( Note: I was not to able to jog completely for the entire duration of the race. I had to take walk-breaks in between).
At long last, after pounding on the pavement for almost an hour, the end was near in sight. I was keen to keep on jogging until the finish line but I had to cut it short due to the throbbing pain on my right foot. So I just walked for awhile then proceeded to jog again until we entered Abellana then up to the finish line. I kept telling Joy "we did it" ( like Dora's song). When I glanced at the time, it was 1 hour and 21 minutes. Joy said that there time is incorrect, she insisted that we jogged for less than an hour. Well, I'll just wait for them to publish the official results online. I was happy to finish the race..kind of smug happy( just kidding). I feel satisfied that I decided to do something out of my comfort zone and it does feel good. Now I understand the real meaning of a "runner's high" or in my case, "jogger's high"....

...Joy and me after the race...