As I look back, I remember the first time I asked my sister to register me for a race. I eventually didn’t participate in the said 10k event because I was too lazy to wake up at 4am so that I could simply run. I quipped ”Why should I change my routine?”. I usually wake up at around 6:00am and do my 2.1km jog around The Fort area and more recently, around MOA. I even remember a female colleague telling me this: “Ano ba yan, papahirapan mo nalang sarili mo, magbabayad ka pa!” I eventually joined my first race (which covered a distance of 10km) wearing my very old Nike cross trainers (the shoe’s sole had been replaced with locally available soles since the original air sole has already leaked). … and here I am, 11 months and 3 running shoes after –> running my first ever full 42KM marathon. What can I say? I didn’t even plan joining this event until 5 weeks ago. I was undertrained . Thanks to the effort of ultra runner friend Isko who patiently trained me in such a short time, I was able to complete this run together with another running friend, Ian. The concept of running SCTEX at night was very appealing to most of the people who participated in this event, after all, you can’t run along this route on a regular night (pun intended). This could’ve been a next to perfect race except for the following: • No water for four consecutive water stations – I think that the water stations were more than 2.5kms apart, so you could imagine how thirsty the other runners were when they came to our support vehicle (the white van with the team hardcore tarpaulin) asking if we...