How To Win A Race In 12 Weeks

 

(L~R, John Valdezco, Maita Malilong, Lilian Fernando, Christian Pobre,

Pabs Yambot, Romy Garduce, Gil Perez)

Feb 26, 2003, four of us P&G’ers were finishing a 3km route around a self made track along Fort Bonifacio.  Most of us were struggling and we finished between 15-25 minutes, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily from exhaustion.  None of us were ever runners in any of our past lives.  Fast forward to May 25, 2003, three of the four are standing on stage as Procter and Gamble’s Team Alpha were declared the winners of the New Balance 10K Corporate Cup.  What happened in between is a fun, hilarious story ala “Revenge of the Nerds”

 

OGSM (Our Grand Scheme Mattered):

 

We started out simply training for an 8K Fun Run originally scheduled in April 8.  The geeks that we were (most of us including myself graduated from a public school called Philippine Science High School) had to come up with a more concrete plan.  John Valdezco had devised a training plan that would get our endurance up to 8K by running 3 times a week.  He also mapped out a 3K track in Fort Bonifacio using his car odometer.   Pabs Yambot, John Valdezco, Alan Gosiengfiao, Maita Malilong and Alelie Clavio started training twice a week at The Fort and weekends at UP Diliman.  Soon Christian Pobre joined us, and the words “pressure” and “competitive” was added to our lingo together with John’s splits, pace, total time, and total mileage.

 

But as the Fun Run was rescheduled we stumbled on the New Balance Power Race and set our sights on the 10K Corporate Cup as an alternative goal.  Toying, at first with the idea that we would win.  We raced a 5K individual race on March 9 to just to “know ourselves”.  We had our own internal contest to keep things interesting and though the results were dismal for all of us, we still got us fired up to prepare, especially upon seeing that there were a lot of Unilever runners ahead of us.

 

As the team’s command central (a nice way of saying aliping sagigilid) I did have my work cut out.  Overall training/ race coordination i.e. wake up calls, SMS or email reminders, parking instructions, holding the car keys, negotiating race numbers, finding safety pins, bringing Immodium, oral hydration tabs, Gatorade were all part and parcel of my job.  I also had to do research on things such as, shin splint, side stitch, VO2 max, heart rates, hill running, lactate threshold, etc.  And had to distribute tips from Oca Sanez as well as his inspiring thoughts and wished for us.  In some ways making him the remote team coach.

 

Another 5K race on March 31 showed tremendous improvements in time for all of us.  The most important discovery though was that internal competition was one of the greatest motivators for all of us.  Knowing that one of us was just behind or up ahead, led us to run faster.  This was going to be the bedrock of our strategy.

 

As some friends had other conflicting commitments on race day, Gil Perez and Romy Garduce were brought in to add more experience to the group.  Their training and exposure to triathlons would prove to be a valuable boost to the team esp. with time ticking.  Allan Velasquez from CBD also joined the team and with his mountaineering background, he was most welcome.  Alas, a stress fracture from his training a few weeks before the race prevented him from racing.

 

When we found out, that previous winning time was 3:57:00, we were hooked on winning.  We did a final individual 5K/10K race in April 27 in Roxas Blvd again with Unilever to do our last check on race performance level.  We outran more of the this time!  Being Proctoids though, we had to have individual time commitments at three levels; minimum time to finish, target time to finish and stretch time. Then there was the committed team minimum time to finish.  Ensuring of course that the team goal was met even at the minimum time to finish level.  Truly making everything measurable.

 

                        Minimum time                            Target time                    Stretch time

Pabs                 56 mins                                     52 mins                         45 mins

Romy                55 mins                                     52 mins                         50 mins

Gil                    1 hour                                       55 mins                         50 mins

John                 1 hour                                       58 mins                         55 mins

Christian           1:10                                          1 hour                           58 mins

Lilian                 1:06                                          1 hour                           58 mins

Maita                1:30                                          1:20                              1:15

 

Team target: 3:57:00

 

The team strategy was simple: Pabs and Christian Pobre were to run as fast as they could and the rest of the males race Christian to the finish line ;-)  Maita and I had to run as fast as we can also using our own “pacers”, e.g. people we wish to run after.  It was a plot that capitalized on good ol’ “passion to win”.

 

Shock and Awe at Rockwell

 

The night before the race, SMS messages swamped my celfone as each runner had their own concerns, Maita was missing her race number, Pabs’ stomach flu wouldn’t go away, John and Christian were worried about the downpour that threatened to cancel the race.  The drama continued in the morning as some runners in the other P&G teams did leave their race numbers behind and Christian lost his safety pins.  The rain seemed to grow stronger at 5 am but we warmed up and stretched to the tune of some unknown club music playing and hoped that the rain would abate.

 

 

Ready to run                                                    Off We Go

 

The rain stopped and the race eventually started a little late with some Tae-bo dance moves led by a gym instructor.  Then we were off, a little disappointed that Unilever backed out of the race but confident, nonetheless, that we had a chance to win.  The sea of runners was not amiss with variety.  There were “fashionistas” ( umbrella, ladies bag, jeans), “lawin” (the ever present masked runner with a cape), “Abebe Bikila wannabe” (shoeless runner).  It was inspiring as well to see the oldest runner at 89 year old, a half paralyzed man limp his way ahead of some runners (some of them P&G), and the future Lydia De Vega and Elma Muros.  And a race wouldn’t be complete without the spectators, jeering and cheering along the way.

Lawin:  The masked runner

The funny stories on the race revolve around these characters and the competitive nature of man.  Mean spectators jeered the fashionistas, yelling “Miss, ang porma mo!”.  Or to the shoeless runner “Sir, nakalimutan niyo sapatos niyo!”  Even P&G’ers weren’t spared as police marshals joked with those who ran the slowest with “Miss, baka gusto mo sakay na lang kita sa motorsiklo ko.”  A man who was holding his left side obviously suffering from a bad case of side stitch was desperately trying to keep his lead over me, perhaps not willing to let a girl outrun him.  I just had to end his suffering and sprinted ahead.

 

Pabs, the “Dashing Debonair”, (dashing through finish lines, traffic lights and intersections with his dimples), crossed the finish line at 50mins 17 secs.  Christian Pobre, “The Sandbagger” came in at 57 mins..  Gil Perez, Romy Garduce, and John Valdezco arrived within seconds of each other at the 58 min mark as  John “The Pusher” forced Romy “The Rock” to sprint at the end zone.  Gil, whom most of the team members met only on the day of the race, showed his “Superman” side as he shed his mild mannered Clark Kent office demeanor.  Literally, his eyeglasses came off and his change of clothes to fit singlet and shorts were a contrast to his daily office wear of loose shirts and pants. 

Photo Finish

At 300 m. from the finish line, John paced me, ensuring that I increase my speed as we neared the finish line then at 50 m. to finish he yelled “SPRINT, SPRINT, SPRINT”.  I made it at 1:02:36.  Maita came in shortly after at 1:13 the only one who beat the stretch target.  Our cumulative time of record (first 3 male and first female finisher) was around 3:47 mins which was 10 mins faster than our team time commitment.  We had executed to perfection.  But we didn’t know how that fared versus 15 other teams. 

SMS: “I ran 10kms in 57mins. natalo ko si Romy”

There were several groups who remained for the awarding, which lasted until 10:30am.  In one table were the celebrities and hosts who were hobnobbing with the race organizers and sponsors. Another group were the winning runners with their families who were excitedly awaiting their booty.  Then there we were,  Team Alpha, looking like tourists in the midst of running professionals donned in our Nike Dri-Fit and soccer jerseys.   If looking like a runner was part of the criteria, we’d never get picked, blame it on our presumption that we would win and hence had to look good on stage.

 

Proud to have stayed till the end                With host Giselle Sanchez and NB GM and staff

 

The best way to summarize how we won, to borrow from Missy Elliot, “It was worth it and we worked it, put our thing down, flipped it and reversed it”