Life continued to grow sour for Coach Rio as domestic and financial problems kept him from finishing first grade. Instead, he accompanied his dad at the construction site where he worked. Realizing that he again needs to put his inherent business skills into use, he had a Eureka moment after crashing a children’s party and getting money from the palayok. He managed to appease the other children by buying ice water for them using the money he “collected.” From this incident, he got the idea for his first business of selling ice water and ice to their neighbors for 1 peso each. He worked from dusk until dawn, a work schedule that is reminiscent of his daily sunrise-to-sundown toil as an event organizer.
Trials and Challenges: The Pang-MMK Story of His Life
Coach Rio continued to face many trials and challenges while growing up, from being a malnourished kid, to walking 3 kilometers while carrying buckets of water from the NAWASA station for drinking, and living within their modest meansby converting his dirty socks with holes into make-shift gloves for a Grade 1 school performance. But to this day, he claims with utmost pride that he survived all these hardships because of running.
If the Shoe Fits
Coach Rio has always been an active child but his experience with formal run training started in Grade 5. He showed that he was a child running prodigy when he beat everyone in his school while running barefoot on his first spur-of-the-moment attempt at joining his school’s track team. Realizing his potential, his coach signed him up for several events including the 50-m and 100-m sprint, long jump, and high jump. He bagged first place and was hailed the Unit Meet Champion in all his events. He earned his first pair of Mighty Kid running shoes from a neighbor who probably took pity on his unscientific barefoot running. He badly needed shoes for running on the road but since they were too small for him, he found a way to make them work by cutting the front-end open, exposing his toes.
Because he was already over-aged by thetime he reached Grade 6, he had to be bumped up to the long distance events. He joined his first 5km at the Milo Marathon in Quezon City with a time of 20 minutes. During the division meet, he beat all his older high school competitors with his 19-minute 5km finish. At the NCR meet, he was temporarily sidetracked while nursing his first injury, developing shin splints from doing killer track workouts on barefoot. It left him with a swollen and badly bruised left shin, which caused him to limp while running, forcing him to stay off his feet for 6 months.
Realizing the need for proper footwear, his first running shoe investment was on a pair of Chuck Taylors with thick soles, rationalizing that thicker soles means longer life span for the shoes. It was during this time, that his elementary coach became like a father to him when he took his biological dad’s place during his grade school graduation and placed a garland around his neck. He even gave him travel allowance and snacks to train at the Marikina Sports Center, where he later on met his high school coach.
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