Rio’s Blog « RUNRIO.COM

Rio's Blog

Bonifacio Global City: The Metro’s Premiere Running Hot Spot 09 March 2010

Much has been said about the importance of a competent race organizing team, a growing running community, and corporations who are willing to spend millions on our beloved sport in order to latch on to the running craze for whatever purpose it may serve them. These three go hand-in-hand in sustaining the current running boom we are now experiencing. But there is still a missing link to this unbreakable chain. If the race organizer was the chef, this would be the pots and pans where a world-famous dish is made, or the high quality plates onto which the chef presents his award-winning dish.

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A Day of Total Wellness, Thanks to Unilab 07 March 2010

With only two weeks to recover, evaluate, and apply all our learnings from the previous event, the pressure was on to correct all mistakes and have another shot at mounting a perfect race at the Unilab Run United for Wellness. From my perspective, a lot of things improved this second time around. First, we placed a cap on the total number of participants at a maximum of 8,000. We felt that we needed to take baby steps and perfect our skills at managing a crowd of this size first before we make another attempt at organizing a race as massive as the previous one.

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Thank you Century Tuna Superbods Run 2010! 21 February 2010

To all who supported and graced the Century Tuna Superbods Run 2010,

After four grueling months of painstakingly preparing for this much-awaited race, our dream event has finally come to fruition. Although we acknowledge that it was not as perfect as we had aimed for, due to issues such as unexpected bugs in the online registration process, an early gun start for 21K & 10K runners, with some 10K runners catching the tail end of the 5K runners , and several runners who got lost along the route, thanks to the collective effort of Century Pacific Group, Saga Events, PC&V, Fuentes Manila PR, Starcom Media Vest, Event King Secretariat, RunRio Inc., and FBDC, we came together as a team determined to rise above the seemingly insurmountable challenge of pleasing each and every one of our 11,344 participants on race day.

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My Road to Boston 12 January 2010

rio fresno marathon It’s been almost four years since my life as a competitive athlete ceased to be what it was before. From childhood to adolescence, up to my years as a young adult, the track and the road have been my playground, my home, a source of income, and at times, my escape from the troubles of the world. But as I came towards the end of my allowable stay at the University of the Philippines, College of Human Kinetics, it suddenly occurred to me that running would not put food on the table. I needed a fallback plan, in case my running career didn’t take off, or I become debilitated either by a running injury or old age. While I probably won’t go hungry working as a Physical Education professor, I felt that life had so much more to offer. And so, with nothing but my ambition, passion for running, some start-up money, and my saliva, I dabbled into the world of events organizing. And with that major shift in priority, my running career has taken a back seat since then. Well, at least until I was welcomed into the loving arms of the Timex family and became one of their product ambassadors. Soon after that, I rekindled my love for running and found myself once again sleeping in my running clothes and waking up as early as 4 in the morning to run up the treacherous hills of Sierra Madre.

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Timex Run will be accepting donations 30 September 2009

Dearest Friends,

Marikina City has been my home for most of my life and it fills me with great sadness to witness and experience first-hand, the tragic events that occurred over the past weekend. In one sweep, many lost their homes and the lives they’ve always known. Some have to deal with the painful loss of friends and loved ones in the midst of the tragedy that struck our beloved city. Now, more than ever, I’ve realized how fleeting and fragile life can be. And despite both of my cars needing major repairs and the first floor of our house looking like a huge mess due to the flood waters that ravaged our subdivision, I am still better off than most of people in our neighborhood. As I stood on top of a rock outside our house surrounded by a raging stream of flood water, seeing the far worse conditions experienced by my neighbors, I remember telling myself that it doesn’t matter anymore if Typhoon Ondoy takes away my Speed Racer and Bubble Bee and suck them completely under water. Losing my precious cars is nothing compared to the suffering that other people went through, some of which I painfully saw with my own eyes. It was truly heart-breaking and I can’t help but be thankful that I am still one of the luckier ones.

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