Aquathlon

Yesterday we had a long and action-packed day with the Ateneo Aquathlon early in the morning and a visit to Antipolo in the evening. We’ll write about our Antipolo visit in our next post.

As I mentioned briefly before, a few months ago one of the Ateneo swim coaches we see at the pool told us about the Aquathlon that the swim team organizes each year, a race that consists of a 600 meter swim and a 5K run. We decided to go ahead and sign up for it since it would provide good motivation to keep on swimming and would make us try some running, too.

On Sunday, Grace and I left our apartment at 5:45am for our 6:00am check-in (we’ve noticed that many races that involve running outside are normally held fairly early in the morning to beat the heat). There was a light rain, which was strange, since there had really only been one other day of rain in the past two months or so. We checked-in and waited around until my age group was led down to the pool at 6:45. Grace’s heat started 15 minutes after mine so I didn’t get to watch her swim.

Swim route

Waiting for the start. I'm in the front line, second from the right

We were both a little nervous about the swim since the staging of it could potentially be pretty wild. My age group was broken into two heats but we still had 17 people clustered together in one lane waiting for the start. When it was time to go, we were supposed to swim down lane 1, swim back in lane 2, down in lane 3, etc., until you finish a 200 at the end of lane 8. Then you have to grab a big rubber band to put on your wrist to show you’ve finished that lap, run back to lane 1, and start your next lap, repeating until you finish a 600. Thanks to some advice from our friend Blake, a professional triathlete who swims with me back in Madison, both Grace and I knew to make sure that we were at the front of the cluster when it was time to go.

 We planned to sprint the first 50 or so to get out in front of the crowd and then to settle in to our race pace, a strategy that worked pretty well. There were definitely parts of the swim, though, especially after the first 200 when we were lapping people, when we had to navigate around other swimmers. Grace had it worse than I did (as this video shows) because the second heat of my age group left only 10 minutes before hers started so she never got clean water like I did. Of course, I started my third lap at the exact moment when the second heat of my age group was starting so that was a bit crazy. Fortunately, I don’t think I hurt anyone…

After we put on our shoes and running gear (thanks to Blake for some tips there, too), we went off on the run (again, Grace did her race 15 minutes behind me). Both Grace and I managed to get a nice lead on our swims so we just tried to maintain it on the run. Grace actually managed to increase her lead on the run and still looked strong when I saw her near the finish. I, on the other hand, was plagued by a real runner who was gaining on me the whole time. The course had two sections where we looped back and could see who was behind us so I was nervously keeping an eye on him. I managed to finish about a minute ahead of him but if the run had been 2K longer it might have been a different story. We were also lucky in that we didn’t have to worry about getting lost on the run since we had found the route online and had practiced it almost a dozen times already.

The run basically went all around Ateneo's campus

After the race, we were both pretty happy because we had beaten the times of our trial run-through a few weeks ago (and because now we don’t have to run in the evenings any more…just swimming from now on, thank you). We hung around the area where they were doing announcements and things. Since there were only so many results to announce every now and then, the MCs were also playing games, singing, and making messages from the sponsors. Grace volunteered to take part in the “Chubby Bunny” game, where you put marshmallows in your mouth and try to say “Chubby Bunny” (although, here they had to say “Plunge Ateneo Aquathlon”). Grace unfortunately (or fortunately?) did not win this game.

after the race

with our cheering section

waiting around after the race (here's where you could pick up your ID that you had to leave in exchange for the fancy timing chips they used)

We waited and waited but, since it seemed like it could be quite some time before our age group was announced, we decided to leave. Mike and Kathy went off to their place and we started down towards our apartment. Just as we were exiting the pavilion, though, Grace heard her name announced. It turns out she had won one of three super-fancy watches that were being raffled off at random. These watches monitor heart-rate, calories, etc, along with normal watch functions. She was really excited since her watch had just broken. We decided to go ahead and wait after that and, sure enough, our age group was announced within 15 minutes. We both won nice medals, snazzy flip-flops, and a nice gift certificate to any Speedo store in metro Manila. Plus we got to keep those singlets with tiny armholes that we wore on the run. All in all, it was a very fun morning (I think that there will be more photos of us posted on the Aquathlon website over the next week so we'll try to put those up here when they show up).