Race: Super
Country: Philippines, Alveira
Distance: 10km
Elevation profile: 175m
Terrain: A mix of lots of sand & rocks, some trail and a small amount of road.
Rating out of 5: 4.5 / 5
Pre Race Decisions
With the Vietnam race cancelled and the rest of the year questionable due to the unpredictably of the Corona virus, I went from being ready to tackle the SEA series to feeling deflated and worried about when I would actually get to race. With a long block of training I felt like I'd made a lot of gains and I wanted to see if this training was paying off, so I started looking at races in the region. With lots being cancelled it seemed like a hopeless task but then I spotted the race in the Philippines. I had a women's workout planned for the Sunday that I refused to cancel but with some beautifully placed flight times and a close race site to the airport (a rarity) it seemed possible, if not a little mad.
I waited until a few days out to monitor the situation with travel and when things seemed stable (as much as they could be) I booked my flight for my 24 hour trip to the Philippines. Obviously I had been training for a Sprint but with 3 out of the 5 races due to be Super distance in the SEA series it seemed like an excellent chance for a bit of a race reccie, especially with the Super becoming a 10km race, rather than the 13km-ish distance we have been used to seeing.
Race Map
Race Morning
Arriving at the start line just in the nick of time…
I realised a lot during this weekend that I'm used to having friends to travel with. This was the first race I'd ever travelled to alone and it seemed a bit odd. But, I woke up and went through my usual pre race morning routine. I had spoken to the hotel and they said I'd be able to get a grab easy… famous last words. Luckily I started booking early and I realised quickly that I was going to have no luck. So I headed down to the lobby and got lucky- there was another girl heading to the race site so we split the very expensive hotel taxi cost. We chatted with the guy, confirmed the location and then got to finding out more about each other. To clarify, the race site was 28mins from our hotel. I had a great time getting to know Charity during the drive and about 25mins into our ride our taxi driver pulled over and I was thinking “great we're here.”
Then he turned round and said “Mam, I just need to check the location…” We pulled the map up to check how far we were and my heart sank- he had gone SO wrong and we were now 39 minutes from the race site. Now, I'm quite a highly strung person on the best of days but luckily between my good friend Emily reassuring me and Joelle sorting out my registration at the race site, I managed to stay calm. We arrived at the race site with about 8 minutes to spare and I threw my suitcase at bag check and had a VERY quick warm up- certainly not the ideal conditions but I chose to leave that shit behind and went to the start line with as clear a mind as I could muster.
The Race
It was a good field, around 15 elite women, which is decent for Asia and as always it was so nice to see some familiar faces! Some of the girls went off the start line pretty pacey and I was around 4th for the first 800m. I had a confused moment where I tried to climb over a wall with barbed wire on the top, until I spotted the small spot at the bottom to roll under 😂 I kept my pace steady and after about 1.5km I was first and heading for Spear throw.... I felt weirdly calm about it this time. I've been putting in a lot of work at Ministry Of Fitness and I had a new found confidence. I lined myself up, took a deep breath, threw, and stuck it! I let out my usual post spear bellow and threw myself under the barbed wire, determined to make up some time here.
The terrain was interesting and challenging. It was a lot of light packed sand and small rocks mixed in with some rooty trails. Around 3km in we were running along a small river and I nearly had a run in with a buffalo so I'm very thankful to the volunteer who had clearly been put on buffalo duty! The race ticked along there until we came into a small clearing and I was faced with Twister, Stairway to Sparta and Olympus about 100m apart from each other. I had to have my standard argument with the ref about if I was allowed to use the middle truss to transition (I was, as always, correct) but I felt really good on twister and the bell arrived much quicker than I'd expected. Looking back I realised there had only been 2 sections, rather than the 3 we're used to seeing. Although having chatted to Mike the Race Director afterwards, apparently a 2 section twister is standard for a Super distance. I felt a little flicker of happiness as I clocked Stairway and it was the good old original stairway, not the bastard 2.0 version we'd seen in Sarawak! Olympus was also the normal, non slippery surface so I passed that too and ran off, taking some time to get my breath back.
It then opened up in to a longer block of running with some tricky sections of terrain and some small hills. I'm normally pretty confident on the hills but the addition of the sand on these hills certainly made it trickier to run these, so that's something I'll be focused on with World Champs moving to the desert this year! I fuelled with tailwind and water during the race and felt like I managed this well, even with some seriously hot conditions.
Coming in to plate drag it opened up to quite a long gauntlet of obstacles across around 1.5kms which was a LOT of fun. Mike had decided to dig the atlas carry into its own little hole in the floor which added in a little extra challenge but it kept it fun. Kept ticking away the rest of the obstacles, balancing getting my breath back with maintaining my running. Being a dry race, when I passed Olympus I was pretty confident I wasn't doing any burpees and as the obstacles ticked off I got more and more excited about this so when I came in to rig and there was a single rope mixed in with the rings I knew I was just going to skip past that bad boy. The second to last obstacle was the sandbag carry and it was a beast of a loop which I loved - by this point I had quite a safe time buffer built in but I'd like to see more of this set up as it would be such a fun push to the finish! Quick jump over a vertical cargo and a dodge around a bizarrely placed Jeep (hello free advertising for them I guess) and I had crossed the finish line. I felt strong till the end and was so stoked that my training had paid off (Thank you Sean!) It was ace to have Mike pass me my medal and as always so much fun to cheer the rest of the girls in.
Overall I was really impressed with the course, it was an interesting order of obstacles and the terrain kept it interesting throughout. I must say a huge shout out to all of the volunteers and staff. They were SO well staffed at every obstacle and the whole volunteer community was gorgeous (special shout out to the girl at cargo net who ran along the outside of the course just to cheer me on!) They made the decision to take out cups from the water stations which I was hesitant about but in hindsight actually think ran very well. I raced with my own plastic cup and being able to come in with my cup ready and fill it up and run off was actually more beneficial than having the cups in my opinion. Plus I heard from Mike that it saved them over 33,000 cups - total madness. So well done to Spartan Philippines for taking the first step in Asia to do this - I really hope we see a lot more of the franchisees making the same move across the world soon.
Also, I had some time to kill before my podium so I went out with Mike to do a sweeper lap of the course and cheer everyone on and I must say such a huge well done to all the Open racers. Running at the hottest part of the day is no joke and it was so amazing to see such an epic community spirit across so many varied fitness levels and so many people choosing to do their burpees and uphold that integrity! It's one of the many reasons I love the OCR community and it made my heart very happy.
So all in all, not a bad result for a 24 hour trip! I feel like it has allowed me to assess my training, continue to build my confidence and let me fine tune some areas before we head in to the start of the SEA Series. I would have preferred to have been travelling with my crew but as always had so much fun hanging out with old friends and meeting new faces! Well done if you were out there racing the Super, Sprint, Trail or the HH this weekend, aroo!
