Splashing with the Weekend Warriors

So what do you get when you toss three guys and a girl into a car, make them drive all the way to Laguna, and then present them with a water park to cool off in?

Well, aside from the part where hilarity ensues, you get another episode of Weekend Warriors coming soon on Flippish.com. This time, Chris was away (preparing for the Asian Poker Tournament in Macau) and Jinno was available to shoot (with provisional script, to boot). Once again, I was the only girl they could get on short notice to be the Girlfriend of the Week. Thanks to Ton for inviting me during Amina’s party, I got to revisit a childhood wonderland, one I was last at when I was 13 years old.

 Jinno, Al, and Ton didn’t offer to take my photo. Boo.

After banging on Al’s door to wake him up (dude needs an alarm clock, seriously), dropping Jinno’s car off to get his bumper re-attached, and sating five hungry bellies including our cameraman’s, we finally arrived at Splash Island around 12pm in our Ford Everest, on loan from the car company.

The park hasn’t changed from my childhood memories of it, except: the grass is longer, there are more dead leaves in the water, and there’s less water flowing at all since some of the slides were closed. It’s only open Saturdays and Sundays in the off-season, but open all days of the week during the summer.

What’s great about visiting parks with these guys is we get to ask for rides to open just for us so we can shoot on them.

 “Get into the hot tub with me,” says spider Al.

One thing I forgot about Splash Island is you always have to climb several storeys up a tower to get onto a slide. But once I slid down our first ride, Magellan’s Drop, everything came rushing back at me: the long lines starting at the base of the tower, the anticipation building as you got nearer to the slide itself, and then finally those short ten to 15 seconds you slip and slide down to the water below.

Jinno took ass shots. Grrr.

I took my waterproof camera with me on the slides, so I took video which they might use for the episode. Aside from the video-taking distracting me from my acrophobia, my advancement in age took away the terror I used to feel getting into the King Pilipit body slide. When I was younger, that ride made me pray aloud.

 I got to play while these guys worked.

There was one ride I sat out while the boys tried it out: the giant plastic balls in the wave pool. Aside from having only a limited supply of oxygen inside, I just didn’t want to be seen falling all over myself. Besides, I was afraid of any wardrobe malfunctions that might happen (or that they were counting on to happen, hahaha).

So I let them do their thing while I took photos! Wasn’t my job to sit still and look pretty anyway? Hahaha. And I was conserving my energy for the Kenny’s Open Urbanite Run I was participating in later that night.

 

Bubble Boys

Thanks again to the Weekend Warriors for taking me on the road trip to Splash Island. It was more fun than a barrelful of monkeys! Oh wait–

Update: The episode is out! Watch Weekend Warriors: Splash Island on Flippish.

Kenny’s Open Urbanite Run

I’ve been hot under the collar to race again and see if I could beat my 10km time at the Globe run. I thought I could do that at the Kenny’s Open 2009 Urbanite Run on August 15.

Urbanite Run: Marc Nelson

Based on this poster alone I would have signed up.

I got sales-talked into it by Rovilson. He told me (and I have the Facebook comment to prove it), “It’s going to be a night run (starts at 9PM, no wind) so I expect a lot of personal times to be beaten.”

Well, that was before we saw the race route. It would wind through the old Fort Bonifacio almost down to C-5, then back up the way we came. Then we would detour through McKinley Hill (past Heritage Park cemetery) and a quick run-by the Manila American cemetery before heading back to where we started.

Urbanite Run 10k route
what the hill?! (pun intended)

I arrived at 7pm fresh (or tired) from a shoot at Splash Island with the Weekend Warriors. After a quick-change in the car I met up with some friends from church who were also going to run the 10K event at 8:45pm.

Urbanite Run: the Vite Runners

Guess which ones were our bandits?

Official race results were released today (enter my bib number 1605 to view all my results) and despite me not beating my personal best, I’m still largely pleased with how I did.

summary info

The Timex clock at the finish line told me I crossed it at 54 minutes 25 seconds after the gun. It’s weird that the official time is off by five seconds. It’s still better than my treadmill time (54:31) before the Globe run, though.

result in entire field

Probably due to the lack of depth in the field (only 887 finishers in the 10K event), I finished in 32nd place. At the Globe run I finished in 60th place. My gender and division results were poor though; I finished two places lower.

result in gender
result in division

section speed
It was really a tough run: the time of night, the route, and the humidity and temperature wilted all the runners. I ran strong during the first two sections of the race, but by the last one, my will was starting to fail me as it was literally an uphill battle.girls do it better I tried to overtake a guy who had glowsticks poking up like antennae out of a headband. Then I tried simply to keep pace with him. But at the last two kilometers, he put on a burst of speed and just vanished. I was fading, and I had to pray aloud for God to give me what I needed to finish strong.

As I made the last turn toward the finish line, I saw the clock tick from 53 minutes into 54. Suddenly I felt a surge of defiance within me. No way was I going to let that clock tick into 55 minutes. I started sprinting.

Urbanite Run: Racing to the Finish

harder, better, faster, stronger

My feet crossed the mat, I came to a sudden stop to avoid crashing into the woman logging the finishers’ numbers, and I was gasping for breath from the burst of effort. A few minutes later, Rovilson came in from his 15K run, and we bumped fists before he went off to host the awarding ceremony with his best bud Marc. I stayed near the finish chute to welcome my fellow runner friends, and then we went back to the finish line to take some photos.

Urbanite Run: Powered Up!

my Supergirl pose. all I need is a cape billowing behind me…

I reverse my original statement that I like running alone. Sure I may leave behind the group I came with as I try to beat my personal best — but being around when they celebrate their own personal victories is a better feeling than the runner’s high.

UPDATE: Thanks to Sam the Running Ninja for giving me the link to my Photovendo photos from the race. See the change in my expression from the start to the end of the race:

Urbanite Run: Serene Start

Serene Start

Urbanite Run: Pushing the Limit

Pushing the Limit

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Make-Up “Splurge”

Because of the eye infection I had last month, I began to distrust the makeup I had in my possession. My mom has a habit of giving her makeup palettes to me (as a starter kit of sorts), but I don’t know how old they are. So for the past week I’ve been throwing out old products and buying new stuff. The other day I bought waterproof mascara, but today was the big splurge.

Perhaps I should write “splurge”, with quotation marks. While some people may have no qualms about shelling out 1,500 pesos on Smashbox eyeshadow, I certainly had no plans of spending more than 500 pesos total. I went slightly over-budget anyway.

Ever Bilena Eyeshadow 24 Shades
Ever Bilena Eyeshadow 24 Shades

I am not a makeup snob, so even if Ever Bilena has a funny and local-sounding name (whateverrrrr), it’s been a trusted brand of cosmetics for as long as I can remember. It’s cheap, but it’s good. I tried this 24-shade palette (worth P240) when I got home, and I was impressed by how rich the pipgments were. I only needed one or two sweeps across my eyelids to achieve the desired effect. It doesn’t rub off easily, either.

I thought I was done with my purchases for the day when I realized the EB palette was too big to fit into my daily makeup bag. I was busy kicking myself when I came across a G-Lish stall.

Patrick Rosas for G-LishEyeshadow and Bronzer
Patrick Rosas for G-Lish Eyeshadows & Bronzer

Normally the eyeshadows are priced at P250 each and the bronzer is P300, but I’d chanced on the store during a promo period. I snapped up the brown and black eyeshadows and bought the bronzer on a whim.

The total amount I’d spent tallied up to P540 — that’s 40 pesos over-budget, and it’s why I felt it was a splurge. But when I tried on the makeup at home, I really felt it was worth it.

PhotobucketPhotobucket

Now to try finishing all this product before it goes stale. Anybody want a makeover?

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Filipina Flickrites

For those of you following my RSS feed you might have noticed some interesting photos cropping up in the image feed spliced into it.

In the HoodYou Got Me Burnin' UpPosh (I Needed an Excuse to Wear These Boots)

These photos are submissions to Filipina Flickrites, a group on Flickr where members post self-portraits according to a theme every week. The first two photos are from Week 22: Music Genres, and the last (and latest) photo is from Week 23: Fashionista.

I really enjoy what other people come up with, and I love how this stimulates my own creative juices.

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Sujiivana: The Beautiful Life

Last month shortly after my birthday, I got an unexpected treat. I was invited to be part of Sujiivana Salon‘s online catalogue of Fall Looks. Check it out!

Fall Looks for Sujiivana Salon

The curl came from an iron, so it washed out after the shoot. What stayed with me is the trim and color. The cut has been growing out nicely, with none of the stray hairs and split ends I had before I went to the salon. The color has been gradually lightening over time since the shoot, but I still love it and am maintaining it with Kolours shampoo. I think it’ll grow out gracefully as well, not leaving me with ugly dark roots.

Sujiivana Salon is located at Westgate Center, Alabang. Check out the price listing on their website for their services. Pretty reasonable, for the spa ambience you get. Ü

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Slice ‘n’ Scrape

Filipino old wives’ tales tell us that Peeping Toms get kuliti, or styes. It’s not really true, of course. You can get styes from wearing old mascara, which is probably what happened. Still, this version of events is more entertaining…

One thing I mentioned from my Run for Home report is I ran past a cute and tall pacer running at 5’30/km. I didn’t mention that at the parking lot after the race, he was changing his shirt at his car, which was parked near mine. I snuck a photo:

the reason for my stye
the reason for my stye

God has a sense of humor. He must have been looking at me, shaking His head and saying, “My child, that’s very unbecoming of a princess in My kingdom.”

So, the next day I woke up with a stye. A HUGE ONE. One that, even after two weeks of treatment with medicines, was still with me. I even had to go to a party at Embassy trying to hide the stye with makeup.

Photobucket
It’s hard to party when you feel ugly.

Today, I went to the hospital where my dad works. I asked an opthalmologist to flip my eyelid, make an incision on the stye, and scrape it until it was hollow so I could finally be rid of it.

It was AWESOME. Also, painful.

Photobucket
I can haz eyepatch?

The bandages came off shortly after I got home, and I iced down the swelling. There’s just a little bruising on the eyelid, but I am finally rid of that stye.

I swear never to peep at anyone ever again.

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Run for Home Official Results

Because of that cool hi-tech Champion chip we all tied into our shoelaces during the Globe-AyalaLand Run for Home event, I now have race analysis and info of how I did during the race. Ü

(If you want to see the page for yourself, check out RunPix at Globe-AyalaLand Run for Home, enter bib number 4405, and click on the 10K button.)

Run for Home - Info & Summary

I initially wrote that I finished at a time of 52 minute and 2 seconds, but that’s the approximate amount of time from starting gun until I reached the finish line. I had a lag of 30+ seconds getting to the starting line though, since I placed myself behind the elite runners. That’s why my net time registers at 51 minutes and 31 seconds. I know, it surprised me, too.

The next two graphs were even more astonishing.

Run for Home - Results by Gender
Run for Home - Result by Division

So, if I were just running a race against other women, these would be the gross results. I’m going to chalk it up to my innate competitiveness: every time I saw a woman running ahead of me, I’d put on some speed to overtake her. Run for Home - vs. MenBut there was one tidbit of info that I had a good laugh at: I’d outpaced 94% of the male runners. There were more men than women in the entire field, but it gave me a weird sense of satisfaction seeing this graph:

Run for Home - Finish Line
It’s Running Men! Hallelujah!

Run for Home - PassingAfter the 5K mark, I overtook 7 people, though 6 people who were behind me before the split raced past me. Run for Home - Speed per SplitIn my previous post I thought I was putting on speed at the end of the race; however, my result shows that I ran my fastest during the first 5K, and slowed down by 1 km/h during the second half. This is what’s called a “positive split” in runner’s terminology. (Thanks to Takbo.ph, I’m learning a lot about this new sport I’ve picked up.)

I think I did pretty well in the speed department, though.

Run for Home - Time per mile and kilometerRun for Home - Average Speed

Overall, it was a wonderful race and I didn’t think I had it in me to do as well as I did. I really think it was by the grace of God I didn’t cramp and was able to fight off temptations to slow down to a walk, since that was my usual modus operandi in my training sessions on the treadmill.

I signed up for the Kenny’s Open ’09 Urbanite Run (10K). I’d like to see whether I can beat this time, or whether it was just a fluke. Will I see you there? Ü

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Up and Running for Home

I’m an on-again, off-again runner and I’ve never competed in a race, so I ponied up the cash and joined the Globe Run for Home race, a charity run to benefit Habitat for Humanity. There were 3k, 5k, 10k, and 21k events, but the closest I’d ever gotten to running 10 kilometers was doing 4 rounds on the UP Academic Oval (8.8km). So last Monday I timed myself on the gym treadmill: I clocked my 10km at 54 minutes 31 seconds (split time: 27 minutes and 52 seconds for 5km). I thought, “OK, good enough.”

Run for Home - my race kit

in my race kit

I was up at 3am this morning getting ready for the race: nutrition, hydration, decoration (LOL! Of course you have to look good while running!). I’d even made a running playlist the night before.

    Noelle’s Running Playlist

  1. Tiesto – Elements of Life
  2. Tiesto – Sweet Things
  3. Black Box – Everybody Everybody (Benny Benassi Remix)
  4. Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Alive 2007)
  5. Tiesto – In the Dark
  6. Da Hool – Meet Her at the Love Parade
  7. Voodoo & Serano – Blood is Pumping vs. E-Samba
  8. Justin Timberlake – What Goes Around… (Paul van Dyk Club Mix)
  9. Freemasons – Rain Down Love (Funk Mobb Remix)
  10. Booty Luv – Say It
  11. Shapeshifters – Incredible (Denis the Menace & Jerry Roperos)
  12. Fragma – Toca’s Miracle
  13. Paul Oakenfold – Ready Steady Go
  14. Tiesto – Do You Feel Me
  15. DJ Visage – Formula One (The Schumacher Song)
  16. Tiesto – Everything

I still underestimated the time I needed to get ready, so I found myself speeding at 90kph on EDSA just to get to Fort before assembly time at 5:15am. I arrived just as the 21k runners set off.

Run for Home - start

starting line

Since I was all by my lonesome, I had no one to talk to, or take photos with. But you know what? That’s exactly how I like my running: by myself, not trying to catch up to or wait for anyone else.

Run for Home: at the assembly point

caught on a stranger’s phone cam

I started pounding pavement with more than 1,000 participants at 5:45am. The sunrise tinted the cirrus clouds red above us, but the air was still cool with dew. Our route led us up and over the flyover from the Fort onto Buendia, crossing Paseo de Roxas and Makati Ave. before looping back on itself at Ayala Ave.

Run for Home - route map

10k route map

Normally the only treads on that flyover are made by tires. Today, I saw the marks of running shoes wet with water and 100-Plus drink on the asphalt. I started running ahead of the 5min30sec/km pacer and steadily increased my speed as I approached the halfway mark. The adrenaline kicked in as I made that U-turn for the long road back to the finish line, and at 1km to go, I started sprinting for it.

There were several digital clocks at the finish line showing the time elapsed for each event. I kept my eyes on the 10k clock as the seconds ticked by, and clocked myself at 52 minutes and 2 seconds at the finish line.

Run for Home - finish

me at the finish line 40 minutes after I crossed it

“Incredible” was ringing in my ears, and it really was incredible. A wave of endorphins surged into my bloodstream as I slowed down, and for the first time I experienced a “runner’s high.” No wonder there are so many recreational runners out there who aren’t in it to win, but just to finish!

I took the photos in this post after my run and stayed around to find out how long it took for the top three runners to finish their 10k. I was aghast when I found out they had sub-45 minute times! Sigh.

Before I made my way to the Fitness First branch in Fort for a shower and steam bath, I popped in at Krispy Kreme for a doughnut and coffee. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with the same idea; other runners were also stuffing their faces as a reward for the morning’s exertions.

Run for Home - runners at Krispy Kreme
Run for Home - donut and coffee

making calorie burning futile

Official race results and analyses will be up by July 23. ‘Til next time!

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