Shoe sharing project

There is currently a shoe sharing project shared to my by fellow runner AdoboKing.

The beneficiaries are the young athletes of Negros Oriental who needed to share shoes to participate in the Palarong Pambansa. The full story can be read from this blog.

The PEx running club is going to donate shoes for this project.

Please support!

More details on this link

360 Fitness Club Challenge: Things I get myself into

After my first urbanathlon finish, I went on a whim and tried the 360 Fitness Club Challenge. The challenge entailed an inidividual to do a circuit with a 12 lb kettlebell. Since the rest of our running buddies are still on the road, I said to myself, "Why not?" and signed up for the challenge.

 Unsuspecting Victim

The challenge

The challenge included 50 kettlebell swings, 25 squat-shoulder press combo on each side and 20 one sided squats. It looked easy but it really wasn't. Kettle bell swings were easy at the beginning but towards the end I could feel my body giving up. Then, I had to do the squat - shoulder press combo. I couldn't even control the kettle bell on the position the trainer told me to do. At the right side, I completed the 25 reps with the last 10 reps extremely wiggly. On the left side, I could only do 10 reps. Then I rested a lot and the trainer was already helping me to raise the kettle bell to a shoulder press. That was my limit.

 Kettle bell swings are not easy at all

More Swings you do that harder it becomes

To end the torture, I was finished 20 one sided squats. At that time, I was thinking about joining a gym again. Apparently, not following a regimen hadn't improved my muscles so at that time, I decided to join 360 Fitness Club by next year. I got vouchers from FTX and MAP so I have myself covered in attending gyms for the next 3 months.

 Resting at the combo

Struggling at that shoulder press

Trainer is already helping me

Come February though, I have to join a gym on the top of my list is 360 Fitness Club.

Fly Yoga at FTX Gym

Thanks to group deals (especially to Cash Cash Pinoy), I was able to spot the newest gym in Makati, FTX or Fitness Exchange. The gym is located in the heart of Makati, just behind Makati Sports Club at the exact address of 2nd floor, Three Salcedo Place, 123 Tordesillas St., Makati.

 FTX Logo from CCP

The new gym offers classes on yoga, dance, core fusion training, boxing aerobics, muay thai drills and 14 signature workouts. Classes have a schedule but since the gym is still in its early run, the schedules are bound to change based on the clients needs. While the signature workouts can be availed anytime that a trainer is around. I haven't tried the Cirqfit workouts yet but based on what I saw when I went there, the trainer works out with you, too.

Fly Yoga

After office hours, I went from our office in PBCOM to the back of Makati Sports club where the FTX Gym is located and used by Cash Cash Pinoy Vouchers to try Fly Yoga. I have only been to a few classes in Yoga but I do practice Fitness Yoga from Tony Horton's Yoga Flex, Yoga X and Stetching X from the P90x programs since they are good for runners who regularly train like me.

Fly Yoga Ad from CCP

So I was excited to see if how fly yoga works. As expected the class was dominated by females but it was okay since it was a small class. The yoga teacher, Isla (who is also the girl in the CCP ad), started the class getting to know our names and introducing info about yoga and fly yoga.

In the class, the "Fly" would be referring to the cloth anchored to the ceiling. This cloth will carry your body while exercising your core through yoga. Being a person that weighs 140+ lbs, the cloth was able to carry my whole weight so if you weight the same weight as me. I could guarantee your safety.

The warm up immediately included the use of the cloth so our bodies was "flying" little by little. I don't really remember the actual yoga terms but our session included body circles with half circle and quarter circle variations (out upper bodies flew in a circle); Monkey God pose with Variation (our leg was flying away while we stay grounded on the floor) and a lot more poses which I forgot how they are called.

To end the workout, we did the hanging corpse pose which was called that since it practiced letting go of everything in this pose our whole body flew while our teacher commanded our bodies to let go.

The workout was fun and really challenging. It needed the student to engage a lot of your core muscles. Our teacher also showed us things we could learn in the future like inverted split, head stand, etc wherein the cloth could make things harder or easier. The only con would be the good pain aftermath which meant your body was growing because of the workout.

Looking forward to my next fly yoga session at FTX.

For inquiries, contact 822-3311 or 0916-2701177.

Running in the Rain: My 2nd 5k at Slimmerun 2011

After experiencing my first fun run in May 2011, I was hooked. I decided to join at least 1 fun run event every month.

And for the month of June, my running buddies (Gelo, KC and JR) came into a consensus to join the Slimmerun 2011. It was originally schedule on the end of June but a big typhoon came to the country at that time so it was postponed to the 2nd week of July.

 Slimmerun Stage

So July comes but the rains are still rampant in the Metro but the run was on still on the GO according to tweets and fb posts so I prepped early in the morning at 5am and asked where KC is (since he was my cab pool buddy) and he was sound asleep. When he finally picked up, he declared the run cancelled and went back to sleep. But I wanted to go despite the rain so I called JR, who was supposed to have his first 5k experience in this fun run event, but he too didn't want to run in the rain. So my last resort to running with a friend was Gelo who wasn't picking so I decided to skip the run too. I changed into my sleeping clothes and was about to shut my eyes when I received a call from Gelo. He was already in the venue and was looking for us. I decided to go and changed into my running attire.

I hurriedly got into a taxi and made my way to BGC. Since I wasn't familiar with the place, as it was also my first time to run in BGC. I dropped off Market! Market! and jogged my way to the starting line. I came just in time as the 10k runner were prepping to start running. I checked my things in and made our way to the starting line but the 5k gun start was already fired so we just caught up with the other runners.

 Start/Finish Line

This was my best run so far. It was my first time to run 5k nonstop and the first time I broke my PR and set a new one.

By the end of 5k, I was exhausted so I learned I needed to learn a new skill getting good pictures from amateur photographers in fun runs. It was a fun experience despite the rain and the small puddles of water that wet my shoes.

 First PR

To cap off the morning, the loot bag was the greatest loot bag ever, it included a box of premium cold cuts from purefoods, tons of giveaways and short lines to eat all you can sandwiches and cold cuts. We spent most of our time in repeatedly getting bottles of diet juices and giveaways and in a long line to a photobooth.

 Best Loot Bag EVER!!!!

Slimmerun 2011 is the best fun run so far basing on sponsors and the amount of people who joined. I didn't regret the decision of running in the rain.

11-11-11

A lot of people are making a big deal with 11-11-11 (November 11, 2011).

It's a good thing though as businesses like Cebu Pacific, Zest Air, Shakey's Pizza, Oxygen and other establishments are holding promos and sales.

But despite the unique date, nothing is really special about this day. 11-12-11 will be tomorrow's date. If you will think about it this date, you will only experience this once as you would probably be dead by November 12, 2011.