Have you seen your race results?  Perhaps one of the best innovations that this race contributed to the Philippine running scene was its adaptation of globally competitive race results due to the usage of the timing chips.  Although it took a little longer than runners expected, the informative race result was never seen before in the country—complete with interesting facts that makes for a fascinating read.  Before, runners are just given a list of runners’ official time with some basic info and ranking, and now we get much more information than we’re used to.  Exclusively local runners didn’t realize what they were missing until Run for Home showed them what runners on other side of the world enjoy.  As the saying goes, “you can’t crave for something you don’t know,” and with what this race had shown the archetype of races had just been heaved higher—way above the previous norm.  Had this result been furnished earlier, my “fair” rating for this race would’ve been “good” since it really improved the overall experience of the race (by the time of the next race the organizers should’ve improved on this aspect).

You may get your individual race result from Globe’s website.

Criticisms and Commendations

Despite best efforts and intentions, a new system would always have some problems, and in this case some of the issues were wrong gender information (thus ruining the otherwise great result set) and missing results (which possibly could’ve been due to a system “bug” or incorrect use of the timing chip by the runner).  There were a lot of denigration thrown at the organizers but in fairness to them not all of it is their fault so if you had problems with your race results you may always inform the organizers your concerns and hopefully they can address your issues.

I know there were a lot of disparaging words about this race that circled the blogosphere and as it may seem like it’s “whining” and sometimes even a bit unreasonable but these are actually “unsolicited feedbacks” from the runners themselves.  Had it not been for these “whining” runners there may not have been a need for innovation in the local running scene and nobody would’ve initiated a feat like Run for Home did.  If nobody asked for better races, would a necessity to have one arise?  Finishline being a pioneer would of course have to endure all of these criticisms, like soldiers in the frontline on the battlefield.  And for being brave enough to be up front, I truly commend the people behind Finishline.  Being run by humans we accept that we have shortcomings and realizing these leads to improvement.

Some say that we should be thankful of what we have now because most of the things we enjoy didn’t exist even a few years back.  Given that fact we know that we are improving.  We improved not by knowing what we had—we improved by realizing what we lack.  If you were to improve your run, do you compare yourself to the poorer runner, or do you seek to be like the better one? In this case the poorer runner was the “old” standards and the better one would be the world-class standards.

Run for Home may not have turned out the way a lot of people had hoped but the lessons and experience gained with this race surely would lead the local running scene to better tracks and higher standards.  Let us keep supporting local races and let us keep giving organizers our “unsolicited feedbacks” so that they know if they’re on the right track.  Critique the problems but commend the accomplishments.