Nike We Run Manila is back and like last year is still an exclusively 10K race event.  This time around though, the race is much bigger with the venue moving to the SM Mall of Asia compound.

I really wasn’t expecting to join this year’s leg because of some personal issues, but fortunately as these got settled Nike invited yours truly to join the race.  As you may have noticed there’s no mention of this event on my blog (except only on the race calendar) as I didn’t have any first hand info on the event and my race kit wasn’t delivered before the race so I absolutely had no idea what to expect with the race except for the nice race and finisher’s tees, and of course the location and gun start.

Saying that this year’s Nike We Run Manila is “crowded” would be an understatement.  I actually didn’t realize that they had around 13,000 participants!  Of all the years I’ve been joining races, this has got to be one of the biggest I’ve ever joined!  To be honest, I didn’t really have the time of my life with this much crowd, and so even the thought of seriously running was off the table.  Even considering a sub-60 minute with this event would be a challenge.

Unlike most of my races, I didn’t bother to squeeze myself to get up front and instead just settled behind the huge pack.  I was so far behind that I was clueless on what was happening up front, and it took quite a while before I was actually able to pass through the starting line.  I wasn’t really up to race pace this day, but I do like that finisher’s shirt so despite being hardly motivated to run with a huge crowd, I just went with the flow.  In fairness to Nike, the race was actually quite encouraging so after a while my mood was a bit better.

Overall, I had mixed reactions with this race.  In one hand, many were impressed that it was quite organized given the number of participants, but on the other hand some technicalities with kit claiming plagued the race.  From what I heard with complaints, there are apparently some issues with disseminating and the accuracy of information as registrants were expected to “pull” the information instead of being “pushed” to them since Nike already have registrants email and mobile numbers.  But I think most will agree that for a high-turnout event, Nike We Run Manila is pretty organized.  Many may not be able to run as fast as they had planned, but at the very least you get rewarded with a lovely finisher’s tee just for finishing!

To all the finishers, Congratulations! 😀