A Week in the Life of a Wannabe-Mountaineer

CORE-RELATE!

SUNDAY. 07.16.06.

6AM-8AM. With Joey and Malen, Chief, Sweetie Pi, JM, Julienne, Alex and my “secret” crush, DQ, I survived my first-ever marathon… DQ doesn’t know about this blog but if and when he finds out and reads this... hehe... HI, DQ! ;')

I ticked the tape of the 30th Milo Marathon's 10K run 1:13:58 after kick-off(?!) and was ranked 808^th. Thank God for my hydration pack, I saved time by not passing through every water station every time my throat went dry. He also sent me an angel who led me through the last 3K. I followed the guy’s pace (‘stalked’ him) then surpassed him on the last 250 meters and waited for him on the finish line. Sadly, I didn’t see him there. I can’t recall his face and wasn’t even able to note his racer number and all I could remember was the pair of shoes he wore and his blue shirt. Darn. Perhaps that was my Dad-incarnate. (Joke, joke!) He would have been 85.

9AM-ish. Had breakfast at McDonalds. On the way to the resto, I heard an old joke for the first time when I complained about some pain in my right knee:

“Masakit tuhod mo?”

“Yup.”

“Isa lang?”

“Isa lang, ‘tong kanan lang naman.”

“So, onehood lang?”

“Ha?”

“Onehood, kase isang tuhod lang, diba?”

I couldn’t stop laughing and it really made my day. Who cracked the joke? DQ did.

MONDAY and TUESDAY were rather uneventful but I couldn’t sleep soundly as I waited for my medical – cardiac – clearance. I’ve been hurdling through the question of proceeding or not with the BMC for the past two months. Then came…

WEDNESDAY. 07.19.06.

5:20PM… 20 minutes has elapsed and I was about an hour away from BMC training. No point in losing my patience, the patient ahead of me was in fact a couple – husband and wife – who both had heart disease, geewhiz.

Anyway, asymptomatic as I am, my cardiologist “cleared” me for mountaineering, based on the results of my bruce protocol (treadmill) and 24-hour holter (ECG monitor). Financial difficulties notwithstanding, the results gave me the green light, yippee! (She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes…)

7PM. I was running late for the 630pm BMC training and Ms. Angie kept texting. I had to be there so they would see I’m deserving of their ‘special’ consideration for my training fee payment. It was almost 8pm when I got to Valero so I was marked absent. Still, I proceeded to do as many ramps as I can with the remaining time (12 in 45mins was the requirement, all starting at the same time). I finished only 5.

10:15PM. Training ended later than I expected because of the post-climb meeting. I reluctantly had to give up my work duty that night. The “silver lining” for the particularly hectic day was the fact that Sir Norman granted me permission to log out by 9PM every Wednesday if there are no quizzes to be taken or pressing matters to be discussed and that he said a special consideration for my training fee payment is under way. (God provides!)

THURS. 07.20.06.

Met Eci, my AP (accountability partner)* #1 at Shangri-la, 720pm. She lent me her pricey 40-liter TNF backpack and in spite of the limited time, we had quite a talk.

8:30 pm. Momybelle, my AP#2, and best friend for a dozen years or so, handed me a blue bill (pay-when-able-until-disabled) and I hadn’t the chance to let her tell me everything about her recent major LIFE decision. Still, we had “quite a talk.”

FRI. 07.21.06.

I had to give up cell group* (for the nth time) for a rather hazy reason (I wasn’t feeling well) and afterwards the recurrent self-talk was: I should have attended, I should have attended, I should have attended.

SAT. 07.22.06. 6:15AM.

I had Jollibreakfast with Bex, Jill and Chief in Blue Wave, Macapagal. Cut out some paper hearts at home before hitting the bed. Set the alarm early enough to prepare for Youth Jam at 6pm. However, I slept soundly through the day, didn’t notice the snooze and ended waking up late for my 10pm-6am work shift. Tsk, tsk.

8PM, I had to browse through my yahoo! groups just to check what we’re having the next day. Urban trekking? Hmm… 8km-run… mm-hmm… 5 liters of load… Quickly, I just had to stuff whatever I needed in Eci’s backpack. “Don’t forget your wash-up (a.k.a. k-i-k-a-y) kit, Ancore!”

SUN. 07.23.06

6:30AM. There was a heavy, torrential downpour yet I, up all night at work, dealing at the Pontoon table, jogged my way through the rain and tried to keep up with the pace of two male runners: Sir Manny, a veteran and Chito, an athletic BMC-mate who runs 2-3 times a week. I jogged faster than I’ve ever done without drinking even a sip of water, by golly! I reckon the route we took was way beyond 8K and I was thankful that they helped me through it. And again, thank God for the rain!

7-8AM. Trekked the area of CCP/Figaro-Westin-Film Center with a 5L+ load on my back (baptism of fire with Eci’s TNF Terra40), under the rain. Just how many steps I took “uphill” and “downhill” along the stairs of the Film Center, I lost count. Basta from leftmost to rightmost, 3 Ups and 3 Downs, times 3, zigzagged. Go figure.

9AM. I had my breakfast (chocolate shake and tuna sandwich with potato salad) at Pancake House with my BMC-mates sisters Michelle and Sheena, Sheena’s boyfriend Paul, and my trek-mate for the day, Nette. I was branded “O.C.” by Nette after I asked the waiter for a small plastic bag for my clean shirt. “Compliment” well-taken, batchmate. "O.C." by the way, stands for “obsessive-compulsive.” Hehehe. Adik-adik!

10AM-12NN. Pearl Plaza. Lecture on climbing and ropemanship. A quiz on the past week’s lectures was given and I flunked. My excuse? Uhm, I was absent when the lectures were given, I wasn’t able to read through all of them and I wasn’t in TC1 so I can’t say I’m a true mountaineer yet. I am still, officially, a wannabe. ;’)

12NN-1PM: NAPTIME! Who would have imagined spending an hour’s worth of POWER sleep on an exercise mat spread clean on a mall floor? Hah! I did it and it was grrrrrrrrreat! I used to remember Pearl Plaza Mall for basketball. Now, well, the free lodging experience encompasses the basketball memories. Wink, wink. Thanks to AMCI!

1PM-5PM-ish: Indoor wall climbing in Power-Up (still in Pearl Plaza). I climbed a wall inside a mall! Hee-haw… I’m going back next time. Bitin pa ko e. And I have to combat the fear of falling -- not the fear of heights. Weird, my fear is strongest when I’m already at the top, while I'm positioning myself to rappel. While going up, "no" fear. While rappelling, "maybe" fear. While stopped at the top, "yes" fear? Weird talaga.

6PM: Home after yet another rainy trekk (maybe I should ask the BMC committee to give me merits for that...) from the point where BMC-mate Maui dropped me off, all the way to Sandoval Bridge where I waited for a PUJ to Pasig Rotonda. Did I slam my body to the bed right away when I got home? You betcha, I did… NOT. Hehe. Although my energy meter was already on the yellow (thinking of that SimCity game…) I still had time to do some little watcha-whatevers until I finally fell to a deep, deep, ravinical slumber. Ravinical? I made that one up, I guess. If you get the picture of a downward spiral when you read it, that's just about it.