Tag Archives: Dindz Bartolabac

How to fail successfully

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JOHN Pages gave a beautiful speech on success in last Saturday’s Sportswriters Association of Cebu awarding. He talked about failure.

Pages, one of Cebu’s best sports writers, told awardees and their relatives present during the 29th SAC-SMB Cebu Sports Awards that failure leads to success.

He shared with those present a gem of a quote by sports legend Michael Jordan, who said, “I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot…and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life…And that is why I succeed.”

In running, as in real life, failure is but part of a cycle that leads to success. It’s easier and faster to see the connection in sports, where training and preparation bear almost immediate fruit.

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Above all else, integrity

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SOMEONE cheated during the 1st Cebu Ultramarathon last Nov. 27. He rode a habal-habal (motorcycle for hire) twice and an SUV once for long stretches of the route.

He finished within the cutoff time and upon reaching Capitol, made a show of being tired. Like he actually ran 50 kilometers.

I first learned of it when I overheard the runner’s teammates talk among themselves about how the person rode a habal-habal.

I have since confirmed it with a source I trust, who also got confirmation from several people. I have also gotten reports from other people who saw a runner ride a vehicle in the route.

FINISH LINE AT THE CAPITOL. Frontrunner staff members prepare the finish line of the 1st Cebu Ultramarathon at the Capitol in Cebu City. (PHOTO BY JAMES GO)

I cannot understand a person who would cheat in a road race, much more an ultra-marathon. It’s not as if we get a prize for finishing it. All we got at the finish line in Capitol was a commemorative plate, T-shirt and a food pack. The run—the entire 50 kilometers—itself was the reward.

Insulting running community

What the cheat did insulted the running community. He actually finished earlier than Brian Padilla, an Ungo Runner who was on the verge of giving up but decided to continue because he left his emergency money with one of the support vehicles.

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Not a buffet ticket

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BREAKDOWN. In a moment of weakness, I succumb to temptation.

BREAKDOWN. In a moment of weakness, I succumb to temptation.

ULTRA-RUNNER Brod. Carlo Bacalla brought me to my senses. He expressed puzzlement when we met—of all places at a fastfood line—why I gained weight since the last time we saw each other despite my increasing mileage.

“Ikaw ra man ang akong nahibaw-an nga runner nga nanambok (you’re the only runner I know who has become fat),” he said as I quickly decided, on the very spot, against ordering a double cheeseburger with extra-large fries.

That honest appraisal gave me the impetus to face something that I had been putting off from confronting for a long time: a creeping weight gain caused by a sense of entitlement to gorge on food just because I regularly run.

It’s true that by exercising, you are entitled to eat a little bit more. But like many runners, however, I thought I was entitled to the equivalent of a daily buffet. It is, as Time described it in an article I did not want to read, “ravenous compensatory eating.”

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