Her doctor, however, told her, “that’s not true!”

I DON'T FEEL MY YEARS. Regional Trial Court Judge Ester Veloso tells Ungo Runners that because of running, "I don't feel 51. I don’t feel my years. I feel a lot younger." CLICK TO ENLARGE (PHOTO BY SYDNEY DELOS REYES)

“You’re not supposed to accept the fact nga mutambok ka (that you’ll get fat),” she told runners gathered in Sun.Star Cebu last Friday.

The Regional Trial Court judge, who had been working out for years in the Holiday Gym and Spa, said she resisted running at first because people told her your skin would sag with running, “muyaya imong nawong, mawa imong totoy.”

She was eventually convinced to run by Annie Neric and lawyer Ramsey Quijano, a marathoner and one of the original Ungo Runners. Quijano told her that if she could run 30 minutes straight, she could join 3K events.

Neric then taught her to run at the indoor tracks of Holiday Gym but she said that after the first session, she got embarrassed by how slow she ran. She bought books about running and found a 10-week program in Runner’s World website that promised to get her running straight for 30 minutes.

Since she had been working out for years, Veloso said she completed the program in just five weeks.

She had started to love running and would wake up at 4 a.m. to run on her own. She also started joining fun runs, starting with the SRP Sundown Run. She said that the mass of people in fun runs and her slowness discouraged her at first but Neric kept pushing her. “You can do it! You can do it!” Veloso mimicked the way Neric kept cheering her on.

Upon the prodding of serial marathoner Joel Garganera, Veloso signed up for the 21K in last Jan. 9′s Cebu City Marathon.

“But how can you practice in December?” she said to widespread laughter last Friday, “I never felt ready for the half-marathon.” December, she said, is a month for partying.

On Jan. 9, Veloso said she learned a crucial lesson, “don’t give up.”

Her companions had left her when she reached UP. She asked herself, “why am I doing this?”

“I thought kalayo sa SRP (South Road Properties), dili man siguro ko kaabot. I told myself kutob ra sa kaya, kutob ra sa kaya, anyway naabot man gihapon ko sa tunnel, naabot man gihapon ko sa SRP, nakabalik lang gihapon. Kaya diay. So never give up. You can do it!” she said.

What has the judge gotten from running?

She lost 15 pounds in 10 months, she told the group.

“I don’t feel 51. I don’t feel my years. I feel a lot younger. Age should not be a hindrance to what you want to do,” she said to loud applause.

Judge Veloso’s next goal is to run 42K in the Cebu City Marathon. “At my age, people will say there are things you can’t do anymore but maybe I can run longer than someone half my age or faster.”

“I plan to run until my body tells me to stop. If my body tells me to stop running at 90 then I’ll stop running at 90,” she said.

But why does Judge Veloso keep on running?

“I have a very stressful job. I handle a family court so I hear all kinds of problems every day. Every day I listen to annulment cases, murder, rape of children. Every day. It’s very stressful. If you’re always stressed out, you get sick. But if you run, you relieve yourself of stress. So far I haven’t gotten sick, my blood pressure is okay, everything is okay. I think it’s because of the constant running.”

“Now, I realize,” Judge Veloso said, “that I run for the joy of it. You run and you feel so much exhilaration. You just feel so much joy!”

Joel never recovered from the faux pas as he was separated by the mass of runners from his wife, Audrey, who stood shocked a few paces away. He darted off for his 15K run shaking his head and mumbling to himself “buanga (crazy).”

Joel Garganera sprints after his son Federico to the finish line of last Sunday’s Quota 12K Classic run at The Terraces in Ayala Center Cebu. CLICK TO ENLARGE. (PHOTO BY MARLEN LIMPAG)

Humor defines Joel Garganera. Whether talking about his reaction upon seeing the grades of his son Federico (pronounced with an Italian diction, nickname—Dodong) or the ecstasy he feels during his regular run or the accomplishment of having finished six marathons in about a year, there’s never a dull moment with him.

When running with Joel, you’re likely to end up with a side stitch—not because the pace is punishing, but because he tells such funny stories in such a humorous way. Joel is one of those runners you want in your long runs because they make the kilometers fly by effortlessly.

Running defines Joel Garganera. Public service may be his vocation—he became, at 21 years old, the youngest person to be elected a barangay captain in Cebu City—but running is his avocation.

But he wasn’t always a runner. He used to play basketball all the time at the Capitol Parish gym, lawyer Ramsey Quijano told me.

“We named (our group) Thursday Club. He then organized a group of players from his barangay to join us. The group became large enough that it branched into another group, the Tuesday Club. At some point, he started to miss our games and conspicuously abandoned our beer sessions…he gave the usual excuse that he sprained his knee but I suspected that it was at this time that he started running and intentionally avoided basketball fearing that he might get injured and couldn’t run,” Quijano said.

“Months passed, and the next time I saw him he was as thin as a stick. He then told me that he was preparing for the Hong Kong Marathon, his first marathon,” he continued.

Listening to Joel speak about running is listening to a changed man, close friends say. Sun.Star Cebu executive editor Michelle So keeps teasing Joel that she no longer recognizes him, that he has become a “saint.”

Garganera said that after he started running, waking up early to run became a habit. He said he used to be heavy but got fit by keeping on hitting the road, sometimes with a weekly mileage of up to 50 kilometers.

“I personally do not know what stoked the fire of running in him. I didn’t ask. But like most runners, the motivation is personal and we wear it in our hearts. I used to tease him that he had mid-life crisis and probably running was a way out of it. He just laughed it off. I continued playing ball while Joel worked extremely long hours running. Two years later, he accompanied me on my first 5K fun run, which he forced me to do. And we have been on the road since,” Quijano said.

Garganera’s passion for running is infectious. Not only does he encourage people to run, he forces them into the sport. He gives away shoes—once he wears a pair for a marathon, he never wears it again and gives it away—and race singlets to encourage relatives and friends.

Although he is able to hit the road less frequently now because he is running for Cebu City councilor in the May election, Garganera tries to sneak in a run even while visiting far-flung barangays. Every Friday night, he joins the weekly 10 p.m. run from the Sun.Star Cebu office to the IT park, serving as So’s pacer and the group’s joker.

Garganera’s passion for running is matched by only his enthusiasm in government policies. He wants to set up a commission that will regulate the holding of running events in the city. Right now, no one oversees the scheduling of events and there are Sundays when you have two different fun runs that converge on certain roads in the city. Garganera wants the commission to regulate the schedule.

He also wants the commission to set minimum standards for fun runs, taking in primary consideration the safety of runners. He wants the City Traffic Operations Management to come up with a fixed race fee that organizers have to pay to assure safety on the road. He also raised the need to educate drivers to respect runners and take their safety into primary consideration.

He also raises the need to look into the city’s sidewalks. “Never mind us runners, think about the school children. They need sidewalks so that they can be safe in walking to school. Our streets are not child-friendly,” Joel said.

You get the full measure of a man by running with him. Joel is someone you want with you, whether you’re struggling to finish 10K or crawling to the finish line of an ultra-marathon.

On Feb. 9, 2009, I couldn’t run one kilometer. On Feb. 9, 2010, I ran 34.34 kilometers to celebrate my 34th birthday. I did it barely two days after running a grueling 21.7-kilometer Condura Run that passed a steep mountain called Skyway in Metro Manila.

The idea to run one kilometer for each year of my life occurred to me in the typically nostalgic days leading to my birthday. When I told John Pages, the person mainly responsible for my—and that of a thousand other Cebuanos’—addiction to running, he was very cautious. I had doubts, myself. It was too soon after a 21K race and I wouldn’t have time to recover. My wife, who is also my running partner, was just as cautious.

But there’s something about milestones that can unstopper an internal reservoir of valor and craziness. The birthday run became, for me, a blister that wouldn’t go away.

Having never run longer than 23 kilometers, I decided to split my birthday run in two legs—a 19-kilometer route to work in the morning and a 15-kilometer stretch to run home from work in the evening.

Still tired and sore from the Condura run, I was prepared for hell.

Instead, it was heaven. The run was easy and very enjoyable that I felt I could do it all over again—after a birthday meal and an hour or so of rest.

There’s something about milestones that drive people.

KILOMETER 27.43. On the 1st Mactan-Mandaue bridge on my way home during my 34.34-kilometer run to celebrate my 34th birthday.

Lawyer Ramsey Quijano found the tough Condura Marathon easy because he was running for his late father on the latter’s birthday.

Meyrick Jacalan ran his first foot race, the Hong Kong Marathon, on Feb. 17, 2008—his birthday. Meyrick said the fact that it was his birthday was motivation that spurred him to finish the run, no matter what happened. “I wanted to celebrate my birthday by conquering my first foot race.”

Dr. Potenciano “Yong” Larrazabal III, meanwhile, is on a quest to run 33 marathons. The number holds special significance for the third child and third-generation Potenciano. When he set 33 as a lifetime goal for marathons, Yong thought he could complete it in 10 years. But having finished 10 marathons already, Yong is confident he could complete the 33 in five years.

“A lot of people call me crazy and even say that what I am doing is too risky. But for those who really know me, they just brush it aside and say, ‘there he goes again with his dreams’ but they are always there to support me achieve them,” Yong said.

Yong said, “typical runners are very motivated and have type A personalities. So, having personal goals would even make them train harder to reach them.”

Goals, especially those pegged on personal milestones, are powerful motivators. Use them to start running. Run your age, whether in minutes or kilometers, on your birthday. Run with your wife or girlfriend on your anniversary or those oxymoronic “monthsaries.” You will be surprised at what you can do.

You think you’re in bad shape? Chances are I was in worse shape on Feb. 9, 2009 than you are today.

One thing I learned during my birthday run is that running is more than just a physical activity—it is a mental challenge. Of course runners keep saying that, but it’s different when you experience it after pushing yourself beyond what you think your limits are. Physically, I couldn’t count on myself finishing the 34.34 kilometers but mentally, I was ready to fly (cue in Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire).

Believe me, we are born to run.

See you on the road.