Tag Archives: Sheila Colmenares

Plaza of Mayor Rama’s childhood

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UNTIL recently, the only reason you’d be running in Plaza Independencia was for your life. Or to chase a snatcher.

But go there today and you’ll find a changed place.

When I was still new to Cebu 15 years ago, I used to dread being downtown. Friends who had been here for years would tell me never to bring anything valuable there. In my mind’s eye, a robber lurked at every street corner.

Plaza Independencia was in that list of you-know-where—places you don’t ever want to find yourself in. “ Tulison ka diha, du (you’ll get robbed there)” was the serious warning of a hometown acquaintance who gesticulated, twisting an imaginary knife.

Mayor Michael Rama hosts the Ungo Runners at the Plaza Independencia.

Mayor Michael Rama hosts the Ungo Runners at the newly-renovated Plaza Independencia. (PHOTO BY RAMIE IGAÑA)

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Do you want to start running?

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FOR most people, the hardest part in running is starting. In my case, it took me over a year of constant soliloquies—”I have to get fit, I have to exercise, I have to start running”— before I actually laced up and entered the Cebu City Sports Center.

The idea of running can be daunting. Five kilometers might as well be 50K for someone whose idea of rigorous walking is to visit all the shops in Ayala Center Cebu. Three kilometers might as well be a jaunt to Timbuktu for someone who’s never walked farther than the office canteen.

BUSINESS LEADERS BY DAY, UNGO RUNNERS BY NIGHT. (From left) Joy Polloso, John Pages and Sheila Colmenares during their pictorial for a series of posters showing how running is a sport for everyone. The posters are part of the Ungo Runners Think Pink campaign to get more people in Cebu running. CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE IMAGE. (PHOTOGRAPHED BY ALEX BADAYOS)

I thought I was running to the moon when I decided to run 10K in last year’s Milo Marathon Cebu eliminations even if I still couldn’t complete running an entire circuit at the CCSC tracks without crumpling out of breath. When I made up my mind, it was still more than two months away.

“The body does not want you to do this,” 1980 Boston Marathon women’s champion Jacqueline Gareau cautions, “As you run, it tells you to stop but the mind must be strong. You always go too far for your body. You must handle the pain with strategy…It is not age; it is not diet. It is the will to succeed.”

Gareau’s statement resonates even more with people like me as she started running to rid herself of a cigarette addiction.

It’s hard to start running. It’s hard to get out of bed earlier than usual to hit the road until you are out of breath.

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Mantra

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Enlightenment came on kilometer 38 of my spur-of-the-morning full marathon, past the smiling and cigarette-smoking pair of a twenty-something prostitute with a makeup made garish by the harsh late-morning light and her 40ish client waiting for a cab outside a North Reclamation Area motel.

At that point in my unplanned 42-kilometer run last March 2, I fully understood, “Free your mind and your feet will follow.”

I haven’t read Kevin Nelson’s The Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration, where the quotation comes from, but I kept repeating that phrase on that day, when, after leaving my house in Lapu-Lapu City for a scheduled 21K run on my way to the Sun.Star office, I decided to complete a full marathon.

It was excruciatingly hot and there were instances on the way to Lilo-an when the thought of just turning back and not completing the run occurred to me.

But I kept mumbling my mantra.


MANTRAS, according to Runner’s World, help runners “stay focused and centered.” (CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTO BY PACO FLORES)

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