LEGENDS say that when Mactan chieftain Lapu-Lapu courted Olango Island princess Bulakna, he used to swim back and forth between the mainland and the island.

Ahmed Cuizon, who anchors the Sugboanon Na Ni radio program over dyAB, said the swimming by Lapu-Lapu was continued by Oponganons (Lapu-Lapu City used to be known as the town of Opon) until the 70s, when swimming contests were held across the Mactan channel every fiesta.

BLACK SATURDAY WITH THE BLACK PANTHERS. Testing The Great Lapu-Lapu Run route with Noy Jopson, Dr. Raymund “Doc Reel” Bontol and triathlete Amale Jopson with her Black Panthers Aegis PeopleSupport running team. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARLEN LIMPAG)

“As to running, I only presume that he was well into it, too, considering that there was no means of land transportation in those days and since Lapu-Lapu was the supreme ruler of the entire Mactan Island, he would surely have run around his kingdom at times,” Cuizon said.

On Sunday, Mactan Island, the erstwhile kingdom of the first Pinoy to have resisted Spanish colonization, will hold The Great Lapu-Lapu Run.

“And that’s one more nice thing about the activity. You get to run around in a place where Lapu-Lapu moved about during his days. In a sense, we are celebrating his life and times,” Cuizon said.

This Sunday’s run is being organized by Ironman Noy Jopson, who seemed cast from the same mold as the Visayan hero, marathon man Raffy Uytiepo and Waterfront Airport Hotel and Casino general manager Hembler Mendoza, himself a runner who finished a marathon.

“We are working hard to have a memorable race for everyone,” Jopson said.

Lapu-Lapu City is doing everything that it can to make this Sunday’s event a great run.

The Great Lapu-Lapu Run will be using RFID timing chips for the 21K and 10K races. This is only the second time that timing chips are used in a race in Cebu. The first time the system was deployed was during the highly successful Cebu City Marathon.

The Cebu City Marathon, however, only used chips for the 42K and 21K races. On Sunday, 10K runners in Cebu will, for the first time, be using timing chips.

Jopson has been repeatedly running the 21K route to check on the distances and it is as advertised—a half-marathon route of 21.1 kilometers—to the meter.

The race will have water stations every two kilometers and several Gatorade stations.

For the first time in a race in Cebu, pacers will be deployed.

Pacers are runners who run at a certain pace so that other runners can gauge their speed. You’d know the pacers because they’d have balloons where their target finish times are printed. Kenneth Casquejo and Annie Neric are the 2 hours to the 2:15 pacers.

Mendoza said the race will also be fielding running marshals, on top of the scores of marshals deployed in strategic portion of the route.

“We are 100 percent ready. We’re just waiting for the participants,” Mendoza said.

The race will start and finish at the Liberty Shrine in Barangay Mactan. The route is relatively flat, save for the bridge portion of the 21K race, and runners stand a good chance of setting personal records. (The virtual map is embedded below.)

If you haven’t registered yet, you still have time. Organizers will still accept 10K and 21K registrations until Thursday and 5K and 3K registrations until Saturday.

Below is an interactive virtual map of The Great Lapu-Lapu Run race route. The blue line is the route for 21K and 10K while the red line is the route for 3K and 5K.

View Great Lapu-Lapu Run route in a larger map