Running for a good cause

My marathon training has officially begun.

I will be running my 4th marathon-for-a-cause on July 16, and once again I am attempting to run the full distance in under 5 hours to raise money for the Bukas Sarili Foundation.

Ideally, marathon training should be done over a period of about 6 months. So it is clear that I am really pushing it by only starting my training about two weeks ago. So far, I've gone from 4.5km to 6.5km to 10km to 12km to 15km in this period. My goal is that by the end of this week, I'm at 20km, then at 25km on July 2, and at 30km by July 8. Yeah, I know, kinda aggressive. But if I can manage to run 30km before the actual marathon, I think I will gain enough confident to finish the race in under 5 hours even after my not-so-good training. Hay, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed...

The pledges have started coming in as well, and with a few weeks left before my run (assuming I finish the marathon), I am at around P15K. Hopefully, more pledges still come in. I never manage to collect the entire amount that is pledged (normally I end up collecting about 80-90%), but still, that is a lot of money that will go a long way in providing charity patients of the Philippine General Hospital with much-needed medical assistance.

Hopefully, the next time I blog about my training, I will already be in good shape both mentally and physically. And maybe I will manage to raise more money than I did last year. Wish me luck!