Cebuana mountain trail runners Leszl Gitaruelas and Merlita Arias dominated the first Mayon 18-kilometer Mountain Trail Run as they pulled off a 1-2 finish in the competition yesterday at the country’s most famous peak.
Gitaruelas and Arias did not have time to prepare for the race because they only learned about it last week. However, their experience in several mountain trail runs made it easier for the two to navigate Mayon.
“We weren’t prepared for this because we cut down in our trail running after Kinabalu. We went back to flat road and we only learned about this last week via internet,” Arias said.
In fact, Gitaruelas, the first Filipina to make it into the Top 5 of the Kinabalu Run a few months back, felt the trail was barely a challenge.
“It was not hard because we have tried far more difficult trails,” said Gitaruelas.
Gitaruelas showed dominance early in the race as she sauntered past the other racers in the easier part of the race—the 4-kilometer stretch on the road.
Good lead
Cebu’s marathon queen took advantage of this and built up a good lead, which she maintained up to the end.
She checked into the finish line after one hour, 32.26 minutes. Arias came in 13 minutes later with a time of 1:45.07.
What made the win sweeter for the Cebuanos was how they overshadowed the mountain race queen, Ellen Tolentino, who finished four minutes after Arias.
Tolentino gained the monicker “mountain queen” after topping the 100-kilometer Northface Trail race last July.
“Leszl and Ellen were so fast. I was trailing them at the star. But near the Kapit Tuko trail, I caught up with Ellen for her to drop to third. I tried to catch up with Leszl but she was already far ahead so I just kept my pace. I did not force it because the final kilometer going to the finish line was very steep,” said Arias.
Next challenges
In the men’s division, RP team members Elmer and Cresenciano Sabal, took the first and third places, while Allan Ballester took the second place.
Up next for Arias is the Singapore Charter Marathon, while Gitaruelas will next take part in the Clark 21K run in January. They will both take part in the Hong Kong Marathon and Hong Kong Trail Run next year.
The event was organized by the City of Legazpi and was staged to promote adventure tourism.
Event organizer Yves Yu told Sun.Star they are doing this to celebrate the first anniversary of the National Conference In Climate Change Adaptation.
“We hope to make it an international event next year,” said Yu.
Arias for her part, hopes that there would be more events such as this in Cebu.
“I hope there will be races like these in Cebu because it is slowly becoming a trend and it is a good way to not only promote the outdoor way of life but also adventure tourism,” Arias said.
Click here to see how Cebu runners Leszl Gitaruelas and Merlita Arias dominated the first Mayon 18-kilometer Mountain Trail Run.
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