7-Eleven Run 2016

After my 16k run last year at 7-Eleven Run 1500 (which was my last run in 2015), I decided to run at 7-Eleven Run 2016 (which is my first run for 2016).

Photo from run711.com

Like Run 1500, the venue is at Skyway and Filinvest City, and the categories are 500m, 3k, 5k, 10k, 16k, 21k, and 42k. Runtastic says I ran 16.08 km in 2:22:04. The official results are 2:22:29 (Gun Time) and 2:21:39 (Chip Time).

The race was better compared to last year's. The route was okay and the hydration was great. There were Gatorade, Powerade, Pocari Sweat, water, and more. Every finisher has a medal and a loot bag. There are also sponsor booths where you can line up for food and other freebies.

Over-all, the run was okay except for the following:

• What I like in 7-Eleven Runs is that you can register online and just pay in one of their thousand stores. My experience in claiming the race kit wasn't as good as the registration though. It took more than a week after the supposed claim date that I was able to get mine.
• There were a lot of people not wearing the official singlet and there were even some not wearing the right color for the category.
• "Runners" who are slow (or those who are walking at the moment) who occupies the middle of the road should be asked to move to the side to give way to "faster" runners. In some runs I joined, they specifically tell this before the gun start.
• There were a lot of paper and plastic cup in the trash. They should have given a bottle of drinks per runner instead. There would be no need for filling up the cups which will just go straight to trash (or along the road for some runners) and there won't be a need for a lot of hydration stations. Fortunately, there were some that just gave bottles instead of filling up cups.
• It is very annoying that the person in front of you would suddenly stop and take selfies or pictures (and some with that selfie stick) of the Skyway without due respect to runners who are behind them. It should be banned in runs like this.
• At the last 4km stretch of the route, almost all runners run on one side of the road while the other is almost empty. There were almost no space to jog or run because a lot of people are just walking in groups and occupies almost the length of the road.