Running with Pacquiao: Excuse his dust, swallow your pride

‘He’s pushing it again’

Only the strongest of the group had managed to stay with Manny on the run to the top. One by one, the tailenders dropped back in Manny’s dusty wake. Bobby, the champion’s brother, and Jun the Ironman struggled a hundred meters back. Nowhere to be found were the Kayote Boyz.

Rem and I continued down the trail to find a vantage point and were surprised when two vehicles—a sport utility vehicle (SUV) and a park ranger’s patrol car—strayed into the slope and pulled up on a corner in the trail. Inside the SUV was Justine Fortune, Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning trainer, holding an iPhone and looking anxiously at the timer.

“He should be coming down the hill by now,” he said after a few minutes. “He must be pushing it again.”

Manny was supposed to run 45 minutes up and down the trail and he was five minutes overdue up to that point. For a moment, he thought Manny had decided to run down the other side of the mountain, but he showed up around the corner two minutes later. The posse had regrouped on the way down, and I gave chase, hoping I could keep up on the steep downhill run.

It was hard on the knees, harder on the soles as they hit the rugged surface. Again, I had the feeling Manny was trying to shake me off. Still I managed to stay within a few feet of the group, until the two cars passed me and stayed in front of me and a couple of other runners.

The two cars kicked up an explosion of dust into my face, clogged my lungs and blurred my vision, forcing me to slow down. I had to keep my distance. Again I ate Manny’s dust, literally this time, and I swallowed my pride.

1 more mountain to conquer

Pacquiao was already shadow boxing when I reached the bottom of the hill. As I dusted myself off, I sought out Justine Fortune at the parking lot and saw him still in the SUV and still holding his iPhone cum timer. As I approached him I was ready to start saying, “What the …?” but he beat me to it by blurting out what I wanted to know.

“Fifty-two minutes, seven minutes longer than I wanted him to do,” he said. “But that’s Manny. He always pushes.”

For a few more days, I ran with Manny Pacquiao. Or more appropriately, I tried. Each time, I’d wait in ambush somewhere along the way, take a few pictures or videos as the group arrived, and follow them a few blocks to the park or down the mountain to where he would do his crunches and cool down. Twice, he ran to the Hollywood sign, several times he took Dante’s Peak, also in the same area.

These runs were not the kind of workout I needed, my own triathlon coach Jojo Macalintal would admonish me. While covering Pacquiao and his date with destiny against Mayweather, I was to train for a triathlon, not a boxing match. But chasing the running Pacquiao gave me a good grasp of the kind of training that the champion has been going through.

When I finally gave up the chase, I marveled at the strength of his will and the power of his legs as he conquered the rugged slopes to reach the top of the mountain, mirroring the struggle that saw him crawl out of the depths of poverty to the top of the boxing world.

Manny Pacquiao has scaled many mountains, but there’s just one more mountain to climb. And the world, not just me, will be watching when he tries to conquer the highest peak of them all.

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