Lang-ay festival 2014 fun run

Lang-ay festival. Mountain Province, Philippines. 15.8km road run. 

7 April 2014. Bontoc to Talubin Junction, and back to Samoki bridge. 

(Captions to come... comments and suggestions welcome.)

The start line at the provincial capitol.

The road marshals er field marshals, were on hand to ensure that runners were not taking short cuts over the mountain or swimming up the Agoyo river.

The top runners all hailed from Bauko, the cradle of elite mountain running.

See them run. Abante Bauko. Maybe I should join bau nila.

 I might just get lucky and meet someone - a ms bauko.

The rest of the top 10.

All the serious runners had gone or finished when I got to the turnaround point at Talubin saddle. The race officials were about to pack up too.

The runners cheered the plodder on.

All the top 25 were in my sights - though I was still outbound, and they were well on the way back.

With about 4km to go I heard some cheering.

It was from the water buffalo cheerleader - mooing.

I plodded on and duly got to the Samoki CBD where nuwangs and canines are kings of the road.

Finally the Samoki jumbo bridge (as opposed to mini I suppose) 

where the finishing banner welcomed the straggler home.
Click here for the race course and profile.

I saw runner #01 sprint home from the finish line. I think the parade float was waiting for her. Not even the fastest female can keep the parade waiting. I tried though, but time stands for no plodder either.

The top runners had already showered and changed, and were marching to the beat of the bandmasters of the 2014 lang-ay parade. Me I barely had time to catch my breath before I pulled out my camera for some pictures of the festival. I was hoping to get enough photos to post later on.