When I was a student-officer in the Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia, USA from Oct 1983 to May 1984, I came across a “500-Mile” Club. Everybody was free to join the club. All you had to do was to follow the rules and regulations/instructions. Every member should be able to run 500 miles by logging on a chart where your name is printed. There were designated routes where the correct distance was measured in miles. “Honor System” was involved in registering the number of miles a member ran for a day.
After the EDSA Revolt in 1986, I was assigned in the Philippine Military Academy as its Intelligence Officer. In order to promote physical fitness to my officers and men who were engaged in smoking, gambling and drinking liquor in their free time, I introduced the “1,000-Kilometer” Club where everybody should be able to run the said distance with corresponding prize/s every time a person finished an increment of 100 kilometers. It was a successful running program that made us a strong running team in road races in the late ’80s.
The prize ranges from athletic socks, headbands, baseball/runner’s caps, running shorts, singlets, T-shirts, sports attire, free tickets to a movie, free food/dinner/lunch, and the ultimate prize for running the target/goal of 1,000K was a brand-new running shoes. Aside from being a strong running team, my “boys” became more healthy, fit, family-centered, and never tempted to smoke, gamble, and drink intoxicating liquor again.
When I visited PMA last month, one of my “boys” who is retired already, reminded me of this running program when he told me that we were running from Baguio City to San Fabian, Pangasinan via Marcos Road and from Bauang, La Union to Baguio City via Naguilian Road on different occassions as part of our “1,000K” Club.
Starting last Saturday, 01 March 2008, I’ve started my membership with my own “1,000K” Club!
Bald Runner 
Count me in. I will be working to join that club!
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Hello from Australia. Count me in as well. I’m not there yet but not far off either.
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Count me in, Sir. Are we going to have an on-line log of our runs? Will there be any other rules?
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m8parco & nolan, i am giving you an “idea” to challenge and reward yourself for the number of kms you have covered in your running workouts. if you are with a running club or in an office or in a group, you can introduce this “club” to motivate your members and friends to achieve something and make them better runners or stronger/healthier individuals. “honor system” is the only rule here.
steve, it’s been a long time when you had your last comment (dec 2007). thanks for the visit. i placed your website in my blogroll. keep on running!
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Oh great … another excuse to go shopping. Count me in! Will reset count in my running log beginning 1Mar08. It might take me awhile … 🙂
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Cool 1,000km club is that 1000 km for the year 2008 only 🙂 count me in. We should have Running shirts made
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patrick, awesome! nice idea! ok, i will talk to Coach Rio immediately to design one for the members of the “1,000 Km Club”. hey, that’s a great idea. thanks, patrick!
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Count me in BR. still far on the way there.
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jun, you better start counting your mileage & reward yourself everytime you finish 100 kilometers. this will motivate you to run some more and improve your finish time. be a member & wear proudly the T-Shirt as recommended by Patrick.
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Only started counting last March. per my record, I’m already on my 265km+ (not including my mileage from Oct07-Feb08. Looking forward to wear that 1,000km Club shirt. Thanks and see you tomorrow at the Champion Run along the river.
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Hi BR! What if we made this 1,000km Club a “for a cause” thing? 🙂 Would it be ok with you if we integrated it with the “run for change movement” I’m trying to start up? I mean, for every 100km, we reward ourselves, but upon reaching 1,000km we should give something to charity or a cause or start a fund? Your charity could be a start or the project donate a shoe 🙂 What do you think?
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junc, welcome to the “1,000Km Club”! we’ll have to design for the said T-shirt. see you tomorrow morning!
eric, that would be nice. i’ve started my charity fund already and you could do it on your own & then have our own individual funds integrated into one and we can select what “project” or advocacy we can support. go for it!
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Hi Br,
My first run on the road (not on the treadmill) was on August 12. It was also the first time I used the Garmin on the road instead of with me on the kayak. Back then, I huffed and puffed with a steady pace of 6:18/km covering only 5.56 km. Hahaha I ran 2 sundays more with the same distance but stopped in September all together.
During our vacation in Boracay, I decided to run the entire length of the beach after drinking a couple of beers. It was more than a couple I suppose. That was from Station1 all the way to the end of station 3. I didnt mind the fact that my feet started to sink in station 2. I suppose I just considered it as training or maybe I was just drunk. The route is 7.98 kilometers, just perfect. The view was great as well so I didnt mind. With the good feeling experienced after, I ran again 2 days later after my allergy attack subsided. My eye was swollen, my body itched from the alcohol and running. ; )
That sunday, friends invited to join the Adidas Run for Love. Since I ran boracay, why not run for Love? hehehe So that started my running “career”. As I just checked my total distance, Im now at 573 kms for 2008. 2007 only logged in at 173km. It was only in April this year that I started to run more by getting a month total of 223. I plan to at least have 200 per month. Well its not really in the quantity but the quality of the runs. Right BR?
I hopefully will be joining your 1000km club soon.
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mark, of course, you make every run a good quality one! hey, I didn’t see you at the Champion Run this morning. We missed you! It was really fun with the heat, bigger crowd, and the narrow path.
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I really had no plans of joining after I found out yaya will be on day off. Di ko yaya ha, sa anak ko po. : ) Glad I didnt have to be as surprised as you and the other runners. Why cant they just fix that distance problem?
See you on the other races this May. Are you joining the first 5 mile run this Sunday at Fort? It would be fun to do it in 30 minutes. : )
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mark, according to some of the runner, coach rio announced before the start of the race that the distance of the race was 11kms. i’ll be joining the 5-mile run @ Market! Market! the longer, the better! see you there!
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