You probably haven't heard of this event called Pamutan Multi-day Trail Ultra A.K.A. The 5 Trails challenge until today. Yes, there is such a thing, and our featured dirtbag of the week is one of only two runners crazy enough to complete it (they were both women, by the way). Her name is Mandreza Lyra Valles. An ALS (Alternative Learning System) instructional manager for an NGO, and a full time outdoor sports junkie. And probably the friendliest trail runner in the community. Well, aside from AJ of course.
Her path to trail running is something most of us can relate to. A hardcore mountaineer for almost 20 years who also does road runs for conditioning - typical you and me, right? Nope. She does road ultras after successfully hitting the summit of some of the biggest mountains in the country! One of her most notable crazy feats is being part of the group who did 7 marathons in 7 days, 7/42. And that's adding AWUM in the equation, less than a week after. Kalasa ug congrats oi. But seriously, who wakes up early 7 days in a row... and run a marathon every day? Oh and, they added 1 more day the following year making it 8/42!
Manay Lyra's transition to trail running was seamless and she went to out to slay a beast named TNF 100 in the same year for a respectable 8th place finish... not bad for her first trail race. From 2013 to present Ta-Lyr has already racked in a number big finishes here and abroad, including the prestigious BDM road ultra and the Badass badge at CM50. She was not spared from painful DNFs though, but she makes up for it by bouncing back strong. Really strong.
Manay is one of those who deliberately deletes 'off-season' from their vocabulary. Although she admits she does not have a specific training plan in place, you can always find her training with some of the fastest runners in Cebu. She even added another discipline to her already full activity schedule: OCR. That's after tasting mud last year competing in the Spartan race at Foressa. This ball of energy finished many more OCR events within just a couple of years - Spartan Trifecta, Ultra Beast, Hurricane Heat 24 hours, to name a few. And some podium finishes too.
Her race calendar nowadays looks pretty similar to the Spartan race calendar, with Spartan Hurricane Heat 12 hours in Sarawak Malaysia at the very top of it, but as we scroll down a big race is still italicized... her unfinished business, Pulag 100.
Lyra is no doubt a pioneer of the sport. The first to learn from the pillars of trail running in Cebu, Nap Dela Torre and Meux Cordova. The perfect Padawan who went on to share her knowledge in trail and ultra running and mountaineering... even applying them to OCR. She paved the way and served as the inspiration to many of our female trail running champions. On many these milestones, Lyra wore her Fenix 3, but she's yet to figure out how to actually use it. No kidding. Ok, that's unnecessary but that really cracks us up every time. Sorry Manay. Lyra is a true "Lamang bukid", always out there either as a racer or a volunteer.
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