For the first time, a team of Filipino ultramarathon runners competed in the 12th International Association of Ultrarunners 24-Hour World Championships held last weekend in Belfast, Ireland.
The four-member Philippine team was led by Dublin-based nurse Rolando Espina Jr. who ranked 74th among 159 runners in the race that featured 310 athletes from 30 countries.
Espinas set a new national 24-hour record, running 210.798 kilometers. The old record was 203.4 kilometers.
It was Espina’s latest feat in ultramarathon. Last year, the 43-year-old became the first Filipino to complete the Spartathlon in Greece, a 246-kilometer race considered as the toughest ultramarathon on the planet.
He also topped the Bataan Death March 102K Ultramarathon Race last January.
Apart from Espina, his fellow Filipinos Rex Brillantes, a 41-year-old health care assistant in Dublin, and Jivee Tolentino, a 40-year-old catering staff at a hospital, also finished the 24-hour individual men’s race, ranking 130th and 137th, respectively.
Brillantes was overall champion in the 2017 Donadea 100K Ultramarathon Race this June, while Tolentino finished sixth in the Portumna Forest 100K Ultramarathon Race, which Espina won, also this month.
Filipina runner Mylene Elliot, 31, now based in UK and hails from Bicol, ranked 107th among 131 runners in the individual women’s category.
Elliot is a back-to-back finisher of the Comrades Ultra Marathon in South Africa (Up & Down Courses in 2017 and 2016). She also finished the 2017 Virgin Money London Marathon.
The team was backed by the support crew of Fermina Mermeto, Pete Elliot, Amado Damot, Blanche Damot and Eugene Brillantes.