By Francis T.J. Ochoa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:39:00 12/20/2009
MANILA, Philippines—On May 11, 2009, Joy Rojas celebrated her birthday in California with freshly picked oranges and cool water drawn from a backyard well courtesy of a stranger she remembers only as Tim.
“It’s my birthday today,” she told Tim. She had asked the stranger for directions earlier that day and they bumped into each other inside a gasoline convenience store.
“Well, happy birthday,” he told her.
And then she was off. Running.
Typical. Joy Rojas, a 44-year-old wisp of a woman with a sun-cooked complexion, always had to be somewhere else. You could tell by the restlessness that would seep into her body once she sat down for even a minute. She would shift almost uncontrollably—a bundle of boundless energy that refuses to be contained.
That’s why even if there were sumptuous birthday celebrations surrounded by family and friends, No. 44 won’t be forgotten for quite a while. On that day, she embarked on a transcontinental run across the United States.
Called “Takbong Pangarap” Rojas planned to run 5,000 kilometers or roughly 50 km every day for 100 days with only 20 days for rest.
Out of the several hundreds who have run across America, only 11 are women. Among them is another Filipino, running gear maker Cesar Guarin, who crossed the continent from New York to Los Angeles in 1985, completing the run on June 12, Independence Day.
Moving in place
“People keep asking me why I even thought of doing it,” Rojas said. “I just tell them I’m a stubborn runner.”
Stubborn, as she refuses to believe there are distances she cannot span with her two legs. She had previously, after all, covered Davao City in Mindanao to Pagudpud in Ilocos Norte. What’s another 5,000 kilometers to add to her body odometer?
“There were other choices, actually, like Australia. But we figured, why not go for the United States,” she said.
After starting off from Eagle Rock Plaza in Glendale, California, in May, Rojas finished her transcontinental run, reaching Central Park in New York in November, although a few weeks off schedule.
She arrived in the country on Dec. 11 and was feted at a luncheon last Thursday, hosted by Western Union at the Hotel Intercontinental in Makati City—a celebration of the indomitable spirit of a woman who, quite simply, refuses to stay in one place.
At the luncheon, she moved from table to table, saying thanks to the people who supported her—bringing them to tears with each show of gratitude. She posed for a photograph—head always slightly bowed and cocked to the right—and then she’d be gone, off to another group for yet another photograph.
A writer starts running
Rojas is a writer by profession. Freelancing for several publishing companies—the Philippine Daily Inquirer
, included—she has written sketches about several personalities, confining herself to a cramped seat in front of a desk figuring out the right words to tell other people’s stories.Now, it is her story being told.
It began almost 10 years ago, when Rojas finally decided to bust the hell out of sitting still.
“I started running only because all I did was sit down and write and I got tired of sitting down and writing,” she said.
Right attitude
It was that attitude that allowed her to conquer 16 states and 5,000 km of sometimes inhospitable and lonely terrain until she finally reached Central Park in New York. Psychoanalysts may sometimes infer meaning from a person’s passion for running, searching for a trigger in childhood that led to all that footrace.
While Rojas draws metaphors from her running, hers is not as complicated as people may think.
“My version of a runner’s high is really simple—it’s bringing myself from one point to … somewhere else,” she said.
And boy, did she end up somewhere else. What she accomplished wasn’t easy. Never mind the distance. The fact that two-thirds into her trip she felt something pop in her hip, which a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test revealed to be a stress fracture, amped up the degree of difficulty.
“I think I was in Kansas at that time. I suddenly felt a pain in my hip. And you know, typical us, we self-diagnose. So I was just popping ibuprofen like they were M&Ms and I was telling my team, let’s continue,” Rojas related.
Fracture, torn muscle
Danny Titus, a professional photographer she described as a “guardian angel in disguise,” suggested she undergo an MRI and that’s when her stress fracture was discovered. Further probing revealed she had a torn muscle, too. And she had been running with both conditions for about two weeks.
“Even when they told me that, I wanted to continue,” she said. “I kept asking, ‘can I run slowly? Can I walk?’”
“I told them I wasn’t quitting. I may not be the fastest runner or the most graceful, but I am the most stubborn runner.”
It wasn’t that she was thinking of her beneficiaries. Western Union pledged $5,000 to the Social Services Division of the Philippine Heart Center and to the Anti-Tuberculosis program of the Inner Wheel Club in Quezon City—practically a dollar for every kilometer she ran. It wasn’t just the commitments to every pit stop along the way.
Although she admitted that “it would’ve been a great disservice to the people who supported me if I quit because I felt a little pain,” Rojas wanted to go on quite simply because she had to be somewhere else.
Six weeks of rest
Only when doctors told her she needed six weeks of rest and a steady diet of Vitamin D and calcium pills lest she completely break her hip bone did she finally agree to stay still. Only then.
“I guess I realized that when you have an injury, you have to slow down,” Rojas said.
The rest period set back her timetable but nobody really cared. Not even those who were financing her trip. Western Union’s Mike Morelos told her not to worry about anything. “There is no doubt in my mind that you will finish the run,” Morelos told her.
Besides, measuring Rojas’ feat against time would diminish her accomplishment. She was, after all, measuring herself against the limits of human endurance.
Finish line
Finally, on a cool sunny Sunday on Nov. 22, she reached Central Park in New York City.
She hauled with her tons of memories to the finish line. “Too many,” she said, “that you will need three notebooks to write them all down.”
She also kept mementos of the long trip. The piece of paper where the stranger named Tim “squiggled” a map to set her off on her long journey. Snapshots of the places her sturdy legs took her. And pens. Lots of pens “from all the inns and motels I stayed in during my pit stops.”
But more than that, she brought with her inspiration.
As an ultra-marathon (anything past the marathon or 42 km) runner, Rojas said economy of movement was very important. “You have to achieve a certain pace to cover really long distances.”
0-M steps
Judging by her running stride, she averaged about half-a-meter per step. That means she made roughly 10 million steps on her coast-to-coast journey.
But judging by the tears that fell from the eyes of the people she thanked and the openness of strangers who supported and encouraged her throughout the run, that number is nothing compared to the lives Rojas will have touched every time her story is told.
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