A day of Extra Challenge (the TV show)
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005This has been a great month! Definitely one of the best months of my life - EVER (experience wise I mean).
GMA aired the McDonald’s Extra Challenge episode last Monday, May 23. As expected, what was shown was our bloopers and the injuries. My face was soooo red while I watched it at home with my parents. I saw myself falling off the rotating log (and they just HAD to replay it several times too!) - good thing they didn’t use the audio (was saying sh*t and more profanity as I went down), or that would’ve been one reaaaallly loooong bleep. Hahahaha. What else… saw Leng and I struggling with the 50kg sack that kept falling of our makeshift cart. Good thing they didn’t show the part where I "destroyed" the cart (I was pullling on it and one of the wooden planks came off!)
It’s great to look back at moments like those. I remember I could hardly eat anything during our brief stay at The Best West Astor Hotel prior to the elimination round. Man, I was a nervous wreck! The thought of wearing that silly costume made it worse….hehehe.
It was sooooo hot during the day the eliminations were held. They had to put up two tents (airconditioned, but those didn’t do much) - for all fifty, er, 49 of us. The first thing we had to do was introduce ourselves in a "creative" way - meaning, all attitude, not much actual information aside from your name. And we were all in costume. Amazon women for the ladies and Indiana Jones for the men - to match Paolo’s McDonald’s ad. I said mine in English hehehe. I think we were supposed to say it in Filipino though - so they didn’t show my clip, thank goodness! I’d never live it down if they had. I was particularly worried about it since I won best costume/sell yourself for that part.
The real fun started with round one. An army obstacle course. Best time, advances. We crawled under really low barbed wire - that stretched out ermmm….I forgot how many meters long….but let me tell you, it was LONG! They used a firetruck hose to make the soil extra soft and, well, there were puddles. Lots of ‘em. Good thing the boys told me to change into jogging pants when they saw me wearing shorts (they got scratches and wounds from the rocks). I ended up using my dad’s vintage jogging pants for good luck (and because I don’t HAVE any jogging pants, all I have are soccer shorts) — by vintage I mean that they’re older than I am. Hahaha. For real!
When I began the crawl, I was full of energy, and was on an adrenaline rush. By the time I finished the barbed wire part of the course, my legs were aching really bad and my energy had left me. That’s how tiring it was. That’s how long it was. Even the guys were complaining about it. (But then again, the boys had to do it backwards).
After the crawl, each contestant has to carry their aching legs up a steep hill and down the other side, where the next challenge awaited. And yes, this part is still timed. It felt like I was running toward and up the hill - but it probably looked like I was jogging. My mud-soaked pants were so heavy (I’m used to shorts…so it made a huge difference that I could really feel that extra pound of wet pants weighing me down). Wearing futsal shoes DID NOT make this any easier. I could feel myself slipping as I went up (futsal shoes have soles that are pretty smooth - they’re for gym floors, not for the outdoors. But I was stubborn and wore them because the other pair of shoes I brought along were Adidas climacools. No competition there. Adidas climacools were hard to wear in muddy situations - and even harder to clean afterwards).
Okay once I got up that hill, I looked down the other side and saw the next challenge. But I had to get DOWN first. Since my legs were on the verge of cramping by then, I couldn’t take slow, controlled, well calculated movements down. And by this time the adrenaline was making me feel like a superhero so I just raced down. My shoes would naturally slip on the surface anyway so that was pretty easy. I just let gravity and momentum get to work and in no time I was running down the hill FAST. I saw a tree, stretched out my arm and tried to anchor myself to it so I could stop myself near the next challenge. As I grabbed the tree, the force from my run made me swing around it…well, halfway around it. The marshalls at the next station were pretty alarmed and were yelling at me to take my time since it was dangerous, etc. (I think they were surprised because the others did not run down the hill?)
So much for wanted to shave a few seconds off my total time. By the time I actually got to the "hopper" challenge, I was all out of breath and my heart was beating a mile a minute. I finally followed the advice of the marshall, who told me to take a few seconds to stabilize myself and my breathing. Okay, the challenge: you know those Chinese martial arts movies where they fight each other whilst balancing/jumping atop vertical logs? Well, we had to jump from (vertical!) log to log - according to their numbers. They were numbered from one through nine, in zigzag formation, with varrying heights and distances. The worst part was that one of them had a hole - and upon landing, your foot had to somehow fit into it or else you’d fall and have to go back to vertical log #1.
I was breathing like some pregnant woman in labor as I did this one (apparently, all of us girls went into what resembled "labor breathing" while doing the next challenges - that must’ve been a hilarious sight). Upon finishing (without falling, thankyouverymuch!) I thanked God for long legs (I was one of the tallest women there) and football. But when I got to the next challenge, I realized that God will always be fair….
The next challenge still involved logs - rotating, greasy, muddy horizontal logs arranged in zigzag formation. And we had to get across them. All of them. The middle portion of the logs were suspended above water, just in case we fell (and boy did we!). However, the starting point was on LAND. And the rule was, your legs should NOT touch the land - not even a blade of grass. And I had trouble with this since my legs were always centimeters from touching some blade of grass. So much for thinking height would be a definite edge!
Nearing the end of rotating log #1, I suddenly thought, "wouldn’t it be humiliating if I fell?" - and as I got lost in that thought, I did - I FELL. Back to the start of the rotating log, then made it over to log #2! I thought I had the hang of it but as I neared log #3, I thought "Hey, I think I got the hang of it! I hope I don’t fall anymore" - then I looked up to check how far I was, saw the camera’s lens zooming in on my face, got VERY distracted, and you guessed it, I fell, AGAIN! Back to the start, to log#1. 
Anyway, I decided to take my time and NOT look anywhere else, and whaddyaknow I made it this time! 
After finishing the rotating logs challenge, we had to scoot back up the hill, and down the other side for the last challenge. Again, I ran up, and ran down even faster. The marshalls yelled at me and ran to the base of the hill in case I fell. I didn’t. Whew. The next challenge was a simple wall climbing task. After scaling the wall, you had to slide down the other side and start running like mad to the finish line. THIS should have been easy. But all of us were sooooooooo tired that we had a HARD time just getting up! Finished this one without any hitches, slid down and looked at the finish line - a long run awaited.
I wanted to just finish everything already, so I gathered all the energy I had left, made a mad dash for the finish line, and high-fived Paolo Bediones (the host!). The run was the biggest challenge (on that course) for me because I was running on an empty tank by then. Upon reaching the finish line, I was exhausted! I hunched over and wanted to sit down, but Paolo straightened me up, held me by my shoulders and told me to let out a "Huh!" to make breathing easier. I did, between breaths. And then I sat down to rest. The guys were so nice, they helped me (and everyone else) remove the helmet, the elbow pads/knee pads, etc. - each challenger that had just finished the course was too tired to even remove their own gear.
Made it to the second round, but I don’t know what my time was though. This is getting pretty long, I’ll continue later. Have to get back to editing a video, hehehe.
