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Takbong
Pangarap began as the
dream for a single runner to cross the width of the United States in
120 days. But what was supposed to be a five-month sprint fell short
halfway through, following the break-up of the running team and the
athlete herself suffering an injury. Most damaging however, have been
allegations of cheating in the 5,000 km run.
Together with her were sponsors from Western Union and Rojas's team, consisting of running partner and boyfriend Mat Macabe and team manager Chuck Crisanto. Takbong Pangarap was also supposed to raise funds for the Anti-Tuberculosis Program of the Inner Wheel Club of Quezon City District 378 and the Social Services Division of the Philippine Heart Center.
While the first three months of the run proceeded without incident, observers online began to suspect that something was amiss. A primary issue, as Crisanto would later say after withdrawing from the group, was Rojas running without constant surveillance or documentation, having declined to run with a pedometer or GPS tracker, and rarely updating her status online on her official Takbong Pangarap blog, Twitter or Plurk account,.
In addition, the distance she supposedly covered between the times she would send e-mails and photos of herself having reached various locations raised suspicions among bloggers that she was not running the entire course.
When Crisanto left the team in late May, Macabe said that it was because he was being disagreeable, and that he took more than half of the team's funds.
Crisanto, however, recently came out with an article on his version of the events. In an advisory sent to the supporters of the project, Crisanto wrote "Joy Rojas the ultrarunner in the Project Takbong-Pangarap: Trans-USA run did not follow the parameters for setting a Philippine, much less a Southeast Asian record in the run from California to New York..."
He listed her violations as failure to adhere to the regulations of a point-to-point run, failure to keep a detailed logbook, failure to wear any tracking device, failure to report regularly on her location, and failure to observe safety regulations. "She has also broken protocol, and breached professional ethics."
In a more detailed article sent to POC, Crisanto talked about his role in the project, and how it came to be a massive disappointment to him.
"My job was to raise resources for the run and to network support without the luxury of time in her determination to start...without sufficient logistics...Had I not advanced my own money, used my credit cards, got pledges from sponsors they would be unable to even fly out. They did not even have money to pay for a support crew."
Crisanto referred to Macabe's previous allegations as "a serious matter...a malicious quote intended to cast aspersions on my character and reputation." He pointed out that if Macabe's allegations had "contained an iota of truth," Crisanto would most certainly have been prosecuted by Western Union.
"Instead," he wrote, "the marketing officers of Western Union in Manila and the US have thanked me for my efforts and sacrifices, by way of reimbursement of some of the expenses in the end."
He went on to discuss the anomalies in Rojas's run, confirming the rumors that she had not been running the entire course. A point-to-point run, which Takbong Pangarap was supposed to be, entailed Rojas running the entire course, starting at the exact place she stopped running whenever she rested.
According to Crisanto, she may have skipped around 385 miles of the run, possibly riding in a car.
"The pictures she sends of her running [and at various landmarks] mean nothing. For most of the run in June, Mat...was her only companion as photographers would come and go. This is the same Mat whose values prompted him to tell me earlier that if all of us kept our mouth shut regarding the conduct of the run, no one would be wiser."
Takbong Pangarap came to a halt in September, when Rojas reported a pelvic injury.
Rojas e-mailed Business Mirror's Francine Medina-Marquez saying, "I am not quitting...We've about a third of the US left to cover and I know I can do it if I just get better." She added that the deadline for her reaching the endpoint in New York was moved from September to November.
Crisanto said in a phone interview that he did believe that she was injured, probably "due to lack of medical preparedness on their part."
"It's sad that things turned out in this manner," he wrote in his article. "However, I console myself with the thought that not every attempt to climb Mt. Everest has resulted in success. Perhaps, one day in the future, another team can be assembled which will be better prepared and have the integrity to make all Filipinos proud."
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