Twenty-four hours after I finished my last lap in a 24 hour race that I joined in Muntinlupa and I still can’t feel my legs. I enjoyed being able to race again after a long while, not having been able to join anything since my last adventure race in Camotes Island two years before. It was a tiring and painful return to racing to say the least, and it being my first time to race solo in a mountain bike competition, I have a solid excuse for flying over the handle bars countless times during the race. It was my first time to see an off-road bike course, let alone race in one, so from the very beginning I did have my reservations. As an added challenge, I was racing without a sponsor or teammates, right in the face of organized teams with bike mechanics in tow and large team tents belching spare parts and scientific sustenance. In stark comparison, I had one bike, a tadpole tent, a few cloud nine bars, and my girlfriend for support.
The race started with a familiarization lap around the course, it was still a hot and dry day and we inhaled the dust kicked up by the motocross riding marshal ahead of us. The first part of the course wasn’t much of a surprise following a rocky path out onto well-paved asphalt that dropped down around the periphery of a firing range and across a short bridge. From there the road shot up abruptly and we left the pavement for good as we turned right into a potholed construction road ripped apart by tractors and six-wheelers hauling earth. The motorcycle ahead of us continued to lead us through the rest of the course, up until we got to the trailhead of what seemed to be a goat path where the marshal declared the obvious that we would have to continue on our own from there. The terrain changed once we got on the trails, riding up and down undulating hills of loose dirt and exposed tables of slick rock, which I correctly imagined to bear the forebodings of disaster at the slightest hint of rain. Fun would not be the best way to describe the last part of the racecourse as it dipped into a creek twice, both with severe looking turns and inhospitable landings. The final hundred meters before the transition area provided the encore performance for the trail riding master class with a deceptively gentle slope climbing all the way to the finish line.
It rained hard later that day, complete with thunder and bright flashes of lightning on the horizon. The sudden downpour turned most of the trails on the racecourse into mush, it was so muddy that my bike would slide down steep sections with both front and rear brakes fully applied. All of a sudden it wasn’t just a race it was also a bike sliding event, a mountain bike gymnastics competition with riders sliding down the steep trails in all manner of bodily contortions, which mostly ended in inglorious crashes never before seen by man. To make matters worse, my headlight flickered to its untimely demise at around three in the morning at one of the more technical sections of the trail, causing much discomfort to the riders behind me as they watched my bike spin out of control throwing me wildly into the darkness like a sack of potatoes. I survived a few more of these episodes until both my brakes failed while going down a steep incline, scaring me out of my bike shorts enough to stop and make repairs.
Despite my best efforts though my brakes was just a shadow of its former self after the abuse I inflicted upon it, and so the crashes continued at almost every lap, due in large part to the fact that I could no longer feel my arms, my hands, and my head felt like it was about to fall off my shoulders at any moment. After a while, I got very good at flying over the handlebars of my bike. I could fall over without snagging the handlebars with my shoes and I could pick a spot where to land with minimum pain and breakage. All these stories of great difficulty and mechanical troubles would be a great build-up for an excuse why I didn’t place so well, but honestly the other riders ahead of me were just too strong and they wanted it a lot more than I did. I ended up at 13th place overall and 6th in my age group, just enough to have an excuse to misappropriate more money for parts and to spend more time on the saddle.
The race started with a familiarization lap around the course, it was still a hot and dry day and we inhaled the dust kicked up by the motocross riding marshal ahead of us. The first part of the course wasn’t much of a surprise following a rocky path out onto well-paved asphalt that dropped down around the periphery of a firing range and across a short bridge. From there the road shot up abruptly and we left the pavement for good as we turned right into a potholed construction road ripped apart by tractors and six-wheelers hauling earth. The motorcycle ahead of us continued to lead us through the rest of the course, up until we got to the trailhead of what seemed to be a goat path where the marshal declared the obvious that we would have to continue on our own from there. The terrain changed once we got on the trails, riding up and down undulating hills of loose dirt and exposed tables of slick rock, which I correctly imagined to bear the forebodings of disaster at the slightest hint of rain. Fun would not be the best way to describe the last part of the racecourse as it dipped into a creek twice, both with severe looking turns and inhospitable landings. The final hundred meters before the transition area provided the encore performance for the trail riding master class with a deceptively gentle slope climbing all the way to the finish line.
It rained hard later that day, complete with thunder and bright flashes of lightning on the horizon. The sudden downpour turned most of the trails on the racecourse into mush, it was so muddy that my bike would slide down steep sections with both front and rear brakes fully applied. All of a sudden it wasn’t just a race it was also a bike sliding event, a mountain bike gymnastics competition with riders sliding down the steep trails in all manner of bodily contortions, which mostly ended in inglorious crashes never before seen by man. To make matters worse, my headlight flickered to its untimely demise at around three in the morning at one of the more technical sections of the trail, causing much discomfort to the riders behind me as they watched my bike spin out of control throwing me wildly into the darkness like a sack of potatoes. I survived a few more of these episodes until both my brakes failed while going down a steep incline, scaring me out of my bike shorts enough to stop and make repairs.
Despite my best efforts though my brakes was just a shadow of its former self after the abuse I inflicted upon it, and so the crashes continued at almost every lap, due in large part to the fact that I could no longer feel my arms, my hands, and my head felt like it was about to fall off my shoulders at any moment. After a while, I got very good at flying over the handlebars of my bike. I could fall over without snagging the handlebars with my shoes and I could pick a spot where to land with minimum pain and breakage. All these stories of great difficulty and mechanical troubles would be a great build-up for an excuse why I didn’t place so well, but honestly the other riders ahead of me were just too strong and they wanted it a lot more than I did. I ended up at 13th place overall and 6th in my age group, just enough to have an excuse to misappropriate more money for parts and to spend more time on the saddle.
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