The Philippine Outdoors

Few days ago, I told my wife, Leila, that there will be a cross-country race at Tagaytay highlands and asked her if she’s interested to join. To my surprise, she feels so excited by joining the race (ahem, napasubo yata ako….:-) ). It will be her first race if she intends on joining. So, I told her to practice first to improve her handling skills and stamina and proposed to ride the malipay trail since it is the nearest trail for us. Thus, we set the schedule to hit the trail, and that is today.
She’s not that good on mountainbiking, yet. Afterall, she’s not a regular weekend rider and it is her only 2nd ride for this year. But what’s good is she’s eager to try it out and willing to learn.

Lei tackling the uphill at the back of portofino village

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I joined Rod and Tisoy, for its early morning ride (today) at Makiling-Rockgarden. This downhill trail at Mount Makiling inside University of the Philippines-Los Banos(UPLB) campus won’t be called a rockgarden if without rocks. True to its name, this trail are full of rocks! It’s not just a tiny bit, but those rocks are big. Big enough to destroy your bike or one of its component if you tackle it wrong. This is one of the few trails here in the Philippines that can give your bike and yourself a good workout.

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Here’s a short video of our ride last March 6th at Malipay with Dino and Edwin using my DIY helmetcam Kodak Zx1. I bought it cheap for Php4995.00 pesos only. A few months ago it was worth Php11000. So, I bought it without any hesitation. haha! The spec is geat for its price, a 720p HD video quality @ 60 fps. Perhaps, the only good spec that is missing in this outdoor video camera is an image stabilization. Well, better check out the video first.

Note:
The youtube video may not be available to you if you’re located within United states and Canada. Heck, it’s due to the soundtrack that I used…..

I got an invite from a friend, Francis a week ago if I am interested in a couple’s ride on Feb. 14th. Just a newbie friendly ride, where our wives can handle, especially his wife, since that will be her first trail ride. I already introduced my wife on trail riding so it won’t be a problem for her. The plan is to ride the La Mesa trail, but Francis told me that there will be a lot of people who will ride on that day, so, he suggested to go to Sta. Elena, instead. I replied, that it won’t be a problem for me. So, instead of going up north on February 14th, we went down south for our couples valentine’s ride.
Upon arriving at Sta. Elena, we’d got problem that the security guard won’t let us enter the village if we don’t have a resident companion or an invite from any of the Sta. Elena residence. Because of it, we decided to go to Nuvali.
At Nuvali, we found out that a trail run race sponsored by “North Face” was held. Thus, we’re not able to use the trail as the race is still on-going.

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It’s been awhile that we do a cross-country ride, since most of us are more inclined with downhill mountainbiking. Anyway, this ride was planned by Toto of Intense Bikeshop intending to hit Malipay trail near Portofino Village-Alabang with a lot of new faces. Meetup was set at around 6AM at Intense Bikeshop. But, since I knew Toto to be always late at meetups, I intentionally came in late at around 630AM. haha!!!
After the meetup we proceed to Portofino-Alabang and meetup a few more guys there. And around 730AM we proceed to Malipay trail. This is what I like with downhillers riding the technical cross-country trail. They do it hard and fast on technical terrain and hates long uphill and boring straight double-track road. Of course, who wants to ride uphill with their heavy downhill bikes? On this ride, we tackle only the technical cross-country path were most cross country riders carry their bikes, but for agressive riders like us, we rode it all, as much as possible. Since we hate boring staright double-track trail, we skipped passing through sugar cane plantation.
Our initial entry was blocked by an intimidating bull. He doesn’t want us to pass. haha! But hey, we’re supposed to be the masters, right? Dino, tried to command the bull to move out, but, he’s an immobile beast. Luckily, with a little bit of Dino’s aggressiveness, the bull went away.

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I-On Mountainbike Race, the first mountainbike race held this year at San Mateo, Rizal. The race involves cross-country, downhill, dirtjump, and road racing with categories for every type of racers from beginners to professionals, from kids to adults, and for men and women. The event was successful as shown by the number of registered participants and spectators. The races were well represented nationally as riders as far as Baguio, Subic, Negros, and Cotabato converged in one area to race at their respective descipline.
I joined in Downhill-Executive. This category is for people aged 35 and above who loves the adrenalin rush. The downhill race started a bit late due to transponder problem, and we ended up using the stop watch instead to measure our time. That mistake can be forgiven as it is the first time we use it in our local race.
The first downhill category was released at lunch time, which made most of us hungry as we await for our turn. Still, the majority are quite happy with the race and that’s including me, of course. Perhaps, we’re just quite happy that a race was organized for us to compete and compare our capability with others. Though, there are things that needs to be improved if we want a race that is at par internationally.
As usual, Joey Barba got the best time for the downhill-open category with a time of 1:57:71(minutes:seconds:hundredths) followed by our National Youth member Scott Remi(1:58:37) and coach Eboy Farr(2:02:03).
Meanwhile, Another Joey (Rogers) was the king at Downhill-Novice category with a time of 2:06:74. Ex-pro Jay Teodoro got the best at Downhill-Executive category with a time of 2:18:96. Mark Gomez is the best among the young stallions at beginner category with a final run of 2:18:53.
For the complete race results, please visit the I-ON Extreme Mountainbike website and its multiply site for more photos…

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Downhill run with the masters? Yes, it is. Philippine DH coach Eboy Farr, local Pro Jhong Sunga and ’09 TLBF DH executive winner Jing Malabanan is with us in this ride. As usual, it’s a good experience riding with this kind of peeps. You can learn a lot techniques watching them bombarding the trail.
But don’t always follow wherever they go, okay? Because following them will only leads you to two options. One is good and the other is… well, you might end up eating dirt…
There are 19 riders overall. It is basically a mixed of veterans, intermediates, and newbies. About 5 riders from South Cycles( Eboy and Jerich Farr, Alvin, and 2 neophytes), 3 from Cavite(Myself, Judy, and Edwin), ATO, Paul, Jhong, Ronnie, Rey, Ronnie’s korean friend, Jing Malabanan and his 2 companions from Batangas, and Kelly and his brother.

A short Video of Eboy and Jerich Farr

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Well, this is my wife’s baptism of rocks and muds at Mt. Makiling-Mudspring trail. A day before, we have to decide between Nuvali track in Sta. Rosa or Mt. Makiling in Los Banos for our trail ride destination for the day. And, I opted for Makiling (where I can do downhilling) which she agreed.
Thus, it becomes her first trail ride on this beautiful mountain. It is challenging and exasperating for her as expected. And that she has to push her bike up during the first ascent and well….. most of the time towards mudspring…. and even on descent. But, that’s okay, because I don’t want her to have any accidents. I warn her to go slow on downhill and if necessary go down in your bike and just walk. And she did because she’s also afraid and at the same time careful.
Likewise, I met the Makiling Team Gravity riders on that day. It’s a pleasant reacquaintance for the group that I know and ride with for a long time, already. Since, I have to wait for my wife most of the time during our descent(downhill), I was able to get a small videos of them while going down. And it was also an opportunity for me to have my video taken in a downhill ride, since my wife is with me as my videographer.

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It’s been a month that I’m out of the saddle due to typhoons onset every weekends. Weekend is my only time to bike and I was quite unlucky that every weekend, there’s an onset of typhoon. However, I still consider myself lucky considering how typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, brought havoc to the islands. While those 2 typhoons devastated most part of Luzon province, my family and I are safe from home. I opted to stay home as I feel won’t totally enjoy riding in the rain, just like my September 5th ride . Thus, after hearing the news that typhoon Pepeng went out of Philippine territory, and brought no more rain starting yesterday, Friday, I decided to pack-up my gears and be ready for a short and quick saturday ride. I have to do it quick because I have another paintball session with my colleague at Teradyne , on the same day.

When your riding alone, you wish you have a company to take pictures when youre bombing the trail.

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I got confirmation Thursday evening from my ride buddies at Santa Rosa, Laguna that the planned downhill ride at Papis trail, Tagaytay City the next day(September 5) will push through regardless if it rain. Indeed it rain on that day. But not just an ordinary rain…………………………….. a heavy rain brought up by the incoming typhoon.

The trail becomes slippery, and flooded by rain. Tires can’t get enought traction. You can’t see what you’re really into. But that’s what mountainbiking is. Lots of challenges, fun and natural factors. You’ll never learn unless you tried it.

I can’t exactly count how many times i fell on my bike. But, after the ride smiles envelope us all.