Tagaytay Hill Climb

It is good to have a goal.  Ours is to cycle to Tagaytay this 2009.  Another goal is to make  the 100 kilometer ride.

It started with two friends cycling on barely SM-variety mountain bikes (actually, a bit beyond SM bikes because we were on our 2nd or 3rd bikes when we started cycling together), cycling around Merville.  The 5-kilometer ride that first time was a celebrated victory.  The biggest climb was the rise in the road to the church, a distance of 100 meters or so, a climb of maybe 5 meters.

Ernie was the more adventurous one, cycling around the outskirts of the village, into the next village and further on.  The rides became serious.  We had twin water bottles that were truly used.  Thirty kilometers to and from BF Paranaque was the achievement.  Coffee and pancakes at Pancake House of course was the reward at the end of the tiring ride, the sun beating down already.

With two more friends, Fritz and Donnie, to make a peloton of 4, our peak distance was 60 kilometers (59 for me, 67 for Ernie), when we biked from Merville to the end of Daang Hari and back.  The ride back was brutal.  Pain in head, in thighs, all ignored because I just wanted to get back home away from the awfully hot sun.  Still in the long tree-less shadeless Daang Hari road, meter after undulating meter, I pumped hard just to get to the end of this frigging endless road.  I attacked the road, pushed ahead, taking advantage of each dip to accumulate just a few more meters of acceleration for the next rise.   I paused at the  edge of Alabang-Zapote road, it was raining hard, and munched a bar of Trail Mix with Ernie before proceeding.   The last 15 kilometers through BF taught me how a cyclist lives with pain.  My view narrowed to the 30 degrees of frontal vision, down on the road to avoid cracks and puddles.  I ran out of water halfway and my thighs started to really cramp a kilometer and a half before home.  But we got home, and bragged and bragged for weeks.

We rode in the rain with yellow jerseys on (all we had were yellow, so it helped) in the morning of Cory’s funeral.  We met with Nelson.  It was raining on and off, there were a lot of people crowding the gate, and cops too.  But all were friendly.  It was not as though we were in a funeral.  It was as though we were saying goodbye to a friend and saying hello to our new-found meaning.  It was a good ride; would have been worth getting sick.  

For more than 2 months, rain, sickness, and flood prevented us from doing the next really long ride together.  Our goal was Tagaytay by Nov 2.  That date passed, our dream wavered, but I guess we kept the fire burning (!).  Our Eatwell lunch conversations still drifted to cycling and long rides; but we did not talk much about Tagaytay because getting back up to the energy level needed for an 80  kilometer uphill ride from our sedentary state seemed an difficult star to aim for.

Yet, the best things are sometimes left better unplanned.  Last week or the week before, we decided to do a long ride–Fritz, Ernie, and I.  Long meant going though Daang Hari.  With a SAG (support vehicle) behind us, we braved the rumors of Daang Hari, dared to cross the SM road towards the 2-lane road bounded on both sides by rice paddies.  We reached the fork of a wide multi-lane road.  The beginning of the ascent to Tagaytay, we were told.  Only 10 kilometers to go, our support vehicle driver said–but that was too optimistic.  We stopped because I had the cramps.  We rode the van back happy and full of stories.  The Hill was not an unreachable dream now.  We discovered the secret:  just start nearer and nearer.

Today’s ride, 7 November 2009, did not have well prepared provenance.  Little planning except on the evening of Friday.  But Fritz said  he was sick, only to change his mind (he was sick all right, but wanted to ride) at 9 in the evening.  My blood pressure went up the afternoon and did not seem to go down to the right level even mid-evening.  The ride was still uncertain but we made plans.  Early morning at 6 when I checked, my blood pressure was still high.  But the ride depended on me somewhat because our rendezvous point was  Donnie’s house and my van was the carrier.  So I dressed up and left.  My wife did not know that I brought the  Omron blood pressure cuff to do a final check at the last moment.  (A stupid way to start a ride, but maybe some cyclists like me are pretty dumb).

We left the SAG (support vehicle) in Verdana–because it would be tempting to give up if the SAG was following.  We cycled to the end of Daang Hari, took the turn along Aguinaldo, past the traffic around SM.  We turned right to the real open highway where only real cyclists rode.  The wind on our open jerseys was cool, the downhills tempting and early uphills bearable.  It started to drizzle, the lens of my dark glasses were spattered, and it became a little chilly.

Donnie sweeped the peloton, encouraging the stragglers, pushing the gasping neophytes (me) literally.  Ernie checked his six every so often, checking for the whereabouts of Fritz and myself.  His Kinesis bike had the mountain-biker’s 3-plate front (he said this was a road cyclists beginner plate) which meant he had that extra lowest gear to attack the steep hills.  Donnie had a very light “lift with your  little-finger”  Look carbon-aluminum bicycle well–matched by  his steel-belted thighs.  Fritz rode his re-engineered road bike with Campagnolo groupset and sticky brand new red Look Keo clipless pedals.   I rode my frisky Pinarello Montello, the bike of Tour de France champions (alas before I was born ha ha).

We pumped continuously in managed cadence as our road bikes slowly ate each kilometer.  We thought we  looked the part–four grown (healthy) men in full cycling regalia, bravely trying not to look like we were dying.  Across the road, as we started the main hill climb, a fast peloton of hard-core unsmiling cyclists zipped by.   Wow they are fast, I thought, forgetting that they were zooming downhill.

It rained on an off and on again.  We stopped several times, not from the rain but to gather energy again, to drink gatorade, and I to take a shot of my home-brewed “powershot.”  It was supposed to give me a lift, like spinach to Popeye, but I cannot help suspect that powershots are overrated.  Hills and kilometers can only be conquered by gritted teeth, aching thighs, and rain-spattered faces.  Gatorade helps.  I ran out.  Donnie generously poured his entire second bottle into my empty one.  That too ran out.  I was guzzling the liquid in an effort to keep away or keep at bay the lactic acid in my calves.  I saw a sari-sari store, signalled a water break, and eased my bike across the sandy soil.  Water?  I asked.  No???  (for who would buy bottled water in the midst of safe drinking water in the mountains!  oh well).  Gatorade perhaps?  I asked, with a little bit less confidence.  No.  Take Coke for the sugar, Ernie said.  So we shared a 1.5 liter bottle of Coke Zero.  I can tell you that Coke, no matter how ice cold, is not refreshing to a cyclist.  I ended up pouring the nearly full remains of the drink down the sink when I got home.  No wonder one does not see advertisements of Coke beside Lance A. in Tour de France.

After the water break, technology prevailed and a text message appeared on Ernie’s phone:  Fritz had cramps all over.  We knew this was going to happen because Fritz was already going very slowly.  I don’t know about Ernie and Donnie but heck I was truly relieved that we were turning back.  My head was aching and I was scared that it was my blood pressure bursting the dikes (it turned out a benign coffee-caffeine withdrawal, as I had not had coffee the whole day, thank God).

Here we are taking the long break at Unioil.  It rained heavily shortly after this picture was taken.  Just before that we made the decision to call the SAG up rather than cycle down.  The rain made the decision easier.

Today we did not reach the edge of the volcano.  But we finally reached halfway up the hills.  The next time, we will make it.

And next time, I will bring a jacket for the mountain wind at 35 kilometers per hour can be really chilly.