2009 Tour ni Frank: My hardest race ever!

CEBU – The 2009 Tour ni Frank was for the first time, without its sponsor and spiritual leader as Frank Gatdula was in a Mexican cruise with his wife, Salome, to celebrate their 25 years of wedded bliss. But as they say, life, or bike racing, goes on. The route was brand new, and has never been used in the history of bicycle road racing in Cebu – the dreaded Transcentral Highway!

For those who haven’t been to the TCH, it is a stretch of road between Cebu City and the midwestern town of Balamban that divides the island down in the middle. The TCH is just 45km end to end but it’s the grade of the climbs that is punishing, some portions are even at 23%! I’ve done the route thrice, the first was in 1999 when it was still half-paved and what I realized was that this mountain doesn’t just prostate to us cyclists, but it fights back!

Going into the race, the longest training ride I did was in Uling and I foolishly believed that I could outsmart the mountains. The race started with a slight drizzle in Toledo, a good 16K from the foot of the climb, but everybody was in good spirits. As we reached Balamban and turned right to start the suffer-fest, the strong riders surged ahead and the rest getting spat out at the back, me included. But I was doing a good rhythm along the Prenza climb.

I was still confident going into the first climb in Gaas since I was with a few guys who’d normally dropped me but sometimes, you get too mental about a race and tend to forget about the physical. And without any warning, I felt the physical. I couldn’t turn the pedal as efficiently a few seconds ago. There was no power left. I didn’t have hunger knock, I simply felt that my strength was drained and sapped by this beast of a mountain. At that point, I knew I was done but I foolishly went on. I did the ride-walk combination, but just before Cantipla, I knew I had to tap out. And just like that, the TCH has beaten me again.

My record here is 1-3, meaning, of the four times I tried to conquer the TCH, I walked twice and DNF’d once. After the race, I told everybody that I’m not doing this crazy stunt again. But if you have been beaten before, there’s this itch that wants you to back at your tormentor.

Every time I ride over the TCH, it nibbles away a part of me. That’s why I have decided to do this again next year.

My Globe Broadband problem

I’ve been having intermittent broadband connection the past week and all the condescending Globe technical support crew could tell me is that they’re having problems (which I already knew), that they’re doing their best to correct it (I don’t know if they are) and that connection will be back the soonest time possible. If Globe is really a professional outfit, they should give their “valued customers” a timetable when the restorations can be finished instead of telling us to “monitor our computer for the next 24 hours,” like all we do in the world is sit in front of our computers! – THE FREEMAN