Tour Of Matabungkay Team Time Trial – Batangas, Oct 24 2009
There are some races which are fun, some which are painful, some which are tough and lonely, and then there is the Team Time Trial. Which I ABSOLUTELY LOVE. Maybe because I love time trialing per se. Or because I love when we all look so professional and slick in our matching cycling kits. And then there are my female teammates. Who Absolutely, Positively, ROCK. I just love being part of this relatively new all girls cycling team and am really proud of what we have done in so little time. We were the first women’s team to cross the line!
Special thanks to Doray for putting it all together the past few weeks, my work as captain was much easier on race day (all I had to do was keep shouting at them, and trust me after coaching for years this comes quite naturally to me by now). Thanks to Rizzo Tangan, Bea Locsin, Tonichi Balaguer, and Mimi Lucas. Love you girls!
P.S. Fitness First Cycling Ladies Team is actually a combination of Fitness First, Polo Tri, and Sabak Tri ladies 🙂
P.P.S. Thanks Anthony Balaguer for letting me use your wonderful photos!!!
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ADIDAS King Of The Road- Taguig and Makati, Oct 25 2009
Today was a great 21k training race, one that I did not expect to have the day after riding hard with my teammates in the Tour of Matabungkay… I was just glad to make it to the race venue before 5am. I drove home late from the race in Batangas the night before to make sure my sponsor would be happy! Sleep I need! I saw Lea Caringal organizing all of her Adidas athletes and after her trusty photog Nesty took some snapshots we hurried to the start line. Soon enough we were surrounded by uber bright yellow singlets and then it was quite easy to stay alert. When the gun went off something inside me woke up as well and even though I had agreed to just run with Joey and Paolo (oops sorry guys) I mindlessly dashed madly with the crowd… something that surprised even myself as I am always scolding my students not to do this exact thing! Hahaha….
Anyhow it turned out to be a good race, I was happily dancing to the music at the aid stations and thanked the cheerleaders for holding up encouraging placards for the runners. I also kept cheering for all the students I ran into. The food and drink were plentiful, which is always important. I was running in 5th place for most of the race and was actually content to stay there til I noticed at the last turnaround that the two girls in front of me were not doing so well. I decided then that I could still afford to pick up my pace a little bit and that was enough to get me into 3rd place. Cool! After the awarding I looked into my goodie bag and found out that I got a Globe Tattoo– way cool!
That afternoon after a well-deserved nap I coached the SuperTriKids for their Bike and Run session. What a great weekend!
Thanks Patricia and Paolo for the pics!!!
Filipina Ironwoman 
i miss getting on the bike too!!! hay i have yet to find parts for my Stella (my cannondale six frame) before i could ride again. congratulations for an awesome weekend! mine could only pale in comparison to yours :p
You have to start riding again! It’s always good to switch it up every now and then 🙂 It’s the best cross training for your running! And btw Stella is a cool bike name 🙂
Hey Ani, you rock! I miss the rush of racing…. Can’t wait for my “A race” to be over so we can start firing up the mojo again.
Cheers!
Hahaha!!! In the meantime try to limit the “liquid carbo loading” hehe 🙂 Looking forward to thursday!!!
Great story Ani! I love watching time trails also, especially team time trials, which makes me wish they’d have more TT and TTT events in the country! If I get into road bikes I’d probably end up trying TT myself! Great blog by the way, enjoyed reading it!