100 Miles (erm, KM) of Nowhere Race Report: Ode to Friendship Edition

03.4.2016 | 10:18 am

A Note from Fatty: This story from SherpaTurtle (originally posted on her own blog) is a terrific multi-person story from a loyal 100MoN racer. Enjoy!

This year marked my fifth 100 Miles of Nowhere, although this year, like most I’ve been in a country where KM are used instead of miles and so once again I participated in a 100 KM of Nowhere instead.

The time was set to meet my friends at Camp Aguinaldo, a military base inside metro Manila at 4:00 AM. I arrived slightly early and was immediately informed by the guard that I would not be allowed on base until after 5:00 AM. I messaged Ty and Keith to let them know at which point I received this response from Ty:

That’s Ty for, “that’s cool, I’m running late anyway, but should be able to make it there by 5:00.”

From Keith I heard nothing, which is Keith for, “I’m not awake yet so 5:00 AM is better.”

Lito and I waited at a Shell station for the guys to show up. For some reason my friends and I always meet at Shell stations before starting our bike rides. Eventually Ty and Keith both showed up and 5:00 came around and we made our way to the base.

Camp Aguinaldo is a Philippine Armed Forces base inside metro Manila (technically in Quezon City). It’s a convenient location for triathletes living in Manila to train since it’s located inside the city, it has a lap pool and roads that are mostly devoid of traffic. Along with me for this adventure were my great friends, Keith, Ty, and Lito. 

My version of their stories are below.

Winner of the Bamboo Bike Single Speed Division

A few years ago I spent entirely too much money on a custom-made singlespeed bamboo bicycle for an ex-boyfriend who really didn’t deserve it. When the relationship went south, I was tempted just to leave the bike outside and let somebody take it. One day I told that to my driver, Lito, who promptly replied that he was somebody.

While the bike was made for someone 6 foot 2, Lito, who is maybe 5 foot 8 has figured out a way to make do with it. He doesn’t get to ride it very often. He lives in Rizal, where there aren’t very many flat roads and the singlespeed isn’t geared great for going up or down a mountain.

The best part of doing the ride at Camp Aguinaldo is that Lito would be able to do as many laps as he felt comfortable doing, at a pace he was comfortable riding. Lito was able to complete 11 laps for a total of 33 KM and took the medal for most mileage completed on a bamboo singlespeed.

Lito, the winner of the bamboo bike single speed division.

Winner of the “I’ll Just Do a Triathlon in the Middle of this Event” Division

Keith and I had been training for a triathlon that would take place at the end of November, my first. The group we’ve been training with was doing a tri simulation (in reality a full triathlon) that morning at Camp Aguinaldo.

So Keith started the 100 KMoN with us and then after an hour he swam 750 meters, biked 30k and then ran a 10k. Keith had intentions of getting back on the bike after the triathlon and finishing with us, but decided to take a nap in his car instead.

In my opinion, that was the better option.

Keith, winner of the I’ll just do a triathlon in the middle of this event division.

Winner of the “Forget this hill, I’ll just take a short cut from now on” category – Ty

Ty had been riding pretty strong and at about 60k he was a lap ahead of me. At 50k I had decided to stop taking a left at the top of the hill, riding down it and then riding back up. Opting instead to just take a right, cutting the hill out of my race entirely.

Unfortunately, it also cut about a km out of the lap, which meant more laps, but that seemed like a reasonable tradeoff to me at the time.

At about 60k, I caught Ty on his lap and he saw what I had done. He decided to make it his last lap climbing that hill too. Up until that point, I had been winning the “forget this hill, I’ll just take a shortcut from now on” category, but with Ty switching categories, now he was in the lead.

He was able to solidify his win in this category by stopping his race at 90km when his phone battery died…and therefore so did his Strava. He figured if he couldn’t Strava it, it didn’t count. This enabled Ty to beat me by almost half an hour.

Ty, winner of the forget this hill, I’ll just take a short cut from now on category. Photo courtesy of Ty Enriquez.

Winner of the “I didn’t even know I was in a race” category – Toby

You didn’t know Toby was in this race, did you? Well, neither did Toby. Toby is my spinning instructor and I ran into him (not literally) while he was running and I was riding up the hill. Toby was out for a run with his friends and had no idea he had stumbled into a race. What makes his win all the more impressive is that he didn’t even find out about it until 2 weeks after the race was over.

This just goes to show that you should always assume you are in a race.

Winner of the “Only person to actually finish 100KM” – me

I finished the 100 km in about 4 ½ hours. It was the longest I have ridden without taking a break. I was worried that if I stopped, I wouldn’t want to start again, so I just kept going. Given the lack of climbing and the lack of stopping, this was a pretty slow pace, but I finished and thereby won the “only person to actually finish 100KM” category.

The time riding gave me a lot of time to think and while on this ride, I realized, this ride was much like my first 100 Miles of Nowhere in that it was bittersweet for me.

My first 100 Miles of Nowhere — an actual 100 miles (not kilometers) — was my first 100 mile ride and was also the only other 100 Miles of Nowhere that I have done with friends. It was a cold and windy day in early May and we rode seven laps on a 14+ mile loop from Iowa City to a town called Hills, which is remarkably flat. The wind was wonderful riding towards Hills allowing us to pick up great speed with little effort.

Riding towards Iowa City, however, was a different story. My friends and I banded together with the stronger riders riding out front and the slower riders like me drafting behind. I honestly am not sure I could have finished if it wasn’t for my friends. About 10 of us started, we picked up a few friends for a lap or two throughout the day and 4 of us finished about 11 hours after we started.

In fairness to those of us who finished, we stopped in Hills every lap for a beer or some food, which added a lot of time to the ride.

The ride was bittersweet though because about a third of the way through the ride I found out my grandmother had passed away. She had been sick for a while and was only a few weeks shy of her 100^th birthday. But my grandfather had died nearly 30 years previously and her last remaining sibling a couple of years prior and she was at peace at the end, ready for what comes next.

When I found out while stopped for lunch I had a choice to make: stop and mourn or continue riding and spend some time remembering the good things she had taught me. I decided to ride on, I spent a lap of the ride riding by myself and remembering.

And why was this 100 Miles of Nowhere bittersweet? At the end of December, I moved back to the United States. This ride marked the last with these friends, in this place, which I had several hours to think about as I rode.

Finding the words to express how much these people and this country have meant to me has been very difficult, which is likely why it took me a month to write this and another two months to post it. And as I used my first 100 Miles of Nowhere to remember my Grandmother and the lessons she taught me, I used this one to ponder the relationships I’ve had with these people I’ve had a great fortune to call friends over these past years.

I first met Keith in 2007 when he was a manager for one of our teams. He has since moved on to other work and we remained friends on Facebook, but I had not seen him in person in several years when in 2013 I ran into him at a biking event in BGC, a city inside metro Manila.

Keith is a lot like me in that we will agree to do anything and gut it out through determination alone and probably celebrate with a beer afterwards. We started biking together frequently after re-meeting in BGC and he was quick to introduce me to his other biking friends, which included Ty.

Ty has been gracious enough to allow us to start and finish bike rides from his house because he’s close to a route that’s relatively flat and the jeepneys and trikes on route are used to bikers. When we finish, there was always a feast waiting for us that his mother has cooked.

And while all food is delicious after a long ride, I can attest that Ty’s mom’s cooking is phenomenal, even when I haven’t just ridden a bike because they always send me home with a ton of leftovers.

Finally, there is Lito. Lito was assigned to drive me on a short 1 month trip to Manila in 2012. When I went back for 2 weeks a few months later, I asked for him to drive me again. When I moved back out in 2013, I requested he drive me full time.

So technically it could be said that Lito is my driver, but he’s also one of the best people I’ve had the pleasure to get to know. He listens to me complain about the Manila traffic jams or someone that has made me mad at work without judgment, or at least without expressing judgment.

At the end of 2013 when I went through a personal crisis, he let me cry in the back of his car without comment. He accompanied me on a hike of Mt Pinatubo shortly after, which was a turning point in me getting my head back together. He has been there for me in things as small as getting the pedals off my bike to as great as making sure the giant, flying cockroach that found it’s way into my backpack one morning, found it’s way back out before I went to work that night.

I am thankful for the time I had on this 100 Miles of Nowhere to contemplate these friendships. It gave me time to remember how blessed I have been to have the opportunity to live abroad and experience a different culture in a way that is difficult to do on just a vacation.

And while I could see this 100 Miles of Nowhere was a goodbye to the city and the people I’ve come to love, I am trying to think of it instead as an “until next time.”