March 2013 Lumpoton

My transition area!

I'm not sure why it was named Lumpoton, but in Filipino, lumpo means cripple or paralyze. With the "-thon" added to lumpo, it isn't necessarily a marathon of crippled or paralyzed people, but more of what may happen as a result of participating in the Lumpothon. In any case, the event is a brainchild of UP Varsity Swimming Coach Noel Rivera's activities for his aquatics' elective class in the College of Human Kinetics, University of the Philippines Diliman. The course was a comprised of a continuous 600 meter swim, 4.4. km bike, 400m swim, 4.4km bike, 200m swim, 2.2km bike, than a 200m swim again.

As a resident faculty who hangs out by the pool to swim after classes, Coach Noel invited me to join his event. I wouldn't really say "no" to such an exciting and conveniently hard core activity. So I made time and joined in. Coach Noel offered to lend me one of his bikes for the race and I just had to come in prepared. Prepared I was! Except my hesitation was recalling if I still knew how to bike as I have not done so for a very long time. I was comfortable with the swim as I practiced at a regular basis. The bike part however was something I could have under estimated. I always remember biking as easy and fun. I biked all the time when I was 7. Being older, unidentified body pains and increase of lactic acid could spring a surprise if I wasn't careful, more so after the swim event. Luckily, before the day of the event, I was able to borrow another bike of a fellow junior faculty to practice on. Balancing, cramping, unknown leg pains, tackling uneven courses were a few things I had to re-learn. The pre-event practice did serve its purpose of helping me gain confidence in the bike event.

The day came for what I call "recreational competition". Resident varsity swimmers, serious and recreational multi-sport athletes, the aquatics class of Coach Noel, set-up their transition areas and readied themselves for the start. I took off with the group of swimmers in front so that I wouldn't be one of those getting kicked during the washing machine start of a multi-sport swim event. I paced myself good but as expected, all the swimmers would have finally overtaken me by the first 150th meter mark. All good though, as I had to prepare myself for the bike event. After the first 600m swim,  the bike event went rather good, we had to pass by a transition road which had a lot of potholes on broken asphalt. The mountain bike I had lent took it smoothly and this was my first experience of riding a bike with front suspension. A good thing was that I knew how to adapt to such suspension and disc brake set-up that the bike because of the experience of having to drive rally cars. During the first segment of the bike event I had to cope with a bunch of student activists blocking the road, for two rounds around UP's academic oval. I had difficulty also with gear selection of the bike and just so that I was sure with the equipment I was using, I opted not to change gears fearing I might have technical problems and ruin a race I would really want to finish. It was all good until the end of the race. I paced myself well and finished the event first in my age group (haha, that was a cheat to be the only one there), but happy to have finished third in the swim-bike category. I was pleased with my performance for someone doing it for fun and for fitness. I officially clocked in 1hr21mins35secs. Quite a long event I would say but really pleasing a the end. I'd do it again that's for sure!

A lot of thanks to Coach Noel and a speedy recovery because he had an accident at the start and couldn't continue on with the race. Thanks for the helmet, bike, and invitation. This kind of events make me feel truly alive!