Long Distance Biking 2012-11-01

It's All Saint's Day in the Philippines and many people are supposed to visit their relative's grave, light candles and offer flowers. I've already done that a week ago, to avoid the crowded cemetery. Now I have the less crowded roads to ride my bike on. A week ago, I bought an odometer to keep track of the distance I covered. So this time, I can put it to good use.

I started biking from my place in Cainta, Rizal passing through the Municipality of Taytay, then Angono and Binangonan, which is my usual stop before I go back. I've only biked farther than Binangonan once, that was when I reached Cardona, a municipality about 4 kilometers ahead. Since I have several days of rest ahead of me, I can stress myself to the limit. I wanted to go as far as I could even though I'm not trained to go far. I continued my journey through the place I call "The Knee Killer". This was the hardest part of my previous journey because this section surrounding Cardona has several uphill and downhill climb. I thought this "Knee Killer" road will not end until Tanay, but luckily I was wrong. The difficult part stretched to about a kilometer or two after Cardona and that was it. The next part of the journey through Morong and Baras only have some slight climb, but not as tiring as those in Cardona.

When I reached Tanay, I decided to explore a bit. I visited the century old San Ildefonso church and the old lighthouse (Parola). I was surprised when I saw the lighthouse surrounded by water. The first time I visited the place, the road extends past the lighthouse. This time however, the Laguna lake somehow overflowed and flooded the place. After visiting the lighthouse, I decided to take a much needed break and quench my thirst with an order of halo-halo from a famous fake-Chinese food restaurant.

Sign to Tanay

Parola

Distance from Cainta to Tanay (Parola)

Break at Chowking

San Ildefonso Church in Tanay

After the short break, I went back to the church to take some photographs. Then I started my journey back home.Along the way back, I also visited the churches in Baras and Morong that I passed by earlier. When I reached the "Knee Killer" section at 54Km mark on my odometer, I felt a slight pain on my left knee. I stopped to rest my cramped knee a bit until the pain subsided. Traversing this "Knee Killer" section is difficult as I could not pedal continuously uphill. I need to take a short break for each 100-200m distance I travelled uphill. Fatigue was already affecting me and I knew at once that I have reached my limit which is around 50Km. After the very slow traversing of this difficult path, I reached Binangonan and continue to Angono and then Taytay. At this point, I could no longer pedal fast enough to reach a speed of 30Km/hr without my knee tiring.I stayed at a more comfortable pace of  about 16Km/hr even on flat road with less cars. When I was traversing this part of the journey earlier, I was able to reach 30+Km/hr, but not this time.

Under-utilized municipal hall of Morong

Church of Morong

Monuments at Cardona

Church of Cardona

I took another break at Taytay to have my lunch. After the break, I thought I will be able to maintain a fast cadence again, but it seems my muscles have reached their limit and pedaling fast will easily tire it. I slowly pedaled home maintaining a good speed of 10-16Km/hr with a slightly sore leg muscles at the last leg of the journey. My final stats recorded are as follows:

Time travelled: 4:56.08
Distance: 79.72
Average speed: 16.1 Km/hr
Maximum speed: 46.4 Km/hr
Calories used: 913 kcal

Distance traveled Before and after 

Speed average and maximum. At the maximum speed, I was going downhill and a bit scared that I might flip over when I apply the brake. :)

Time

Along the way, I was able to watch bird a bit. Here are some of them:

Mix flock of egrets

White breasted wood swallow

In the future, I will probably not attempt to go this far and just go as far as Cardona. But if I want to improve my leg strength, I should try Tanay again. ;)