We call them “upHELLs”, those uphill roads that is sheer torture for runners and force you to slow down. When I saw the elevation profile of the Team Davao Runners 80-kilometer Ultramarathon (TDR80) scheduled for March 14-15, I thought, “Wow, what an upHELL route that is!” Its highest elevation is 826 meters above sea level (masl), near the finish line at Eden Nature Park and Resort. I’ve stayed at Eden a few times before, long before I started running. Maybe a couple of times I was the one on the wheel, and I couldn’t remember the road to be that steep; it was an easy drive. I survived the 42k Dumaguete Adventure Marathon (DAM) in 2013 with a maximum elevation of 720 masl, so I convinced myself that surely I will survive this one too. After I and my teammates in the Iligan Trail Runners finally registered for TDR80, we attacked the upHELLish routes of our hometown relentlessly. It was perfect timing as, when I turned 50 two weeks earlier, we did a 50k run, half of which was through the mountains. We’ve often done trails that’s more like mountain climbing than running, sometimes even creating new or reopening long forgotten trails. We would find ourselves traversing the steep slopes crouched on all fours. Continue reading...
