TXT BIKE HUT RACE FACE

It’s RACE WEEK, sports fans. And what a wonderful week it is — it’s been a wet and wild, rainy month of September and although we hope for great weather, we’ll be ready to ride anything that comes our way anyway. Speaking of ready to ride, about a month ago, we spoke to one of the teams that will be racing this year’s #TEBANTR3S: The TXT BIKE HUT RACE FACE ENDURO TEAM

Composed of racers and riders who all come from the South of the city, they proudly carry the name of their team wherever they go, knowing that what brought them together was the pure, unadulterated joy of riding and racing a bike. The TXT, by the way, stands for Trail Extreme, so we can all get a sense of what kind of riding these guys love doing.

IT’S ALL ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

“We race because yeah, it’s fun, but most of us are all racers anyway,” Teddy Roa tells us, “we’ve all been doing this for a long time– we love riding so naturally, we ended up loving racing. I’ve been racing since 2010.” But not all of them have the extensive gravity experience, one of them, Antonio Quiazon, is a self-professed “pandemic biker” (there’s that term again) and has been racing for just about two years, but trust us, he’s as gnarly as they come. “I started ‘nung pandemic,” Antonio says, “for exercise. Until I met the TXT team, that’s where it all came together for me, it all went downhill.”

Another racer, Bodjie Morales, tell us that he “started with XC and then I moved on over to a full suspension bike as soon as I could, as soon as the riding changed,” he continues that, “we all really got into racing together, budol-budol na. I was the one who got Tonio into it, but he raced ahead of me.” That sounds very familiar to a lot of us, something that we can actually all relate to.

TRAILXTREME

To give us an idea, TXT is over a hundred riders strong. A mix of road bikers, gravel riders, enduro, downhill, you name it, they’re a bonafide biker gang (in every sense of the phrase), and it’s the ENDURO team that’s racing this weekend at #TEBANTR3S. It’s a diversified group of amazing athletes, all the way to triathletes, that come together for the love of the sport, of multi-sports.

Something that brings them all closer is the fact that they all share common goals: progress, growth, and just JOY. Talking to them, they always circle back to the happiness, the health, and the community. Bodjie tells us, “it’s all about progression. Jumps, features, and of course fitness.” Patt Atienza, who kindly explained to us the size of TXT, shares with us that riding and racing, especially gravity, is a sort of mental and physical escape, a “break” from the norm and routine. “It’s all about the adventure for me,” Patt says, “I love the outdoors and it’s a different feeling being in the mountains, surrounded by nature.”

WHY ENDURO? WHY MOUNTAIN BIKING?

“I started with XC, like most of us,” Jayson Oxales tell us, “for fitness mostly. But as we kept riding and riding, trying more trails, I felt that I needed more than just XC. I needed the fear, the fun of fear.” Jayson continues to talk to us about how progressing with a team helped his riding more, pushing each other at a comfortable but challenging pace that only makes us better. And well, that’s really what we could hope for right? Getting better. As riders, as a community, as a culture.

“I really hope that things get better,” Teddy confides, “especially in racing…that it gets…cleaner.” He continues that, “we put in a lot of time, effort, and even money into this, it’s only fair that we’re all treated fair as well. That things are transparent.” Teddy and the team outline a lot of things that need to be addressed and we listen, from “teleporting” to proper race manners, all of which we agree with, 100%, especially since TEBAN TR3S is our FIRST ever race that we’re a part of. But that’s a story for a whole new article, for now: we’ll see you all at the top of the mountain.

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