Subic Bay, Philippines

Hi Family and Friends,

We hope you’re well and enjoying the cooling temperatures as your season eases from autumn to winter. Those two seasons always leave us a little home sick since we haven’t truly experienced them in about 5 years. We’re always happy to get home during the winter though and get a good dose of snow. With that said, some good news, we recently booked our holiday home leave and we’re happy to be coming home for 3 weeks in December/January. It’ll be the first time we’ve been home for the holidays since 2018. We’re really looking forward to introducing Arden to everyone. In the meantime, we’ve essentially eased out of rainy season and into the “cooler” months. With less rain and to practice for our long haul flights, we’re traveling locally a bit before our home leave. This post is about our most recent travels to Subic Bay and Travis’s return to triathlon.

Travis has been training for the olympic distance, Subic Bay 5150 Triathlon, which took place this past weekend. We paired the race with our first vacation as a family of four, staying a few extra days in Subic to soak up the sun before and after his race. We chose to do this because it was a 3-hour driving trip, which allowed us to dictate the schedule and pack more easily. On Friday, 21 October, Merrick went to school per the usual, then we got on the road after lunch to coordinate the drive with nap time. It worked out great, as both boys slept almost the entire drive to Subic.

The first night we swam in the pool, grabbed some dinner, and Merrick helped the ACEA Subic Beach Resort staff decorate their Christmas tree. He even ended up in one of their Instagram promotional videos. The next morning, Samantha, Travis, and Merrick literally danced their way into the race expo to get Travis checked in and scope out the swag. Arden and Charity stayed back at the resort while Arden napped. Later that day after the Floritys arrived, John, Carolyn, and Travis headed to the transition area to drop Travis’s and Carolyn’s gear and scope out the course. Samantha, the boys, and Charity stayed back at the hotel beaching it up. Race morning came quickly, with the Floritys and Travis heading out around 4:45AM. Samantha, Charity, and the boys followed to spectate at 5:30AM. Spectating the race with two in tow was definitely more challenging but Charity and John were a huge help. Merrick enjoyed cheering for Daddy… “Go, go, Daddy!” and after breastfeeding after the swim start, Arden slept in Mama’s carrier for almost the rest of the race.

Travis had a bit of nerves leading into the race, as this was his first triathlon in nearly 5 years and had been sick the entire week prior. He started in the first wave of swimmers, alongside his coach, and finished the 1.5km swim quicker than he anticipated with a time of 23:49. The same can be said about the bike portion, finishing the 40km in 1:09:55. A few notables about the bike, the road course was super rough so he lost both water bottles and had to be on the defense… not something you want to do in aero position. When mounting his bike after T2, his leg got crossed and he went down on his side but thankfully no injury to him and only a minor scratch on the handlebars of his bike. And there was a miscommunication with a marshal who pointed Travis in the wrong direction requiring some back tracking. By the time the 10km run came around, it was HOT and the course provided little shade. This led to a slower than anticipated finish of the run, with a time of 0:55:21. Another notable about the run is that it was a 6-loop 10K… which meant it was boooooring besides the awesome supporters. The system for keeping track of how many loops a runner ran was also poorly organized, which led to a lot of confusion for many runners. Overall, Travis was happy with a 5th place age group finish with a time of 2:34:49. He’s been on keto and he was happy with how strong his nutrition plan served him despite losing his bottles on the bike. Caro also finished well with a fourth place age group finish!

After the race was over, it was time to fully relax. We spent the remainder of race day and the following two days, soaking up the sun, playing in the pool, beach, and ocean. Merrick was super explorative and truly loves the ocean and beach. We had a ton of fun building sand castles, searching for coral and seashells, observing a hermit crab and a clam, feeding the fish, drinking fresh buko (coconut) juice cut down and open by the lifeguards, lounging in the cabana, and seeing a tractor up close. Arden mostly smiled, napped, ate and also swam in the pool and ocean for the first time. He’s a little champ. The ACEA is located in a beautiful part of Subic Bay on a private beach, which makes the resort super quiet and enjoyable. The surrounding mountains, including Mt. Cinco Picos, are gorgeous in the day and also provide incredible foreground for the colorful sunsets. Overall, vacation was wonderful and Subic Bay would be a great place for a quick trip with visitors. Think about it! We’re looking forward to Boracay in early November, which is our last local trip before home leave.

We’re heading into a four-day weekend, where we’ll take the boys trick or treating with some friends, do a community tour to see the Halloween decorations on our golf cart, paint some Halloween cookies, and likely put up our tree and decorations for Christmas. We’re hopeful for no rain but Typhoon Paeng may have something to say about it.

Happy Halloween, ya filthy animals.

All our love,

xo Team Jansen