Cycling Goals 2022

Recreation Cycling
1

Another year and another cycling goals post. I’ll never get tired of these, hope you guys don’t either.

2021 was another interesting year with COVID in Taiwan, we were lucky to be outdoors during the the first half of the year. When the shit hit the fan and were were stuck indoors during the summer months, some of us rushed to get our indoor trainers and others decided to take a break and hope for the best.

We did not have as much rain as we usually get at the end of the year, so we may have gotten the chance to catch up on our goals and finish strong.

Reflecting back on my goals from 2021

  • Stay healthy :white_check_mark:
  • Injury free :white_check_mark:
  • Recover correctly after rides :x:
  • Round the island :x:
  • Tour of East Coast :white_check_mark:

What I hope to achieve in 2022:

  • Provincial Highway No.3 (one day or two days)
  • Stay Healthy/Injury free
  • Recover correctly after rides

Here’s my year in review:

Screen Shot 2022-01-01 at 12.39.07 PM
Screen Shot 2022-01-01 at 12.39.07 PM734×308 39.9 KB

I was a bit shy of 8,000km this past year, but just glad I was close.

What do you guys have planned going forward into 2022?

6 Likes
2

December 2020, cracked rib (cycling accident), off the bike for a month or so.

November 2021, sprained/strained/twisted/whatever’ed knee (walking accident), off the bike for six weeks and counting.

So I guess my main goal is be more friggin’ careful in the fall. Or better yet, not fall at all. Sigh, I want to make that pun work better.

3 Likes
3

Being a former Road Racer a couple of decades back, I had a Goal of a different kind which I achieved in 2012 - almost 10 years ago now.

The Goal being to go and watch the Spring Classics in person rather than on TV.

So I did it, flew direct from Taipei to Paris with EVA, then by train to Kortrijk in Belgium where it just happened that I was lodged in the same Hotel as the Tinkoff and Katusha Teams.

The idea was to watch the particular race that weekend and go and abuse a Eurail Pass travelling around Germany mainly in the week between.

So I had a few days to get over the jet-lag. I had pre-purchased a couple of local tours to go and watch the Tour of Flanders (the Start in Bruges, and then on the Oude Kwaremont), and Paris Roubaix (in the Arenberg forest, then at the velodrome in Roubaix) which were a week apart (both won by Boonen).

Amstel Gold (which at that time also had the moniker of Tour De Gilbert) was next which I watched pass by the Germany - Belgium - Netherlands tripoint near Aachen and then later at the foot of the Cauberg in Valkenburg (got a train in between as that race goes in all directions) where Gasparotto won - Gilbert won the WC on the same hill later that year.

Next was the mid week La Fleche Wallone which started at Charleroi in Belgium and ended after the third climb of the wall like Mur De Huy in Huy - which I watched from the 200m to go point on the climb - won by Rodriguez.

The last was the Liege-Bastogne-Liege which was won by Iglinsky. I watched this one from the grounds of a small Pub at the village of Mery (I had learned of that through a Cycling News forum post - and met a few others there) which was at the foot of the Roche-aux-Faucons (2nd last climb). There were showers on and off, but they had a big tent in the grounds complete with a huge TV and the beer was good.

That left me with another week which I went and watched a couple of stages of the Tour De Romandie in Switzerland, before returning to Paris and the flight back to Taiwan.

If anyone is contemplating such a trip, its well worth it. I think the single day races are easier to get to as it would be a logistical nightmare to follow a Grand Tour, even for just a week, due to the crowds and the difficulty of finding accommodation (though a Camper Van / RV seems to be one solution).

7 Likes
4

That sounds like an awesome trip.

1 Like
5

I hope to get 115,000 meters elevation gain for 2022.
Complete the Buddha hand route
Not get injured or overtrain.
Get in the top 20 of my ‘age group’ for a Strava climbing segment.

image
image1107×438 14.6 KB

3 Likes
6

Stay upright, don’t die…as always.

5 Likes
7

I’m glad I posted my numbers in another thread. :flushed:

3 Likes
8

I haven’t been riding for a while. I’ve been hiking (3k and 300m elevation run up followed by walk down mostly) and swimming. But starting in spring I would like to begin with my goal of doing Xiwan Road with my son. He’ll be 10 in April. That’s the only goal I have for now. We’ll need to work up to it on Xiding Road, which he did successfully a few times before it started raining every day in Xizhi.

5 Likes
9

My goal is to figure out how to sit in a bike for more than an hour without my ass among other things going numb.

2 Likes
10

Was not my intention to have it show up that big on my post :laughing:

1 Like
11

After not being able to do any sports in 2H 2021 due to cartilage injury in my knee, and getting my cartilage replaced with 2nd generation fully autologuos minced cartilage implantation mid November - I just plan to ride as much as possible until hiking and trailrunning is possible again - however I decided to not buy a scooter this year - so I will be forced to ride everywhere.

Some goals: Taichung to Hualien (or lower Taroko - as there is not much in Hualien city worthwile for me) in one day.
20hours of cycling,hiking,trailrunning per week. My fitness right now sucks after 6 months without sport, and I still limp around walking. But cycling seems fine and the last 3 weeks I averaged about 300km/week with 6000-7000m altitude gain per week - excluding youbike rides in the city which must add to 40-50km per week easily too.

For the wack things in Taiwan thread. Ride from Taichung to Yuanzui trailhead, carry my bike up the summit and trackstand on the Yuanzui sumit ridge. I really have to improve my roadbike trackstand before I attempt that - else it will gain a Darwin award. Maybe I just go crazy and take a youbike instead - they are really easy to trackstand. but carrying that one up to Yuanzui would be a nightmare and the 50km 1800m climb on the youbike would be nightmare as well. It would surely get bigger attention on the youbike however :slight_smile:

If I get a mountainbike, do Daxueshan to Xueshan and down to Huanshan. That is an epic mtb trip - did it trailrunning last year and most of it is rideable. For me mtbiking Taiwan mostly sucks, but the high altitude areas actually have quite suitable trails if you’re find with singletrail scale 4 and lower 5.

3 Likes
12

That’s one helluva list of a goals. Do keep us updated!

1 Like
13

well I doubt about the last one. If I ride technical trails I’m relly icky on the details - else I cannot feel secure. 460-480 reach on a Medium frame, 180mm up front (love the Manitou with the dual chamber) and some good breaks which are fine for small hands and best a 223 rotor up front. Doesn’t have to be Trickstuff Maxima - but yeah need something like Shigura power (my hands are too small to feel secure on a Magura lever). But the rest should be well doable even if I ride 12-13 hours including breaks from Taichung to Hualien - when my fitness is back I’m always the guy for long days - I suck on any kind of competition shorter than 4-5 hours comparatively.

1 Like
14

About halfway through… are we on track to achieve our goals? :muscle:t3:

I didn’t have any goals at the start of the year and only rode my personal bike once which unfortunately resulted in a neck injury (no idea how it happened)

I’ve been riding rental bikes while i’ve been away, racked up about nine hours of city riding on a rental bike though without issue (yeah i know it’s not a lot but I have concessions…)

All in all i’m feeling good and looking forward to trying my own bike again, hoping the neck thing was just a fluke, or maybe caused by stress or something.

2 Likes
15

How do you fuel yourself? Constantly eating lots of high-calorie meals?

16

Well, you gotta eat enough calories. But I always try to rather eat low carb - except while riding. Most of my rides in Taiwan were below 5 hours - so they are easy for food. I usually got up - stopped at a breakfast place and ate jiaozi/baozi/xiaolongbak around 1200 calories. Then I have 30 minutes to get to Dakeng crossing Taichung and after those 30 minutes I have digested well enough to increase the pace. 1.5-2 hours in I will peak - and after 3 hours my power drops because I eat too little.

Then during the ride every 30 minutes two “mango cakes” - which are around 40g of carbs but low on sugar ( the pineapple cakes are way higher on sugar) - just the mango cakes which are always on offer if you buy two packages at pxmart (33.50 ntd per 200g package - so pretty cheap). Then at the end of the ride stop by some nice restaurant and eat a big meal - or eat my favourite coconut milk dohua and at home a protein shake - and eat big 1-2 hours later.

Usually I average around 4000 calories per day - 2100 from sport, 1900 residual calories. It’s hard not to lose weight if you do sports 5 days out of 7 for over 2-3 hours each of those days. But as soon as you do a rest week hard not to gain fat as your body just is used to eating those 4000 calories per day or more (as sometimes I had huge meals - like a 3000 calorie burger (that is 750g of beef) after a ride and the body cannot consume all of it anyhow so likely you rather need to eat 5000 calories if you burn 4000kj)

Oh yeah - and due to vaccination and problems plus then bad weather I missed my goals of carrying my bike up to Yuanzui. Also didn’t get to to Taichung-Hualien in one day. Longest ride was pretty similar at 200km/4000m though. And once back in Austria - meaning no heat - I pushed down 286w NP / 281w avg over 30 minutes (1 minute was very steep downhill with virtually no power) - or 4.2w/kg FTP (95% of 281w). I do think I will not reach 4.5w/kg by August though. Now I’m in the heat of Cyprus and it’s hard to do really efficient training. I hope to reach 4.5w/kg by next year January (I could likely hit the 4.5w/kg but only by going on a diet - which is not my goal. I do not want to slim down to 62-63kg but stay at 66-67).

I did notice however that road biking really isn’t a sport for me. I’m a great climber but I simply cannot get into an aerodynamic position. I stretch every day my back muscles for 5 minutes but I simply cannot ride a low or very low handlebar without getting problems like numb hands and severe back pain. I will always be a better mountainbiker - so I don’t mind. Even though I made friends with some of the fastest riders in Taiwan (podium on Taiwan KOM), and likely ride with them again when I come back to Taiwan in November/December I see road biking only as training for mountainbiking. Plan to do some mtb enduro races again in 2023 - with hopefully 4.5w/kg which should give me very good results. This season my knee is not fit for mtb racing yet. If I can do some nice rides in August without knee pain I am happy. Right now my knee is not ready yet.

Actually in Europe when I was racing I used to take a bottle of water/maltodextrin with me - that’s the best fuel during racing. But also only works for races up to 4-5 hours if you have no support people giving you new bottles. You can manage around 150g of malto in a 700ml bottle. If you then eat some bars / biscuits or similar enough to get you through your normal training routine.

But yeah - riding with really fast people and seeing what they eat/drink every hour really helped me figure out that I need to get much more calories in per hour if I wanna survive a race like Taiwan KOM at best potential.

Oh and I really cannot get used to heat. While I would guess most people at 35° and sunshine suffer like a 20% breakdown in power, I lose 45-50% (no kidding). And it does not matter how much I train in the heat (but yeah I sleep always with AC, and also spend the rest of my day in as cold temps as possible as my body really cannot have heat. In Taiwan from February onwards I need to sleep with AC. On the ohter hand I do great in really cold temps. Like trailrunning in shorts at 0° for 3-4 hours without feeling cold. Sleeping every night at 5° or so in winter with a summer blanket when living in Austria/Switzerland - never heating my apartment). Right now in Cyprus my power again dropped like crazy in the heat.

2 Likes
17

Thanks for keeping us on our toes :laughing:

Two of mine are on-going, but missed my chance to do No.3 this past April-May. Looking to complete it in Oct-Nov later this year when the weather cools down.

3 Likes
18

How’s everyone doing on their 2022 riding goals?

I may be requesting an extension of my first goal until CNY, but doing well so far with the other two.

2 Likes
19

Bike was stolen nearly a year ago. IIWII.
So, nothing this year except a few minutes this week on tread-bike in gym.

2 Likes
20

From May 2022 4,888km : Elev Gain 29,761m. No plan but I’m happy with my results and I’m improving a little.

I’d make a plan for 2023 if it ever stops raining! :cloud_with_rain: :swimming_man:

3 Likes