Yeah, I know.
Edit…I’ll settle for early September when the humidity starts dropping off. That’s what kills me, the humidity.
My experience has been that fuelling only really becomes an issue for rides two hours and up. And if you know you’ll be in the saddle much longer, you need to take in carbs as you go and starting from toward the beginning of your ride.
I imagine the intensity level is also a factor, and for a heavy guy like me (86 kilos), any mountain thrown into the mix is intense.
I’ll keep that in mind. I actually want to throw in a tiny mountain (not too much to start) at least once a week.
Plus, if you think 86 kilos is heavy, I’m embarrassed to mention how much I weigh. (add an extra 15-20 kilos–86 kilos is the lowest I have ever been and that’s after three weeks in the Himalayas and eight months wandering around Asia 
)
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More than anything, I mean relative to others who cycle the mountains. I’m okay with my weight otherwise.
I highly recommend it. Five minutes up and you feel like you’re no longer in the city. It’s very addictive, even when you’re bad at it like me!
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It’s more like it has the potential to be intense and it is very easy to get it wrong. Use a heart monitor and adjust speed, or even take breaks so you don’t burn yourself.
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Yes. However, once you get used to the mountains and routes, your body will too.
I know for any one peak effort in yang ming shan, I only need one Nutrigrain bar and a bottle of water. Anything more than that and I’ll need extra.
If you’re unsure, always do your homework on where you can refuel on your route or just bring a lot from home.
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Today’s fuel experiment. 55km total distance at 19.5km/hr -
-3L of water Camelbak
-300ml coconut water
-1-7/11 In(brand) squeeze jelly bag jobbies
-1 Bekind PB choco bar
There aren’t any stores of convenience for me to stop at on my regular route so I carry all my supplies.
-Pre-ride - boiled egg and big cup of coffee
-15 km point coconut water
-25 km point squeeze bag thing
-45 km BeKind bar
Marasan’s regime-ish worked for me. Feel great post-ride for once.
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Great! It seems to me that you earned that BeKind bar (I love those!).
Can somebody provide a picture? I will later this afternoon if nobody else does. The “energy” ones are about 40 grams of carbs. If accurate, that’s about perfect together with the sugar in a sports drink.
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found where the “fresh” food is.
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Ah. Ok. yeah, I’ve seen the “energy” one before. I’ll go buy one and give it a try tomorrow on my ride. Thanks.
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So I gave the sports drink a try during a 40 km bike ride (which is getting close to my limit) and I definitely don’t feel as tired as I usually do after a long bike ride.
I guess I’ll have to make it a regular part of my bike rides.
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Don’t forget to clean your water bottles if you guys are pouring the sports drink into them. The lip can get pretty nasty if not cleaned properly. Especially those Camelbak ones!
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I’m using only Camelbak now. I like how you can get a huge mouthful quickly.
Fueled like crazy for my 4 hour ride today. I kind of went by feel, eating every time I got to the top or bottom of the mountain or sometimes waiting when not hungry. Worked well. Ended up eating a banana before the ride, then an energy jello thing, a pineapple cake thing, a soyjoy bar, and a chocolate bar. Had a sweet sports drink, a low sweet sports drink, and water (in this order). I’m going progressively down in sweetness as I’m finding this is what I desire in this heat.
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The night BEFORE a long ride (80-120km) I would usually eat slow burning fuel like pasta, oatmeal, rice, etc with a about 30% protein. The morning of the ride I would eat another bowl of oatmeal and at least one banana with a big cup of coffee.
During the ride I eat home-made easy to eat snack bars; consisting of oats, honey, peanut butter, dates, some salt and almonds slivers. I eat one of these every 30 minutes after the first hour. If things get tough, i grab a banana or some candy for an instant boost.
I usually only bring one water bottle depending on my route; 7-11 is so common. Every stop, I drink a FIN and refill my water bottle 750mL. I try to time this for every hour.
Post ride I eat a little more protein than carbs, but the important thing is that I eat a balanced meal WITHIN 2 hours of the ride itself so I can recover quickly.
Hope this helps!
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I’ll have to remember this. Last Saturday, to my great amazement, my wife was working on lunch/brunch for the whole family when I got home. One of my favorite Korean dishes. It was probably not the best thing post-ride, but it really hit the spot.
I need to look into getting some oatmeal (I’ve heard this a few times now), and I also need to learn to make those bars at home.
Thanks for the info!
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@Gilgamesh. If you want to add a small and very achievable small mountain into your rides to get used to the climbing thing, and if you’re in Taipei, I strongly recommend two places.
First is Jiannan road, starting just past the Palace Museum and ending up by the Miramar Wheel. The other way sucks.
Second is the Fuder Gong Mu road, either starting behind liuzhangli MRT, or behind Academia Sinica in Nangang. It starts off being called Chongde street. (narrow road, so beware insane taxis. I was forced off the road by a BMW X5 once. Asshole!)
Both great roads and easy accessible climbs.
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Thanks for that, but I actually live in Yilan. I’ve found a couple of mountain climbs that aren’t too bad and close to my house. The main one I’ve done a couple of times now is only a 3km climb but I’m not sure of the elevation. It’s not too bad (although I still need to take a number of breaks) and seems to be a fairly popular ride. The whole ride is only around 20km from my house, so it’s a pretty good ride for me.
There are a couple of other mountain roads around me that I want to try but I don’t think I’m up to them yet. I’ll probably practice on the easy one for a bit more and then tackle the tougher rides.
Now, I just have to figure out how to stop the black birds from attacking me. A few spots on my rides, they are super aggressive and actually hit me in the head or the back.
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Yilan-land is @IbisWtf territory. Maybe he has some other suggestions as I’m not too familiar with the area.
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Due to a couple of lower back injuries my bikes are gone 
I only keep a Giant Escape to use when I want to go shopping (that’s like a 3km ride).
Depending on your location and level of training, you could ride to 福山. In the South, the first place that comes to mind is 棲蘭, which is basically where the real mountains start. In that direction you could follow the #7 anywhere you want, it’s a pretty good ride. In the North you can reach 坪林 without too much effort.
After that it’s just a matter of increasing distance, trying to make it to Taiping mountain, exploring around in direction of Taipei and Taoyuan, and eventually establish utter dominance by reaching 合歡山 and then descending into Hualien through Taroko.
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Thanks for that. I’ll keep it all in mind.
Right now, I’ve been working on the mountain behind Meihua lake (up past Sanching Temple). That’s about all I’m ready for now.
The hope is eventually I’ll get to bigger mountains. I need to get in shape for when we finally move to Canada so I can bike the Rockies (not sure if that’ll happen though–both the move and the biking 
)