How was your ride today?

Recreation Cycling
141

I’m not the only one riding every weekend am I?

This week a few of our regular members were doing the two day challenge from Luodong, Yilan to Wu Ling. So we have a small different group and a different ride this past Saturday. My usual partner in crime for picking the route is Jurriaan, since he was one of the members not in town this weekend. It was down to me to make the executive decision.

I chose, Qin Jin Rd, in Xi Zhi district. I saw the elevation map on my mapped route on Strava and knew it would be steep, but I’ve been training pretty hard and it should be a good challenge. Turns out I woke up not feeling 100% and after an initial wrong turn at the foot of the mtn (that ended up being a very steep hill) that drained a lot of my energy, we got onto the correct road and I suffered for 45 minutes and even had to get off and walk at two points on the route. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sleep or allergies throughout the week that hindered my strength on Saturday, but I wasn’t too happy with my performance. I’m not a big believer in walking.

My initial plan was to climb that mountain (Sha Tian) and head north and climb Wu Zhi Shan. However, everyone in the group had other obligations and everyone was pretty beat from the initial climb, so we rolled back down into Xi Zhi and towards Song Shan for a late coffee.

All in all, not too many complaints from the group about the route being too steep, but the route was so tough, it was so tough it was borderline not enjoyable (in my opinion). Usually I like a good training ride, but this one just sucked the energy and life out of me. I guess that can happen when it’s way too steep.

The video isn’t my best work since I had to rush it out for some members to see. I know my videos lack interaction, so I’ll work to better it this upcoming or next week.

142

I rode this route a couple of weeks ago…

Starting from Shueli, the first 30km or so along the valley is quite easy, more rolling hills than mountain, but at the end of the valley the road turns sharp left, and instantly gets steeper. From here it’s about 40km to the highest point at Tatajia (about 2600m), and there’s nowhere to buy water. At Tatajia there’a a visitor centre (the trails up Yushan start here), where I could finally re-fill my bottles. There are some good views on the way up, but by the time I was at 2000m I was in the cloud, and never got above them, so I’ve no idea if there’s a good view at the top - I could only see about 20metres.
I don’t usually enjoy the descents in Taiwan much - too steep and twisty, with bad surfaces - but the road down to Chiayi is good. I took the 159jia(?) from about half way down - this isn’t so much fun to descend, but has some good views.
I had planned to stay overnight in Chiayi, but the descent had given me back my energy, so I took the flat route back to Shueli. It was a nice evening with little wind and little traffic, so felt good to cruise along the flats for a while.



143

That’s an amazing feat, march. 200km+ is something I would probably only dream of doing.

I did a challenge event this past February that started in Shui Li and went up to Tatajia. It’s gotta be one of my favorite routes and challenges I’ve done this past year. I rode up and came back down into Shui Li and it was my longest ride ever at 136.6km. I can only imagine what 200km+ feels like in the legs.

144

This past weekend we had a great turn out with a total of 6 members joining our ride. We usually are 3 or maybe 4 people. The more the merrier right?

We were initially going to do a long route towards Jin Shan, but opted for a quicker route up to Leng Shui Keng due to lunch obligations some of the members had.

We went up together up until the turn off of Zhi Shan Road Section 3, towards Ping Lin and everyone took off to try to get some PR’s. We stopped at the Ping Ling Police station for a quick refuel and headed off since it was very windy and kind of chilly. Unfortunately, it started raining as we headed closer and closer towards Xiao You Keng. Once we got to the last couple hundred meters to Xiao You Keng, it was raining hard.

We met a very energetic young local along the way and he attempted to stick to Jurriaan as I went back and forth with the local about 1min behind Jurriaan. In the end, he thought Jurriaan was a pro that did KOM. Pictures were taken with him (and his wife) as well. This is something I’ll definitely miss once they leave.

Our main goal before descending was finding coffee or somewhere to sit and chat. So we descended into Neihu and found a “My Warm Day” breakfast shop and had a breakfast sandwich and coffee. A great way to end a great ride.

145

This weekend’s ride was my second longest distance I’ve ever ridden at 126KM. My longest being 136KM. I maybe should have done a few circles around the block to either tie my longest or do .1km more :smiley:

We started in Tian Mu and went up towards Er Zi Ping Parking Lot (the foot of Datun Mtn). Our last member, whom we will call Colonel, had said he would drive to the meet up because he was coming from Banqiao. That extra 20-25km would definitely hurt on the way back. We got to the meet up point at the the beginning of Xing Yi Road and ended up waiting for 15 minutes. Colonel arrived and the first thing he said was, I decided to ride up instead of drive. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Everything went pretty smooth. Surprisingly, there weren’t many cars when we got closer and closer to the Er Zi Ping parking lot at around 8:30AM. We rolled down towards the Police station and into the maze of roads north of Sanzhi and Shimen. Let this be known that Colonel said that he knew the ride well. Guess who got lost? :laughing:

We ended up stopping for lunch in Shimen and bumped into some of Colonel’s teammates of OBG cycling group. Afterwards we got veeeeeeery lucky and did not get any headwind on the north coast. By the time we got halfway into Yang Ming Shan national park via Yang Jing Rd., we were exhausted and were already running on fumes. However, we had 13k of climbing to go.

All in all, a very good ride. Was tired for a full 36 hours after I got home, aside from the horrible air quality at Leng Shui Keng, the weather was great for a long ride.

146

Nice vids, you’ll be able to rewatch them in 40 years when you can’t ride any more :slight_smile:.
I’d think about coming up and riding with you guys 'cept I’ve only got a touring bike and the extra weight would be severely punishing.

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[quote=“Nuit”]Nice vids, you’ll be able to rewatch them in 40 years when you can’t ride any more :slight_smile:.
I’d think about coming up and riding with you guys 'cept I’ve only got a touring bike and the extra weight would be severely punishing.[/quote]

Thanks Nuit. I think it would be more enjoyable for us to come down and ride with you!

I’ve yet to ride the east coast! Going up into Wu Ling via Taroko does not count as east coast riding…kind of.

However, if you do want to come up, you’re always welcome. Once the Golden Peaks challenge is over on December 6, we will be doing much more leisure and social rides on the weekends. Join us!

148

This weekend’s ride started with a rude awakening for a few members who set their alarm clock a whole hour late. Surprisingly, they made the secondary meet up on time. However, they were completely out of breath and did not do very well for our short race up Zhong Zhen Mtn in Beitou.

After a gruesome 3.1km race that took us up to 500m elevation. We rode out with a few teammates around Yang Ming Shan and got to attacked a few segments along the way. We had a new member from the forums join us and rode for the first time in Taipei. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., he was pretty amazed at how a lot of climbs just seemed like it never ended and the beauty of Yang Ming Shan.

I think the highlight of the route was the last triple bump of a hill going up from Xiao You Keng over to Leng Shui Keng.

We ended our ride with a coffee at the Lavazza across the street from the Jian Nan Rd. MRT station. It’s a little different from what we’re used to (since we prefer a nice coffee at the top of the mtn), however, we enjoyed a long chat even with the loud car and scooter noises going past us.

The countdown of last couple of rides is happening. The people I usually ride with will end their cycling career here in Taipei in 3 weeks and it’s tough knowing that I’ll have to find new people to spend my Saturday mornings with.

149

This weekend’s ride:Jiayi to Qishan.

150

The challenge race a few of us participated in this past weekend was by far the most epic ride we’ve had since I started cycling a year ago.

All throughout the week we had forecasts of 90%+ precipitation all day Sunday. So, none of us were looking forward to ride. Luckily, when I woke up and was starting to get ready, I did not see any rain. This gave me enough motivation to get dressed and head out to the meet up point. Only did I get to the meet up point did it start to come down hard.

Luckily, we started the first 10km of the race dry, however, the conditions got worse and worse. 20km into a 90km route, there was not one inch of my body that was not wet. It got to the point where I wiped my face with my glove only to make it more wet. Due to muscle memory, I kept doing this. :doh:

All in all, despite the rain and cold temperatures, I had a good race day and could not be happier with my finish time. A great last race of 2015.

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Good effort on that Ranlee. Great time in the conditions.

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Thanks bear. If it wasn’t for Jurriaan, I’m pretty sure I would’ve just kept on sleeping. I didn’t want to hear, “remember that time I went out and raced in the rain and all you did was sleep?” for a whole year. Glad I have bragging rights until Dec 2016.

What was amazing was there was a total of almost 3000 people signed up but only 850 people finished the race.

The organization actually did not reveal those who started and did not finish. So we will never know how many actually showed up at the start, but decided to abandon.

153

Ranley,

Your altitude profile seems to be a bit off (as was mine). Perhaps correct it on Strava :wink:

Still… This was truly an epic race to be my “last race in Taiwan”. I’m happy to have started and happy to have joined in this experience with the guys from ICU that managed to show up despite the extreme conditions.

EDIT: Yes… You would indeed have been the focus point of my scorn… But not for a year my dear friend… It would have lasted a lifetime :smiling_imp:

154

Down Highway 11 from Hualien to Taidong, blown along mostly with a fat tailwind:
Day 1 - 105km
Day 2 - 50km to Dulan

Bit of a drinking gap in Dulan, before continuing:
Day 3 - Dulan to Taidong, then out’n’back to Zhiben (50km?)
Day 4 - Green Island counter-clockwise 20km
Day 5 - Green Island clockwise (not much else to do there on a bike!)

Covered some coastal road that I’ve never ridden, plus the tours of Green. Much of the latter in the rain - it’s a desolate place in December, but at least it’s cool.

155

We had a big turn out this weekend. First big group of people in a long time. We had the biggest age gap of around 17 years old to…whatever marasan’s age is. :laughing:

Started up one of my favorites here in Taipei, Xi Wan Road (汐萬路), in Xizhi, up towards Wu Zhi Shan. We usually don’t meet at 6AM, but I was very scared of the weather forecast saying it would hit 32C. However, we got lucky and saw some drizzles along the way and it was actually a little cool at the peak.

The group disbanded after the first peak and three of us went on to Wanli → Jinshan → Yang Jing Highway up to Leng Shui Keng. Here’s a video of the first half of our ride (ran out of battery before the second half started)

Hope everyone is getting out and about! Hope to see you on the next ride.

156

Sunday was one of those days where I wondered, why I sign up for these kinds of things. The graph and stats say it all…

Tatajia was my first road bike race last year. So there was a little pressure going into this one since I had done it and if I didn’t do better than last year, it would’ve been embarrassing.

It was a nice trip to go down south with the team and spend some time away from Taipei though. We got very lucky with weather since there was no rain going up the mountain, but ran into some light showers on the way back.

One of the longest distances I’ll ever do on the bike.

157

Ha! I’m just seeing this now. Yeah, I had some decades on those high school guys! Nice group that day.

Edit: Did you notice that the old guy in the group didn’t come in last that day?

158

Went out with some young’ns this weekend and they both kicked my ass on almost every part of the ride. Glad that the younger generation is as passionate as some of us about cycling and being competitive.

We started off at 6AM in the morning and boy was it amazing weather. Cool temps at around 25 with clear skies and was cool all the way until we left the Jin Shan 7-11 at around 9:30-10AM. After that, it was a 30C degrees sufferfest of heat and steep hills going up Yang Ming Shan.

All in all, a much needed training ride before attempting to conquer Wuling this Sunday.

159

I’ve done a few rides that i wanted to share here, but I’ve been too busy, too lazy for writing anything. Anyway… here I go!

Today:

I was suspecting that my bicycle was jealous because every time there’s a typhoon I ride my motorcycles and she has to stay at homt. So this time I took it to GuanYingShan, but climbing it from the East, which is what apparently most people do. I usually go from Hsinchuang to Taishan, from there to Linkou and then the rest is obvious. Yes, today is a typhoon day… so… it was perfect: the light rain and the gusts of wind helped me to cool down and well, also to climb faster some parts of the road. It is true that some other segments were harder due to the wind, but… overall, I enjoyed the experience. The DW was a bit scary because of the water and the small branches that made me lose confidence…

Last Sunday, Hsinchuang > JiaoXi by number 9:

I really had to do it. I’ve been thinking of cycling BeiYi pretty much since I got a bike here. The traffic was surprisingly good. I was expecting lots of motorized cunts and Trucks from Hell on my lane, but it was quite OK. I’m not a fast climber, but I compensated it riding pretty fast downhill. I can say that know the road fairly well, so I was still cautious when necessary. Had a drink in PingLin with a couple of friends who were on his motorcycle (he was surprised how quick I arrived there haha), and then I kept on advancing towards JiaoXi, which received me with open arms and stupid crowds. In general, a really nice ride “door to door” (left home on bike, and didn’t get off it until i got to the train station where I bought my ticket back home). Still I had to flip the bird to 2 or 3 assholes who where on my lane. also the waiting there was boring, for i didn’t want to spend more money on massages, feasts, nor whores.

Hsinchuang > JiaoXi by number 7
Another ride that I wanted to do but I never had the chance to do it. This has been my most “adventureous” ride so far. I made it alone… and in two days :smiley:. too lazy, too out of shape for doing it in only one shot, even if many others can do it.

While it felt a bit lonely (many km alone, no more “group rides” this year :frowning: ), it was great. It took me some balls and I almost dropped the idea last minute, but it was worth doing. Nice landscape, not so bad weather (it rained just a bit), and I met some friendly and joyful youngsters, which took a walk by night with me, and we got to see several interesting snakes. Next morning… more snakes :smiley:

I bursted my front inner tube inflating it stupidly when I found it was flat the next morning. Thanks god I spent a few minutes repairing an old tube the night before the ride.

I almost killed myself going downhill kinda fast when a car was on my side of the road because there was a construction heavy truck or something on his side. That part of the road was wet and covered with a bit of mud and I was lucky enough for just skidding my rear wheel for a few minutes. Scary!

As soon as i was giog downhill towards Yilan, the weather changed from fresh and misty to hot as fuck. The ride in the “flats” felt very long!

I met a nice guy (a rider with his titanium frame bike) in the train station, and we had some nice chat in Chingrish.

A little adventure I will remember forever, for the effort, for the landscapes, for the people i met and for the snakes, of course!

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How’s the #9 for riding? When I’m with my wife we never go past Wufenqi because she cannot take going uphill. I’ve never been on that road by myself because when I want some hills I usually head in direction of Taiping mountain, but I’d be curious to try the #9, maybe stopping in Pinlin then come back home.