How was your ride today?

I finally left Taipei to get some “fresh air” and headed down to Taichung for a quick get away Friday into Saturday.

This is Taichung’s three peaks which really does not compare much to Taipei’s, but it’s still a pretty rough few hours in the saddle with lots of elevation gain. What was planned to be a slow, fun and picture packed ride turned into almost a non stop ride with one store stop. Good thing I had prepared some food, but ran out of water by the time we came down the final hill.

That first hill up the 136 is pretty damn steep. I will be back to give it another go soon.

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After weeks of using the Shilin Zhongshe Rd climb as my after work exercise (twice a week)…I felt like it wasn’t giving me any climbing improvements for when I would do my weekend Xiding Rd (wimp climb | Strava Ride Segment in Xizhi District, Taiwan)

I would go up Zhongshe Rd 3 times a night, but I guess the gradient doesn’t translate well to the “Wimp climb” which has some tougher sections. Last week I did get two “descending” strava KOMs for that segment and the Jiannan Rd one…but not sure if descending KOMs count for anything since you don’t have to pedal :wink: For climbing, I need a lot of work or a timemachine to get back my 20s or an e-bike.

So thanks to a Ranlee suggestion from months back, last night I brought two headlights and made a maiden voyage up Yangmingshan via (冷水坑 | Strava Ride Segment in Shilin District, Taiwan) and made my way to the ‘lookout’. Going up is fairly well lit and as you get farther up the roads widen a bit…but as you get close to the “lookout” it’s pitch black.

Luckily no angry dog encounters. I only passed by 3 sleeping or socially distancing dogs. So I might use this as a night route since the gradients can get around 12-16% in a few sections.

I ate a slice of banana bread at the lookout and enjoyed a few minutes of seeing actual stars here in Taiwan.

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Oh come now, don’t just put up a picture. We want to hear what it’s like for someone riding for the first time after being out of the saddle for years.

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f yeah, the bear is finally out of its cage.

That is by far my most favorite routes whether day or night. There’s roughly no traffic, summer nights it’s cool the whole way up, the reward at the top is pure bliss. No city pollution to dull the sky, so on most nights when it’s not foggy, you can see the stars. The cherry on top of that is if you go the same way down, there’s still hardly any traffic. A lot of my best descent times are all from night rides on that route.

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Great weather out there

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Yay, for yesterday’s ride I finally got over 100km for the first time! I don’t particularly recommend this route - I planned it in Google beforehand to ensure it was over 100km, hence the somewhat pointless extension to Bitan. PNG of map pasted in below; I did this counter-clockwise.

My first time with the Graveyard Climb. That was a lot nicer than I expected. I thought it’d be through graves themselves and totally exposed, but no, it’s fairly well shaded and pretty. The far side, going down to Nangang, was a big surprise: I didn’t expect such a long and pleasantly rural stream-side route in the middle of Taipei City. Until hitting Academica Sinica Road. I was leapfrogging a couple of buses and that wasn’t pleasant.

One of those little brainfart moments coming towards Muzha along the river. “Oh, look at all those graves up on the hillside; I’d like to explore those one day, when I’m not too busy doing my … er … Graveyard Climb. Oh. Guess that’s where I’m going. Shut up, brain.”

Upthread I was asking about navigation for the graveyard climb: going this direction, the two most useful Strava segments seem to be (going up) “Rear Full Graveyard Climb” and (going down) “The Sinica Swallow研究燕”. Also, comparing the two climbs that I’ve done on these round-Taipei loops, the graveyard climb counter-clockwise felt a lot easier than the Nankang-Shenkeng route clockwise. I took the Graveyard Climb too easy because I was expecting it to go on a lot longer.

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Fantastic. Great to see in one go, with a good target. I’ve done all, separately, in ~25km segments…

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Any particular reason you don’t recommend this route? I’d like to do something similar on a cooler day, I don’t know how you guys go out in this weather.

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Long and kind of dull: mostly just flat riverside. In cooler weather it’d be better for sure, but usually when it’s cooler the views in Taipei aren’t as clear. There aren’t any parts I dislike, but all combined it’s just… long. Which was after all the point; I want to do more rides out of the south or east of Taipei, but for now the hour+ on the riverside to even start those rides (and then same again to get home) puts me off.

The rides I do up into the hills above Danshui and Sanzhi are gorgeous. The ride yesterday was lovely during that climb and especially descent in the middle, but otherwise just fine. That being said, wow we’ve got a good riverside cycling network here.

Mind you, if you’re not starting in Danshui, it’d be a lot shorter!

So glad I bought a bike with a lockdown looming . I love cycling empty city roads.

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I think it’s the big reason I didn’t really mind the Level 3 stuff earlier. It wasn’t good, of course, but the cycling often had me reading forumosa’s COVID threads and thinking “Huh, guess I’m lucky - this doesn’t seem like that big a deal.”

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Yeah, that circular bike path loop is kind of a do it once and never again kind of thing…its a slog for me.

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Fair enough. I agree the riverside cycling paths are awesome, but mostly as a highway to get to the place you really want to ride. Going through big stretches of city roads is terrible.

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Great weather out there today! (Subscribing to @the_bear school of thought on posting about one’s ride.)

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Time to incorporate the MRT into your rides. The 10:00 to 16:00 window on weekdays is limiting, but you can at least use the MRT for one direction. I rode up Yuanshan in Sanxia recently by taking the MRT to Dingpu station (end of the blue line) where I started my ride. I doubt I would have been able to get to the top with switchbacks with 20% grade if I had taken the riverside path to Sanxia.

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Yeah, it’s definitely there as an option, but I think I’ll wait until things cool down a bit - starting a ride at 11am (or later) doesn’t feel like a good idea at the moment.

Or I can plan to take the MRT back, when I’m good and stinky and may get a car to myself. It’s the idea of riding back for 90 minutes that intimidates me more than the way out.

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Except when you ride up well-shaded Balaka. Just have to grin and bear the 101 first. :hot_face:

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I thought I would sneak one in before the typhoon. Leaves and twigs strewn all over the road, and there was some wind from time to time working against me. But I really needed that stress relief after last week’s craziness.

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