The image above is from my Garmin, from Sunday's ride. 67 miles, 4700 feet of climbing, 4.5 hours of ride time, and a really beautiful day with temps in the 60's. This was my first time joining in on the Sunday morning regular ride that happens out of Sean's bike shop. Sean is pretty well connected with the local expat cycling crowd and the shops team, Team Columbus, has a mix of expats and taiwanese on it's roster. To get to Sean's shop from where I am staying it's about a 45 minute ride North across Taipei into the northern area of Tien Mu.. I got there at 7:30am as instructed and found some familiar ride partners as well as most of Team Columbus, and a few other friends mixed in. The teams here mostly revolve around bike shops with most decent shops having some sort of team, Team Columbus seems to be one of the best Taipei shop teams and Sean does a really good job of supporting the team and is a very decent rider himself.. team also has a really sweet team van painted to match.. I'll have to get a photo of it at some point.
So at about 8am we finally roll out, about 20 of us, mostly Taiwanese. I've made a new friend amongst the expats, Leon, and he is there and is a member of Columbus.. a really strong masters rider. We work our way North out of the city and stick together for about an hour or so on the coast road, mostly flat with a few rollers. A right turn onto route 101 and we work our way up into the foothills and the group starts to break up, I ride with the lead group that gets smaller and smaller in number till it's just four of us. It becomes a game of cat and mouse, with some attacks and counter attacks.. a total blast, especially as I was able to hold on. We reach the high point on 101 and everyone re-groups, then it's all down back to the coast, a blast along the coast road again has everyone split into little pacelines and again I a manage to stay with the lead group.
After almost an hour along the North Coast road, into a headwind, in a 5 man paceline the whole way.. we hit the next re-group spot, a 7-11, time to replenish, use the bathroom, etc. There are other riders here.. this whole area is full of groups of cyclists of various levels.
We get rolling again, just a k or two up the road we hang a right onto a tight little mountain road.. this is the start of the finishing climb or a race I will do next month. For the next 7k we work our way up, the group spreads out and once again I'm in a small group of 5 or so at the front halfway up.. the cat and mouse starts again and once again it's a blast, one of the guys from Columbus keeps attacking and soon it's down to three, with a little surge I get a little gap and finish off the climb about 30 seconds ahead of them.. another re-group here.
Another descent, then cross a little bridge and onto a small mountain road that twists and winds, climbs and drops through a little valley, 5 of us pull away again and cruise along, the road is so much fun and we stick together at a really decent clip... lots of sharp, blind turns with traffic here and there, all the turns have mirrors on poles and you learn to watch the mirrors as you approach the turn to see if the way is clear.. this goes on for half an hour... then the road turns up again..
This last climb is the steepest of all.. once again it's a ride of attrition and soon find myself climbing alone with "Mr. Kim", he does not speak english, we take turns on the climb, pace each other, it's steep with lot's of switch backs, most of the climb your out of the saddle going about 10 mph or a little less.. we ride up into the fog and soon you can just barely see to the next turn.. at a certain point "Mr Kim" attacks me and I let him go.. I'm cooked.. a few turns later and we top out.. in the fog.. cyclists everywhere.. this is a central spot for local rides.. and the high point for many of them also.. four mountain roads intersect here.
No more re-groups, we hang out for a few minutes, Leon catches up and suggests we head down, it's cold wet and windy at the top.. the city below is sunny and warm so we hit the decent spend the next 45 minutes dropping back down into Taipei.
We split up in the city.. everyone heads home.. for me that means another 45 minutes across the whole city in mid-day traffic.. but it's warm and sunny..
A really fun day.. looking forward to next Sunday.
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