Sorry, it's not even a 'humblebrag'.... (updated)

.... no this is a full on, unabashed, unadulterated brag... For the moment at least, I think I’m pretty cool, and I’d love to tell you about why (we’ll be back to my regularly scheduled mostly humility soon).  Don’t worry, it won’t devolve into total narcissism - there’s still room for some self doubt and coulda woulda shoulda in there too.

It’s called the Taiwan KOM Challenge... KOM standing for King of the Mountain.  It’s a ridiculous thing - a bike race that starts at Sea Level and rises to 10,744 feet at the finish.  Oh and there are a few descents along the way so you end up climbing a few hundred meters more.  Total race length is 105 Km...65 miles. ( there are tabs for route map and  elevation profiles of the race if you down towards bottom of linked page)  


 The first 18K are ‘neutral’ meaning the race hasn’t actually begun - there is a pace car leading the field, keeping control of the peloton.   So those first 18K are flat along the beach.  Right after you turn West and start heading up the race route, the actual climbing starts, the flag drops, and race begins.  

 



The race route is up Taroko Gorge - a very, very deep, narrow marble stone gorge.  So it’s 87 KM or 54 miles to finish at 10,744 feet of elevation.  Not *so* bad if it were evenly spread out, but the lower elevations are quite civil in terms of grade - which is good and bad, easier to climb = good.   Faster to stay with the group = bad.   Group consisting of pros (including Tour DeFrance level pros, Asia Tour pros, elite locals and finally schlubs like me) is also good and bad.  Riding with pros just sounds cool (not that I saw them too much beyond at the start line) = good.   They’re pros and freakin fast riders = bad and painful pace to match.  

So you want to stay reasonably in contact without blowing up... which I did, until the time when I didn’t (which was a good thing - I found my pace, which was wise cause the overall winner finished about 69 minutes before me - not a pace I would or could hope to maintain, trying to do so would be bad).  I found a great pace for me and it was ideal in that it was faster than a bunch of the people who fought to stay with the lead group and did so longer than they should have.  That caused them to move backward - so I had my favorite thing of all on a bike - a constant supply of people to chase down.  Perfect motivation. 

While the grade is pretty civil, to keep a good tempo is still  very hard work.  And this climb is so much longer than most, including all of the marquee climbs of the Tour De France, the Tour of Italy or the Tour of Spain.  It is punishing just for length of time you are going up.  Eventually you come to a really nice descent, which is also good and bad.  Not climbing for a while = good.  Descending on a twisty road closed to traffic = good and fun.  Knowing that you have to regain all of that elevation that you just lost (200+ meters worth) = bad.  

Plus after the descent, the average gradient kicks up a few notches.  Still not gruesome, but getting worse, coupled with the increasing fatigue, it starts to get memorable.   Then you hit the small ‘town’ of Dayuling, which is the start of the last 10Km or so....   This is where the race gets really interesting.  Not only is it getting high enough in elevation that the air is getting thinner, the road starts to climb for real -  averaging 9+% in many places, with a few kicks into the teens, and one .3km stretch at 27% grade.  Thankfully there are a few short flats and one actual gentle descent in the final KMs, but it then kicks back up for the last 1Km to make sure you really got the point about this being a hill climb.

I was battling cramps in both my legs, but was able to keep it together to finish inside of my rather arbitrary goal of finishing in the top 100.... I was 98th, in a time that was very satisfactory.  

On the road, you are able to track your age group competitors based on their race numbers.  All of us in the 400’s were in the 45-50 group, so I knew who I was battling with amongst those I could see - I wasn’t sure who all was farther up the road of course.  

As motivation, I was riding as though anyone with a 400 series number was the difference between me being on the podium at the finish for my age group.  A while after the I finished,  I learned that the guy with a 400 number who I watched finish just about a minute before me was the last podium place for our group - at that grade our speeds were not that high, so I was quite close in distance but still a minute away on time.  

I know it’s likely tedious listening to how satisfied I am about this race - so here’s a moderating dose of doubt and questioning - I'm left wondering if I knew in definitive terms in those last few Kms “hey, that guy up the road is the difference between you on the podium and him up there”,  would I have found any more energy to chase him down?  I’d like to think that maybe I would have, but I also like to think that I’d already wrung all I could out of myself.  

Near the start of the barricades, probably 100 meters from the finish line.  This camera angle exaggerates the grade, but not by too much!

It sure felt like I gave all I had after I crossed the line - which was really the biggest victory of them all to me.  It sounds trite, but I have finished races where I felt frustrated that there was still more in the tank - no fun.  This time it didn’t feel that way, who knows if there was a bit more that adrenaline might have contributed to chase that one last guy for 6th place, but despite that wondering I’m content and really satisfied with my first go at this race.  But I followed my plan for the race really well, and that's always a bonus too.   I’m already looking forward to next year.

On top of the racing, this is a stunningly beautiful area of mountains and gorge.  Julia and I have been through the gorge both driving and riding a few months back - unfortunately as pretty as it was both of those times, it was also quite rainy.  

For the most part, this time up was clear and amazing views.  There are also numerous places where you can see the road far above and far below you... which is both good and bad.  Seeing how much you’ve already climbed = good.   Seeing how much you have yet to go up = bad. 

 As you can see from the photos of me, the finish is above tree line.  The vegetation up there is called dwarf bamboo I think, it's pretty cool to see. And true to form for the times I’ve been at the top of Wuling, it rained and was cold.  No rain the whole way up during the race, fortunately, but moments after I crossed the finish line it started raining.  The area at the top where the finish is located is quite small, so we had to head down the Western side of the mountain to meet up with our transport back to Taichung... so it was about a 3Km descent in the pouring rain.  One of these days I’m looking forward to finishing a race here in Taiwan without freezing being involved - which is always ironic given the normal heat and humidity down lower in elevation.  Fortunately it didn’t rain for too long and I had warm, dry clothes to change into.

For any who reads this who rides - you should train up and come join in next year or in 2015, it is an unforgettable experience.

And finally, the finish line... not yelling, just trying to breathe!

Updated 11/12/13 - One other bit of context/info, Mt Wuling, where this race finished is the same mountain top that I raced to and mentioned back in August here, only that time we started on the West side of the mountain and began around 480 Meters of elevation... same mountain, same finish area, but very different race.   Also here are some more  cool photos I came across....

One of many memorable bridges on the Taroko Gorge road

I'm pretty sure this rockslide got a whole bunch bigger between April and November.  I think there was one there when Julia and I drove through back in April, but I don't think it was this big - and there have been a number of typhoons and earthquakes since then.  From the looks of the hillside, there are always going to be rockfalls here - it would take an incredible amount of work to shore this up to stop the falls... not that the Taiwanese road engineers aren't up to the challenge to give it a go.

Another cool bridge

Little Guys of Korea

They've got them all over the place on this side of the planet....

I think this is the Korean power company's mascot, he shows up on all of the street level transformers.

Dunno, maybe it's just me, but this sort of diminishes the badassitude of the ROK-hard soldiers at the DMZ when you make a Little Guy statue out of them.  And I don't mean to jest about their soldiers - the real live human ones at Panmunjon  appear to be about as hard as you can make a human.  After some attacks by the DPRK guards, the ROK upped the martial arts proficiency and fitness  requirements for all guards with that duty.

Don't get your tentacles caught...cause if you did, someone is likely to dip them in sauce and eat them.  I know I did.

Don't be a boozy crab?

This thing is about 10 feet tall, and there's one located every few hundred yards along the beach in Haeundae.  I couldn't help but think of the character from the 'Doonesbury' cartoon, "Mr Butts", I think is his name, sort of different message than the character, but similar look.

Not a Little Guy as such, but I just loved this sign... I should have asked one of Julia's Korean co workers
if this actually says 'Don't hit this wall' or just 'caution' or whatever.  Either way, it's an important message for anyone unclear on general concepts of physics.

Belated Happy R.O.K.-tober!

Julia had some meetings in Busan Korea and a few days prior to the start of them was Taiwan’s National Day (October 10), which meant that she had a few days off... so we decided to take advantage of the timing and spend some time in Seoul and Busan.  

Seoul is a pretty amazing city.  It’s huge and sprawling, with high hills and the Han River through town.  We lined up a tour of the DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea from North.  On the bus there, only a short distance out of downtown we got onto an expressway along the Han River, and there the barbed wire fence and guard towers began - the DPRK (North Korea)...(Isn’t it great how so many of the communist countries  went out of their way to add ‘Democratic’ into the name of the country?)... has sent numerous infiltrators into Seoul via the river, hence the fences and guards.  Seoul sits about 40 or 50 km from the DMZ.

The DMZ tour itself was pretty amazing and sobering.  We toured one of the 4 infiltration tunnels that the ROK has discovered (there are many more suspected to exist), and Camp Bonifas, named after one of the two US soldiers killed by DPRK soldiers in an axe attack back in the 70s.  The gate at the entrance to the camp says ‘In Front of Them All’ and that couldn’t be truer, given their proximity to the DMZ, and the numerous attacks and provocations the DPRK has made over the years since the end of the war... whoops, that’s wrong - technically the war has not ended, it’s just been suspended for nearly 60 years, but hostilities are obviously still just under the surface.  The tour took us to Panmunjon, located right, smack in the middle of the DMZ.  

Panmunjon - The US soldier in the foreground was our tour guide for this part of the tour. The building in the background is the DPRK... actually beyond the middle of the light blue building is the DPRK...all the other soldiers on this side of the blue building are ROK soldiers - the guys with white bands stand watch with fists clenched for 2 hour stints, note the number that are partially shielded by the buildings - not for dramatic effect, but due to the long chain of attacks and other provocations by the DPRK - I guess when you have nothing to lose, you've got nothing to lose.  He's very hard to see in the this photo but there is a DPRK soldier at the top of the stairs who spent much of the time we were there checking us out with binocs.

This is actually a photo of a photo on display in the visitor center, but I had to include it as it shows the DPRK guards in a rather telling orientation.  Note that both here and  in my photo above (taken from locations only a few meters apart) the ROK guards are positioned facing the enemy to the north.  However, the DPRK guards are positioned either entirely towards their own people, literally and metaphorically, with the guy at left, or at least halfway facing their own country and halfway facing the South.   Just like how many of the old Iron Curtain defenses were aimed pointing back at the citizenry they were alleged to be 'protecting'... same drill here I guess.

There are buildings located such that they straddle the border, used for meetings between ROK and DPRK, generally overseen by Swiss and Swedish military officials, all under the terms of the agreement from 1953.  We had a chance to enter one of the meeting rooms used - it has a meeting table oriented so that the middle of the table is across the border, so to stand or sit on one side puts you in the ROK, and the other in the DPRK, so of course we had to go to the DPRK side.  The DPRK had only one soldier stationed outside, he spent a bunch of time watching us through binoculars.

Kinda blurry, but here's Julia in the DPRK... table at bottom left of photo is meeting table that is oriented with middle at border, so she's a few feet into North Korea right there.  

After bopping around Seoul for a bit, we headed to Busan via Korea’s high speed rail line.  While they both list a top ‘cruising’ speed of 300Kmph (186mph), in Korea, they actually run at or near that speed for extended lengths of time - here in Taiwan, they seem only to get to about 285Kph or so and then for relatively short stretches.  

Busan is also a huge city, but the spot we were staying, right along the beach in Haeundae is a really cool little enclave in its midst.  

I’m looking forward to getting back to Korea to explore some more - I think a bicycle tour there may be in the cards for 2014?  We’ll see.