Trek100, 21st August 2016!

Today we had a pleasure (NOT!) of joining TREK100 charity ride. If you are not familiar with this event it is all about raising money for pediatric cancer and related blood disorder research and general awarness about those awful diseases. Since 1990, the Trek 100 has contributed over $13.1 million to support that! So basically you ride your bike for a good cause!

Start of the event was in Jiading Stadium which is around 30km from downtown. Luca, Wencherk and me decided to go there by bikes. Meeting 5:45AM at Gubei/Hongqiao – crazy hot already… We went the easiest way ever – just go north and turn left somewhere after crossing the river. I decided to add some spice to our ride and we changed the route a bit. We ended up in some funny place but found a baozi place so I could eat breakfast finally. On the way we met fellow cyclist going same way as we did, but she had MTB and that was best idea ever as roads went supercrappy… Almost crashed trying to change lanes as difference in height between two concrete flat blocks was around 5cm lol. But my Sagan skills saved my ass so we could continue without problems. Arriving around 7:30 at the venue, met Peter Kwan and his lovely girl there. Few minutes later Slong, Servaas and Max arrived. Our team was ready.

As that was a charity ride (at least that was the idea) we decided to just follow one of the groups, as there were zillions of people so organisers split them into smaller packs. We started 3min after first group (we were in fifth or so). First turn and already strange things – open roads means riding with all the traffic… There was police standing here and there but nobody from them gave a f*ck about our safety… After 5min we knew there is no charity ride… that was a proper race. So we had to push a bit and after 15km we caught leaders (or whoever that was but we didn’t see anybody in front). Because there was no clear leader of the pack we had to teach Chinese guys how to ride in a group. They were just smashing but no pointing out crap on the road, cutting all the red lights (we almost ended up under a massive truck bcz of that). It was freaking hot all the way. We had small drizzle for 3-5km, but that was nothing. Good that at checkpoints we had access to water, bananas and melons. In the end we finished the ride in 2h45min (2h37m moving time according to my Garmin). Ride was tough like hell, but for the good cause we were willing to take the pain from the start to the end. And we did!

There was also one strange thing – no clear signs marking the route. Most of the time I was guessing where to turn… We missed two turns at least, had to go back. Strava later told me that we actually missed more but ok, in the end we found all the checkpoints and finish line.

Funny that in the end we did 90km instead of planned 100 but maybe that was a good idea to make it short because of high temp. It was brutal from the start to the end even going quite slow (34.3kph avg).

On the way back we hit roads that if somebody told me I can choose Paris-Roubaix instead I’d go with that instead of Jiading… I cut my tire so bad that we had to implement some MacGyver skills and fill the hole with tire patch. It was enough to go back home last 25km in a granny pace making sure I don’t hit any other crap.

We dedicate this ride to Glenn Bai who was involved in a massive crash yesterday during HQM ride. Glenn get better soon! Glenn should ride today in TREK100 but he was not able so Servaas took his place and did his best to make sure Glenn’s name will be forever in history books! Awesome performance! 

Few pics from today (not many from the ride itself as I was focusing on not melting).