…and another long(ish) post but I need to share what I was doing during my weekend coz it was freakin’ amazing! Top 3 of my cycling experiences to date!
This will be a story about a group of strangers who went into the unknown… Two days of eating pain, suffering, struggling, fighting, pedalling hard… Two days of supporting, cheering, helping, talking to each other. After those two days strangers became friends… as bonding through cycling is one of the best thing you experience ever!
We started at 5am near famous photo studio Dreams Factory. I was one of the first people there as I came at 4:45 which was a bit too early… Other people arrived on time so I had few seconds to introduce myself and we started to pack our stuff into two nice buses. Bikes went on roof racks, all perfectly secured and checked 100 times. RideNow crew knows what they are doing, after 5min I was already calm knowing that my bike won’t fly to the other galaxy. We boarded buses and started our journey to Anji, where we were planning to spend a weekend. I’d never expect that during my bus ride I’ll exchange information about history of China, Malaysia, Singapore and Poland with newly met people where normally on such trips you talk about bikes, bikes and bikes lol.
Time passed and after few hours of comfy ride BOOM! Here we are… Nice and quiet hotel, quick check in and unpacking bikes. We decided to delay our ride for about two hours as thermometer was hitting 40s… and we went for pleasure, not to get heatstrokes!
Around 2PM we met again, looking almost the same as RideNow crew provided team kits as a souvenir! Awesome! Last check of the bikes and we started our journey. First 15km of rolling hills and exploring the area which is really astonishing compared to flat Shanghai… Then we hit the proper climbs – 5-8%, where Shanghai avg gradient is like -0.00001% maybe. Our goal was to finish one tough climb before coming back to the hotel. On the way up we split a bit and faster guys (we had Suzhou crew in the same hotel and they are freakin strong!) went their pace, slower guys were fighting and not giving up! It started to drizzle a bit here and there so hitting the top was quite wet. I arrived third which for my current form is not bad (recovering from bronchitis for last 3 weeks), but comparing times I was far behind David and Hannes, Suzhou boyz.
Great thing about RideNow bike tours is that they provide full support so we had a van equipped with all stuff you could dream about. Waiting always in crucial places to provide water, coffee, food, a hug and a good word. And they were at the top, so first thing I did after unclipping was drinking as much as I could lol. Waiting for others didn’t take long, strong performance from all the riders! Girls were smashing uphill like Pantani. I was impressed how strong they are! Dropping boyz like kids! After all people arrived we decided to do a slow descent as the road was wet and we had to keep it safe. Meeting at the bottom, going back to hotel and resting. Evening was also special – bonding through eating and watching documentary about Transcontinental Race which fourth edition was in the mid point during last weekend.
Waking up the next day at 5:30, going for a breakfast and there he is – Ken cooking his amazing oatmeal congee with lots of goodies like walnuts, honey, etc. Check pic below! It tasted better than it looks and it looked awesome! After breakfast we had to prepare ourselves for a bit harder task as Sunday ride was planned to hit 850m of elevation gain and around 60km distance. Sounds like nothing but for Shanghai riders anything above 5m of elev gain is hard lol. We found out that few tires had cuts so what happened? RideNow crew provided new tires and tubes to replace the old ones and keep all of us as safe as possible. RESPECT for that guys! After all tire problems were sorted out we moved again into the woods! Ken was leading the group. Rolling hills for a warm up, one short stop at the bottom of the hill. We kept an easy pace as the level of riders was mixed and if we go as a group we keep it as a group. Our journey uphill was long… but the views were crazy good. I didn’t know if I had to stop every 5 meters and take pics or focusing on pedalling but these are dillemas of a photographer! Again RideNow was here to help – they provided a photographer to cover our rides so now I can share some nice pics with you! We had a small stop before the tunnel that was mentioned during debriefing. Tunnel was short, around 600m but 6-7% gradient plus quite dark plus reflectors that were size of a freakin Garmin 1000 and half of them missing at random so we had to be careful not to hit anything crazy. Going out of the tunnel was one of the nicest things of the day lol. Reaching the top was hard but again we all fought together, so when we came all people were super happy with their achievement. Again Suzhou boyz were waiting for us as they were waaay faster and there was no need to slowing them down! But they provided baked potatoes so all was good! Van was waiting as well, providing cold water, coffee, bananas.
In the plan was a lunch in nearby restaurant. Great food, resting, talking, having good time with friends. After that we decided with Ken, Max and Annamarie to smash it downhill as rest decided to take van to the bottom (it was getting crazy hot as we were close to noon). We helped to pack the bikes and started our journey down. Ken and Max are awesome going down, great bike skills. Annamarie was smashing like a boss as well. I was impressed with all of them, barely keeping up with them as I struggle always in the corners when it comes to speeds higher than 10kph. On that nice descent I hit 69kph which was not bad, road and weather was perfect (ok maybe bit too much sun but rest was as it should be!). Getting to the bottom took us much less time than going up which is normal. We just had to slow down going through the tunnel as hitting those reflectors at 50-60kph would end up in meeting St. Peter at the heaven’s gate!
All four of us arrived with big smile on their faces, buses and others were waiting chillin and packing their stuff. Quick change of clothes, mounting bikes on racks and going back to Shanghai… this way everyone took a nap so not much talking lol but two days of proper climbing drained us a bit. On the other side meeting new people, all the views, riding those perfect roads, just being there and enjoyin was worth all the pain we ate!
If you look for a proper bike tour in China (more to come very soon!) contact RideNow Global or Ken Goh to get more info about upcoming tours! Highly recommended! Big thanks for perfect organisation to the crew, only thing we had to do was pedalling and that was freakin awesome! THANKS!
if you are still here (congrats for going through!) here few pics from the weekend: courtesy of RideNow Global crew.
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