Sunday, June 27, 2010

Desaru Long Ride

Off to Desaru early in the morning for a long ride. It has been almost 2 months since I last rode, properly. I was prepared for a suffering session today.

Not long after we started, Melvin's base bar fell out of position after he went over a pothole on the road. So we stopped to adjust it, and lost the rest of the group. That left him, Ryan, Alber and I. We continued for about 2-3km and realised that we missed a turn. So we backtracked to find the rest of the riders. There was a dark cloud gathering in the distance and we were riding into the storm. Oh....

True enough, the rain started coming down, hard. We passed a hut and heard someone shouting out to us. A group of riders was there seeking shelter. 30km. We waited for a while and decided to continue with the ride to Petronas. That was another 20km. We made it in relatively good time. I managed to draft the guys for some sections over the rolling hills, and what a huge difference drafting made! I was able to keep at 32-35 kmh on the flats.

We decided to follow the way back to Sungei Rengit for lunch, over the rolling hills again. At one point, something black and plasticky fell onto the road and broke. I was the 3rd bicycle after Melvin and Ryan. It turned out that Melvin's rear light dropped. Subsequently, his chain fell off and got stuck behind his inner chain ring. The guys spent some time dislodging it, and we were able to proceed again. Somewhere along the ride, his water bottle dropped as well. No wonder we did not see him following behind - he had stopped to retrieve it. Guess it was not a smooth day for him! Haha.

We made it to the restaurant in time for food. Then it was another 17km to the jetty. I tried and managed to keep at 30ish kmh for the whole stretch, but it was quad-searing work! Totally unconditioned. I so need to ride more and harder.

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