HK Island 100

Saturday morning saw another training milestone (of sorts) - my biggest ride on Hong Kong Island to date, clocking in at 100km over 4.5 hours.

A 100km ride is not exactly epic in distance, and is certainly something that can be bashed out with comparative ease on my home roads of Essex or Hertfordshire, but when you throw in 2500m of climbing and a physical limit to the amount of road actually available then it becomes a (little) more impressive. To put the vertical ascent in context - across a similar distance in Essex/Hertfordshire you would only expect to hit between 600-800m of climbing and in terms of 'bang for your buck' the ascent:distance ratio compares favourably to all but the hardest mountain stages of the Tour. By all accounts a big day in the saddle.

A 6am start saw me cycle over Magazine Gap Road, up Mt Butler and then up to Park View before meeting Janice, Pt, Simon, David and Jono at the Cricket Club for a gentle cruise to Shek-O. Simon, David and Jono had all cycled with Dan in Hong Kong at various points over the past couple of years and it felt appropriate that we should all have a brief spin together on the morning of the Black Tie Benefit Party that had been organised by Nic (with help from JK and Vicky) and would be raising money in aid of Dan's trust - DBMT. The only notable absence was JK who is still on the mend from her accident.

The Dark Knight pauses to admire the view....

And what a glorious morning it was, a stunning sunrise over Cape D'Aguilar and a clear, cool and sunny morning. Perfect cycling weather to make the most of before the all too familiar Hong Kong humidity makes a morning spin feel more like a brutal spin class in a maxed out sauna. A definite improvement from the wet and windy (I would say it was cold also, but at 14C that seems a little unfair for any readers back in the UK.... still it felt cold, but its all relative I guess) ride of the previous Saturday. Hopefully a sign of things to come.

One half of the bike powering system (note blurry road for 'speed' effect)

The group stuck together all the way to Shek-O were we fed and watered ourselves at our usual cafe. Gleaming bikes lining one side of the quiet street and suped up supercars lining up the other side (with their admiring owners in matching Ferrari/Lambo/Porche jackets, caps etc congratulating themselves at being able to open the throttle for more than 5 seconds on the run down into Shek-O). In fairness I am not sure who is worse, the lycra-clad cyclists or the team kit clad motorists - mid-life crises manifesting themselves in different, but at the same time very similar, manners....

"Horse-Dog" was also spotted again.... a photo is really needed to explain what I mean by that. Next time.

After stuffing my face with arguably the best french toast on the Island we all headed back off to Central at our own pace, with me diverting off almost immediately to climb up to Cape D'Aguilar's radio mast (a climb for some reason named as "Luke's Lament" on Strava.... I have no idea who Luke might be, but you can understand the possible reasons for his lamentations as you inch yourself up the 13-16% gradients)

Taking some time to deeply regret having climbed Luke's Lament

From there back to Central and the base of the Peak it was a pretty uneventful ride with little to report, other than my failed attempt to catch Pt and Janice. Only afterwards, when really thinking about it did it occur to me that giving them a 20min head start (by virtue of my lamentation) was a pretty significant deficit to overturn in little over 17kms! Still, I tried.

Pro..!

The remaining 30km of the ride at this stage was mainly achieved by going up and down the Peak/Mt Austin and Mt Butler a couple of times to eek out each km from the limited road space - a task that got more and more fraught as the traffic up to one of Hong Kong's prime tourist locations on a sunny day exponentially increased with every passing kilometer. A decent first ascent of the Peak was followed by a distinctly average second and it was becoming evident that the 100km marker couldn't come soon enough. With 3km to go I finally dropped down Magazine Gap Road back towards home.... only to have misjudged the distance by 100 or so meters. 99.9km is not 100km so I cycled straight past my front door, bagged the extra 100m and did a u-turn to finish the ride.

Some chocolate milk, a vat of rice and scrambled eggs, a snooze of the sofa and a bit of 'sorting stuff' later I was ready to knuckle down to the days biggest challenge and attempt to tie my bow-tie....

The Strava link for the ride is available here



Bumpy...