As almost every Saturday the Beijing Peloton road cycling club has arranged for buses and mini-vans to take us to the mountains outside of Beijing. We started at the Gao Ya Kou village (near the Stone Lions) and went the normal way over Gao Tai with various intermediary small passes and down the valley. At the train tracks overhead we turned left (east) towards Beijing. The route then went through the “Dong Fang Hong” tunnel climb. I stayed with the B riders (just doing the 80km route) and did not do the tough climb with the A riders (doing 100km including the Yang Tai Shan climb) hat I had done last time we cycled here. We continued until we reached the “Miao Feng Shan” archway. I cycled till the village but I had to rest in between as the road up towards Miao Feng Shan is a 13km uphill at 6% of which the first 7km are a false flat. Tom made a nice table of the intensity of the various mountain climbs for road cyclists around Beijing. Despite the sun shine and blue sky the temperature was bearable. But I did get a slight sun burn on the spots where I forgot to put suncream.
