24.11.2008 von Ines.

What a great day of cycling. Our fixed gear friend Mike from Tianjin came just to visit us and ride with us. Unfortunately some of our Beijing fixed gear riders were sick and some had to work. So we ended up riding only with 3 people. While stopping in Jianwai SOHO we were directly spotted by some people as the most fashionable kids on the block. They took our picture and said they have an online street wear magazine. We were amazed “why us?” but I have the feeling it was just a trick to get our contact details. I cannot enter the site name they provided…

We then rode to the Drum and Bell Tower of Beijing. On the space between the 2 towers there are always the pedal rickshaw guys standing around. They were fascinated by our bikes. I let them try my bike and as always all they guys and us laughed a lot. They are just not used to fixed gear.

William received his beautiful bike just a few weeks ago from Japan. If anybody is interested in riding fixed gear with us or wanted to learn more about fixed gear bikes, then please join our fixed gear group on facebook.

We were riding the whole day and then when it got dark went to the Olympic village. Mike did a free handed track stand in front of the Bird’s Nest on the Olympic Green. Unfortunately he had to leave at 10:30pm with the high speed train back to Tianjin. I hope we can ride together again soon.

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23.11.2008 von Ines.

Despite the cold temperatures (luckily there was no wind) we had another good turn out with over 40 riders. To save the spectators and the riders from waiting in the cold, we opted for a mass start. Remarkably, the kids’ race had a spike in attendance with 7 kids “battling” it out. I was riding with gloves at first, but they were outdoor gloves (as I have no cycling gloves). That was fine for 1 lap, but then I had a hard time to shift gears so I decided to drop the gloves after the second round. Suddenly at the accent with barriers the Chinese girl Hu Chen overtook me. I stayed at her back tire for the whole lap. After one lap she seemed to have no energy left and dropped behind. And Jenny was again far ahead. She is a really strong endurance rider. After about the fourth lap I again could hardly shift gears as my fingers were almost frozen. I also had almost no feeling in my toes. I think I need to wear warmer socks for the next race.

The winner were:
•    The ladies podium was the same as last week: 1. Jenny (CAN); 2. Ines (GER); and 3. Hu Chen (CHN)
•    The open podium was: 1. Mr. Liu (CHN); 2. Mike Bilan (USA) and Mr. Wang (CHN)
•    The advanced podium was: 1. Tom Lanhove (BEL); 2. Naran (MON) and 3. Dieter Braekeveld (BEL)

I was especially happy to see Tom finally win as he was there every race and had multiple problems like flat tires or leakages as well as problems like crashing. And he was riding ahead alone with a gap to the second rider. Dieter almost got overtaken by a Chinese rider in the final sprint. We had a special guest at the track. Noel Truyers is the chief editor of the cycling magazine “Cyclo Sprint”. It is the largest and most in-depth Dutch language magazine in Europe. Tom Lanhove has written a special article about Cyclo Cross Races in China and submitted pictures. I cannot wait to see the article.

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16.11.2008 von Ines.

Today we had the 3rd race of this season. Again I am too lazy to write my own report so I again took the great race summary from the newsletter of Tom Lanhove. Here Tom’s summary:

We are happy to say that we set our own record of attendance! We had 10 man “A” race, followed by an impressive 30 something “B” race. At least 5 women and even the kids’ race featured 5 promising youth, braving the wind and the bumpy course. Another fun feature was the high number of spectators giving much needed encouragement when the going got tough. A solid feature of cyclo cross is the “anything can happen” aspect. We had punctures, (harmless falls), broken gears and so forth. The race positions change often and abruptly making it fun for riders and spectators.

The winners of this race were:
• The ladies podium was: 1. Jenny (Canada); 2. Ines (GER); and 3. Hu Chen (CHN)
• The open podium was: 1. Mark Thirwall (AUS); 2. Mike Bilan (USA) and Mr. Liu (CHN)
• The advanced podium was: 1. Todd McKean (USA); 2. Hangkai (MON) and 3. Yang Wei (CHN)
The level of competition was very high this weekend. The top 4 ladies actually finished in the top 10 of the ‘B’ race. This indicates how strong these female athletes are. It also shows how cyclo cross is an “honest” sport where bike handling skills, running, overall fitness, power and endurance are key factors, leveling the playing field between men and women.
For pictures, please see the following links:
• http://picasaweb.google.com/johnston2.4/2008CycloCrossRace3
• http://picasaweb.google.com/cyclosportschina/Cross3Nov16th#
• http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/hirobeijing/200811163
The pictures I have inserted here are all from Steve Johnston: Thank you for taking such great shots!

The B race saw a heated battle between the first 5 riders, with positions changing often. Mark Thirwall (AUS) and Yoshi-san (JPN) broke away with 3 Chinese riders + Mike Bilan (USA) chasing them down. When it seemed the gap was made, Yoshi-san smashed his rear gear shifter and he literally dropped away from the front. Mark was able to hold on to his lead with Mike Bilan putting up the best challenge, in front of a strong Chinese contingent. In a second group behind these front 5, we saw the four strongest women (Jenny, Ines, Hu Chen and Ms. Liu) battle it out. They overtook quite a few male riders, much to the delight ofthe neutral supporters. Jumping over obstacles is part and parcel of cyclo cross.

In the ‘A’ race, we had a 4 man strong race situation, with TREK’s GM Todd (USA), young Khangarid from Mongolia, Tom (Bel) and Yang Wei (CHN). Tom fell out with a puncture, skillfully repaired by Ines and Mike, leaving a heated battle between Todd, Khangarid and Yang Wei. They finished in that order at the end too.

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8.11.2008 von Ines.

Today we had TREK’s 2nd Cyclo Cross event at the Wenyu River. Our famous Beijing road cyclist Tom Lanhove has written a nice short report that I will just copy in here:
__________________________________________________________
It was a few degrees cooler than our first outing but we had even more people show up.
The course was revamped with less riding on the dirt road, and more “crossing” in the fields next to the river.
The change made the course overall more challenging, but it also reduced the amount of punctures. Where we had 4 or more last time, we had none this time.
My favorite section of the course were those sharp uphill zigzags, resembling a skateboard ramp as much as a cross circuit!
The race had its usual quadruple divisions: open, advanced, ladies and kids.

• The open mens podium was: 1. Mr. Wang (China); 2. Mr. Liu (China) and 3. Mike Bilan (USA)
• The advanced mens podium was: 1. Hangkai (Mongolia); 2. Tom Lanhove (Belgium) and 3. Naran (Mongolia)
• The ladies podium was: 1. Ines Brunn (Germany) ; 2. Ms. Chen (CHN); and 3. Echo Yang (China)

For pictures, please see the following (more albums are sure to follow later this week…):
johnston2.4 on picasaweb
Cyclosportschina on Picasaweb
__________________________________________________________

It was a really fun race with the technical sections. This time I had the impression that having a mountain bike would have given a certain advantage on the long section riding on the bumpy fields. I am looking forward to the next race. Let us see if I then can still beat Ben (I was pursuing him then he was pursuing me - just behind me in this picture)

And in the evening we had a house colding party as we will soon move out. But it actually did not get really cold despite all the friends that came. It would have been nicer if we had already found a new apartment, but we still have more than a week to move out of the old place. The search still goes on.

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26.10.2008 von Ines.

Today my beautiful colleague invited to her wedding lunch. We had very good Sichuan food together with a lot of friends. It took me 3 hours to get there because I had people from Beijing TV film me riding my black Flying Pigeon bike all the way from home to the restaurant on this terrific sunny autumn day. That was fun too. After climbing in the Ritan Park we had dinner in the Ritan Highlife complex where there was some opening entertainment like jugglers, clowns, traditional Chinese dancers, something like flamenco dancers, a kid on unicycle and real Brazilian Samba dancers wearing the real costumes despite the chilly weather.

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19.10.2008 von Ines.

This was a great race despite short term change of location! Originally we should have been at the Goose and Duck ranch, but just the day before Trek was told that they cannot set up the race there. So it was changed to the Wenyu riverside in Shunyi. Getting ready for the race:

Here an extract of the race report from Tom Lanhove from Belgium (with some comments added):The “open” race (first time racers) was won by Samy Khoury from the US. He had a slow start but managed to come into second position, behind fellow USA Mike Bilan. Mike had a super race and quickly had a large gap to 2nd place Samy. Cruising on his way to victory, he met with cyclo cross’ Murphy’s Law: Sadly (though quite common) Mike punctured at 2 rounds before the end. Lucky for Mike he found a spare wheel and still finished 4th. Ines (GER) made 3rd in this race and thereby won the separate women’s classification ahead of Helen Melville (CHN).

The advanced category race was won by Todd (USA), ahead of a Chinese rider from the UCC team and Dieter (Belgium). Like the “open” race, disaster struck the likely victor of the race. Dieter from Belgium is a known MOB rider and I personally saw how awesome he is on rough terrain in Mongolia. With that specialized skill and the legs to finish it off, he was well on his way to victory when his front wheel literally exploded. This allowed both Todd and the UCC rider to overtake him. Luckily Dieter was able to jog (!) his way to third. And this because Tom decided not to overtake the jogging Dieter but stay behind and come in on 4th place. That was a great gesture of fairplay from Tom. That was awesome!

For pictures of the race go to Picasaweb of Cyclosportschina, Pictures on Dongfanghong, Picasaweb of Chris, Picasaweb pictures from Udo. More pictures from another friend are on flickr. Here is just a short video clip of the race.

Cycling back we came through the 798 Art District full of contemporary art galleries. My friend took some pictures:

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11.10.2008 von Ines.

Trek organized an introduction to Cyclo Cross racing and training. They held it at the Wenyu riverside in Shunyi. We cycled out and back to the city afterwards as it was such gorgeous weather. Trek gave out Cyclo Cross bikes (similar to road race bikes but with wider rims and tires) as loaners for people like me who do not have one. It was great fun to jump off the bike, jump over barriers, carry the bike uphill and jump back on again. Cyclo Cross riding seems very fun - I am looking forward to teh upcoming race season (6 races).

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10.10.2008 von Ines.

Today early morning was the opening of the 8th Book Fair in Ditan Park. They had many booths - for example from the Beijing Association of Science and Technology (BAST) as well as an exhibition of almost real size pictures of the Chinese Olympic athletes. The Beijing Youth Daily newspaper had a small bike race course with obstacles like rocks and wood. That was fun.

The Beijing Youth Daily and the Chinese Cycling Association are promoting cycling as an alternative transportation method. So I was asked to perform tricks on my trick bike as a “green” environmentally friendly sign.

And here are two cycling friends Tian He (from the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper) and Lao Zhao

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4.10.2008 von Ines.

My two friends from San Francisco wanted to come out on the road bike ride. Tom had arranged two nice road bikes for them. I had tried to have somebody write down the address of the meeting point the night before. But that seemed to have failed. And the bigger problem was that they did not have a working phone. So there Tom, the other cyclists and me were waiting for them. At a certain point the group left and I continued waiting. I got fascinated by this mountain bike. Can you find out why?

A typical old Chinese bike will always have the saddle holder mounted pointing forward, so that the saddle would be mostly in front of the saddle post. My theory is that the huge bikes were uncomfortable for the mainly small Chinese so they just started installing the saddles that way round. But for this mountain bike it looked like the stem was mounted the opposite way. That was never an option for the old bikes, because they did not have any stem.

For my friends: We actually did meet that day. They found somebody with a mobile phone and had her call me. Then we actually did ride a bit through Beijing and up to Wangjing and a nearby country side market. It was quite nice despite the cold temperature (much colder than the day before) and the dark clouds that were always giving the impression that it would start to rain any minute.

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2.10.2008 von Ines.

A cyclist that I met this year in San Francisco came today to Beijing together with his friend. He sent me some emails before this trip and then we met up when they arrived to have dinner together in a small Shanxi restaurant around the corner from their hostel. It is their first time to China and they were trying to absorb the first impressions of Asia and the fact that they had been ripped off by a bike rickshaw. Two things I find remarkable:

1. Sports (or other hobbies) is a great way to get in contact with other people. There is instantly a common ground to talk about, especially if you are passionate about that sport (or hobby). I love contacting cyclists when I travel to other countries or cities. It is a great way to get in contact with locals.

2. I find it great how nowadays the whole world is connected. You can stay in contact with friends via emails or networking sites. It makes things so much easier than they used to be 30 years ago.

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