China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

The road bike ride today started at Huairou at about 50m elevation. The ten „A“ riders cycled along the small valley northwards to the Jiao Je He Pass at 550m.

After that pass we continued on to the Queenstown pass at 900m altitude. It is a intriguing climb because in between it gives the impression you are already at the top, but you are not and it is still quite far. Here are the guys at the summit – all sweaty and wet due to the humid weather.

On the way down we stopped in a village with yard marked with a huge „商店“ (shang dian = store)  sign to refill our water bottles. A Chinese cyclist on a touring bike stopped and said hi. It is still rather unusual to see real Chinese cyclists with cycling clothes and helmet. He said he is from Huairou and he rides every weekend. Very nice guy and packed as if he was on the road for one week.

The next climb was along the national road up to the Yun Gu Shan with the pass at about 700m. The total uphill riding that we did today was 1466 meters with an average gradient of 2% and a maximum of 9%. Here two pictures just after that last summit.

The average velocity of the A riders I was riding with was 28.5km/h. My average pedal revolution was only 69/minute. There are nice graphs of the elevation of this loop on the Cyclo Sports China website.

The Beijing Peloton had a nice long ride for today. Specifics of the Huairou – Yanqing Passage Ride for the fast group (A riders):
Total distance: 113km
Total climbing: 4 climbs

We started in Huairou just north of Beijing. We rode north towards Queenstown (note: the name was given by Tom Lanhove a long time ago) and over the Queenstown Pass. That first climb was tough because the whole group was going at full speed and was really exhausted at the summit.

The second pass we all took it more easy and most people riding at their own pace. There were hardly any cars on this beautiful mountain road. But we did need to stop to buy water in a front yard in a village we rode through on the way down.

In the above picture you see the mountains that were were heading for. The best picture of this front yard is the following one with our club leader Tom Lanhove and his road bike:

We then turned towards the West at the main junction and rode over Dongbei Kou Pass. This was the toughest climb of the day. It was agreat feeling to arrive at the top at about 1050m above sea level.

Then we kept following the main road towards Yanqing as we gradually ride downwards past Yongnin. That was over 40km with a slight climb and otherwise making the impression of a false flat. But as most of the roads in Beijing province there are always trees on both sides of the road. Like here.

At the finish point about 5km outside of Yanqing Town we had to wait for all our cyclists to get back. We had riders doing the shorter B and C rides. And one of the mini vans had problems finding the meeting point.

Today Lulu & Ludwig dropped their luggage off before they went to visit the Summer Palace. Afterwards we had a delicious lunch together at a good guotianr restaurant before they had to leave to fly back to Shenzhen.

Later fixed gear bike friends came and tried out the tall bike. It still amazes especially the Chinese people how you can get on and off. But it is just like a bicycle only the seat is a little bit higher.

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.

This afternoon/evening I met some friends but we had to say goodbye. James is leaving too. It was the last time I saw him. Now that both him and Brad are gone 🙁 I will be the lonely foreigner showing up to the rides of the Beijing Fixed Gear bike group. Another cycling friend is moving back home and had his goodbye party tonight. He was showing the 45 minute video he had taken with a handlebar camera on his daily commute to work. That really shows the feeling of riding in Beijing traffic. Vehicles and people can suddenly approach you from random directions. And another friend had a party but it was just because he moved into a new apartment. Even though he will leave in September.

Today was the 10th big ride of the year organized by the Beijing Peloton. It was a special one as it was the first MOB (Mountain Bikers of Beijing) and Peloton Road Cyclist Joint Ride. Tom had written in the Trek newsletter: To make it official we have adopted the following slogan-esque and easy to remember name: “Glorious Unity Purpose MOB and Peloton Joint Ride To Make Harmonious Society At Bai Hua Shan To Wanr Wanr With Bikes: One Country, Two Bike Systems”. Amazingly, the Chinese version of this slogan is only 4 characters long. 😉

We started at 05:50 a.m. at the TREK Chaoyang store. Bai Hua Shan is located 100km west of Beijing and is situated along a slow and meandering mountain national road number 108. Driving there already took us 3 hours as the that national road was under construction most of the way.

But we all wanted to ride on Beijing’s highest mountain summit road. The Bai Hua Shan Loop had a total distance of 100km for the fast A riders. It was an out and back loop and started at 200m altitude. The road went continuously up for 30km length towards 2000m elevation (6500ft)!

The first part of the road to the foot of the hill was not such a nice ride. All the villages seem to live from coal mining and huge mountains of shredded coal are everywhere. All the old trucks on the road do not just annoy us as they drive roughly the same speed as we cycle but they were all loaded with black coal. On the right side of this picture you see the edge of such a random coal hill.

Well there was a gate at roughly 1300m where we had to stop for a while.

We were all happy that we did continue our ride up this beautiful narrow road that soon turned into many switchbacks. They were really steep that I often had to stand up to get more force onto the pedals.

At the top of Bai Hua Shan mountain there is a monastery. This is the highest temple in Beijing province. There was a monk sitting with us at this bell. We took a picture for one of our sponsors Powerbar.

On the way back back down we could enjoy the beautiful view. I stopped to take many pictures. It happened twice that I was so amazed by the view standing (but still sitting on my bike) to take a picture that I just fell over and could not get out of the clip pedals. On this picture you can see part of the road that we cycled up and back down. It goes all the way to the center of the picture.

All the pictures of this beautiful ride are uploaded to my website. When I arrived back at the mini-bus our driver just started laughing at me. I asked what is up but he did not explain. But other people told me that may face was quite black. And when I got home I had to shower twice to get all the black coal dust off of me.