China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Shannon Ricky and I said we meet for an early morning road bike ride all the way up North-West to Miaofeng Mountain. We had a 5:30 am meeting point just at the famous Beijing Hotel. I had luck because I found an electric bike rider that was riding at 30 km/h that I could draft behind all the way to the meeting point. Shortly before our meeting point I noticed a road cyclist standing on the sidewalk. My first thought was “great to see Chinese people in lycra this early on a weekday”. My second thought was “was that maybe Shannon? Maybe he does not know where the Beijing Hotel is”. And then by the time I thought my 3rd thought I was almost at the meeting point. Shannon came after a while and was unhappy that I passed him without stopping to help with his flat tire. Both me and Ricky gave him our pumps. Mine is the kind where you need to turn the inside of the head around if you switch from American to French valves. Well it is probably not the best thing to do early in the morning standing right over a sewage grid. Well the obvious happened, I dropped the pump head and it nicely rolled into the slits and dropped into the sewage water.

After a long flat ride as a peloton I suddenly hit a rock a got a pinch flat. Now that my pump had no head anymore and Ricky’s wasn’t working Shannon helped me pump up the new inner tube. But with his pump he broke my inner tube valve. So I took off the new now broken tube and patched the original inner tube and put it back. Then it was not far to the foot of the Miaofengshan where we split up so that each of us could try to beat their own best time. I was already feeling quite tired so I only did the 13km uphill ride from the gate to the village.

Shannon and Richy continued the additional 6 km continuous uphill to the temple at the top. It was quite windy on the mountain and I was happy when they both came back.

As we approached Beijing city the traffic started getting worse and worse. And what I find annoying is all the cars parked and driving in the bike lane. Like here, this picture shows a pure bike lane, but it has people parked on the left and right side plus cars riding in the center. Where should the cyclists ride their bike?

Or here in this picture the white line on the left divides the car lane from the bike lane. But the cars are all jammed up and standing in the bicycle path. No cyclist can ride through this mess. So it was even worse that after today’s 130km bike ride that Shannon insisted that we try out the route for tonight’s STC ride and we had to squeeze ourselves through the city traffic jams.

Finally I could join my first cyclo cross race of the 2009/2010 season in Beijing. TREK had already organized 2 cyclo cross races and this one was the last of the series for this winter.

Last season I was racing on loaner bikes from TREK. Last summer I bought the TREK entry level cyclo cross bicycle hoping for many races. But today was the first time I raced on it.

The race was organized well. There was an A group, a B group, the women and the children. The A group started first and the B and women started 1 minute afterwards. So we were all racing at the same time which made it more interesting.

The course was shorter than last season and there was only a very short part on the road, the rest was on the extremely dry (dry Beijing) and hard fields. Of course there was no mud anywhere. I am not sure it was good to be on a road bike with cyclo cross tires as it was really uneven in most parts of the lap. A suspension fork like on some of the mountain bikes would have helped to absorb the shocks. Actually most of the contestants were riding mountain bikes this year. With the barriers and the jumping on and off the bike you really feel your heart working. Half way through it started getting really tough, I felt my legs get softer and my hands having hard time to keep a firm grip with all the shaking of the bike vibrating over the corn field. It was a big relief to hear the bell for the last lap.

Jenny from Canada was fast and fit as always so she won and finished way ahead of me (2nd place). The Chinese girl that won 3rd place was actually quite fast. But unfortunately I lapped all the other girls – that means there had been more than an entire lap slower. Why are there not more fast Chinese girls participating? For the A riders our French friend Tony came in first place and Piers had a problem with his pedal so he only came in 3rd place.

The bus on the way home was stuck in massive afternoon traffic jams. I should have just ridden my bike home as that would have been much faster. But I do not know where I could have ridden my bike. In many places the cars (traffic jam) was blocking the bike lane. On the one stretch there were two car lanes in one direction and on each side a bike lane. But all 4 lanes were filled with cars.

One car that was incorrectly driving in the bike lane hit an electric bike. Instead of saying sorry the car driver got out and started hitting the electric bike rider. But he did not foresee that the electric bike rider was more fit (as he does not drive cars) and was soon in the superior position.

I just remembered when I did the test for the Chinese driver’s license in 2005 we first had to listen to a 20 minute video instructing us that any disobedience of the Chinese traffic rules and laws will be followed with punishment. They showed how they have cameras every where in the city tracking drivers that do not follow the rules. I complete forgot about that because living here you experience so many people breaking the traffic law all the time. Maybe it is just too often to actually be tracked. But I really would hope that the cars would stay out of the Beijing bicycle lanes. That would make it less dangerous.

My ankle that I twisted in Taiwan which doing some tricks on somebody’s bike is still not fully healed. But now after the race I might take the tape off.