Good Morning all,
I have just arrived in Hong Kong and I am now waiting for my flight to Taipei, Taiwan.
During the flight from London I managed to sleep for nearly 10 hours.. I think I needed to rest a bit...
Last night in London was hard to leave particularly when my son told me: ” Please daddy stay with us”... I had to fight hard with myself to regain the force to leave.
I have been given the chance to ride with the PRO from Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, la Vuelta and all other champions from different part of the world at this amazing event 16 hours away from home. I am sure that there will be other occasions in the future for them to join me in my adventures....
So, now lets talk about this event.
The main event, which is on Saturday is called KOM Taiwan Challenge, KOM stands for King Of The Mountain, obviously you might imagine why...
We will start the race at 0630 on the road next to the beach at sea level and we will be finishing the race (hopefully) at 3275 meters from sea level after a distance of 105km.
I have done races where the distances where much longer, but the peculiarity of this one is that the total climb is long 87km, which means that nearly 90% of the race will consist in cycling up hill.
The total ascent is 3500 meters, quite a lot for such a short distance if you think that most of the best cycling events in Europe in the Alps the do the same amount in at least 140km or maybe more.
Obviously having the top boys and girls in the race, means that all the entourage of cars will be following the big peloton of 444 riders from all over the countries.
There will be different 4 feeding stations with mechanical support from Shimano.
The top riders are expected to finish it within the 4 hours mark, about myself.... I am happy to finish within the limit time of 6.5 hours.
The other event will be held on Sunday Morning at 0630 next to Sun Moon Lake, in a remote area of Taiwan, this race will be much shorter and will give the chance to local rider to ride with the PRO (professional).
In this race, if my legs don’t hurt too much, I will push hard to see if I can keep up with the top dogs and play the game with them, hopefully without crashing.
