The difference between the 2.5 and 595
KOTRTpit view by the jinx It's all about the bike! That is all I can say. Our usual Sun road ride turned out to be a clash of the titans. We started at Jab Hutan @ 8am as usual. It's unusual to see such a small group of 11 riders only instead of the usual 30-40 plus riders who would faithfully turn up for the Sun ride. Maybe the word Kg Masjid intimidated people from joining! The pace was civil ONLY for the 1st 5km before some riders kicked up the pace! It was a consistent average pace of high 30s km/h until the town of Serdang. We were slightly lucky as everyone cooperated taking leaps. 
The biggest surprise was one of our Knights (who claimed he hasn’t the time to run in his bike or so he claimed!) managed to cope with the pace. Is it the bike or secret 'yellow' ride that helped him improve tremendously? :) Malik, please confirm this? :)
We waited at Serdang town for someone who dropped out citing the reason of having an intimate time with his wife the night before. That was what he claimed lah! :) We continued from there onwards to the town of Selama. The rolling hills were flattened by our strides! So u go figure lah! :p Reaching Kubu Gajah, we were 'supposed' to stop for our usual break but Kulim Lee decided that we should extend our ride and stop later to enable us to condition ourselves better for the upcoming Broga ride the following week. We stopped for refreshments at Kg Yaman, exactly 70km away from Jab Hutan. The stop was short for Kulim Lee's group as everyone didn’t want their legs to cool down for the upcoming climb at KM 82! 
The pace slowly increased as we were about to reach the climb. My Goodness! The climb wasn’t kind to us at all. We were like flies being sprayed with Shelltox! We were riding like 'pening lalat'! Kesian, suruh duduk rumah diam-diam tak mau! Padan muka :p We regrouped at Kg Masjid town for a quick drink and quickly headed towards the recommended 'short cut' route thru’ the National Service camp road. 
’Gracefully’ we rode thru the Kampung road before we were greeted by the spikey 'tiga beradik' hills. Slowly the group ‘disintegrated’ to smaller units! All that was left at the rear were 3 lost souls; me, Chen-pion and Kito-san. Kito has been murmuring some language which only those in the cycling fraternity could understand; most of it unprintable here! U get the pic, right? So go figure it lah... 
We regrouped again at the junction. The group received a welcome break when Stephen's tire punctured! We weren’t sure though it was on purpose or his tire was already due for a change. This guy always kena puncture at the 'right' time! :) Anyway, THANKS to him lah nyawa sempat masuk balik :) We stopped for brunch at Selama. We ate, chatted, talked cock and rested approximately 30mins before we continued our ride. 
We were contemplating to choose the alternate routes from Selama... I suggested Sedim/Bukit Hijau.... guess what? All of them shouted GILA! ha ha ha... 
In the end we decided on the Sg Tengas route. It'll be another 30km to our car park. The pace peaked again just before Sg Tengas climb and this time all of us gave our utmost effort to clear the climb. From Sg Tengas junction towards Jab Hutan, we still had another 12km before the car park,.... the group went on an idiotic pace again as if being chased by a ghost! My speedo meter showed 177 beat/min for my heart and 38km/hrs for speed. Goodness, am I killing myself today?! We kept the high pace although someone tried to ‘curi KFC’. I pulled in front for long time and every time I 'opened' the leap, this guy would say... 'I dah tired...' so I continued to pull but suddenly this 'tired' guy tried to breakaway! Hmm…where got gentleman like that!? So I pun showed off 'who's the boss' skill lah... :) Only me, Stephen and Fauzi were left in front and guess what? God sent us a car to ‘pace’ us to extend our lead further from the rest.... 'Forty! Forty!' I shouted at Sam who KFC the ride today and opted to drive and join us for last 15km instead. :) The 5km of drafting behind the little Suzuki Swift was a welcome relief.... errrr... cheating :) What a big relief all of us reached the car park safely :) We had done 140km 'only' with riding time of 4hrs 55mins. Our average was only 30.1km/hr.... TC! Thanks to Kulim Lee for organizing this ride to prepare us for the upcoming Broga ride on 20th April.
top |
