another podium, another sunstroke

last Saturday was the 3rd round in the Taiwan Club Series Championships, a season-long competition run by the hard-working Taiwan Cyclist Federation that I’ve yet to be able to completely participate in due to overseas racing commitments. there isn’t much racing in Taiwan so it’s a shame that i usually miss the good parts of it, but it’s always fun to do what i can and to catch up with the local guys.

last week’s event was a short 8km hill-climb that i managed to win last year in a record-setting time of 16 minutes on the nose, but the preparations this year haven’t been as good and i’m still a good few kgs over my ideal weight thanks to a variety of reasons, pizza my recent illness chief amongst them.

me and two buddies set off by bike for the event from our town at 6am, signed on at 7, raced at 9ish – and got home at 3pm. the beauty of racing in Taiwan and indeed most of Asia is that if you podium, they make you suffer by making you hang around a roasting hot car park for hours on end before you get your medal and cash-in-an-envelope.

fortunately i’m a huge fan of standing around on melting black tarmac in 38 degree heat in 90% humidity. in fact, it’s what i do most weekends here in summer, just for fun, so i take it all in stride…

i got home at 3pm and washed down countless ice lollies with a 2 liter bottle of Coke’s finest gut-rot, head bathed in a towel stuffed with ice.

i did come 2nd though, but a whopping 25 seconds down on my best time (4 seconds down on the winner).

so, it was all worth it in the end!

big thanks as ever to my sponsors, Lapierre and Jean-Maxim Guyot and the French crew, BLKTEC and Greg Grobler, Laura and Daniel at 720Armour, Colin Leung and the guys at CCN, Micki and the mad folk at Lezyne, and XEndurance.