By Darren Lee

Route : Round Island, 8:30am, 60+km

I had a fabulous time that day. There were about 60 riders joining the convoy, which I believe is quite some record by Penang standards. It was the first time that I had joined such a large group (the biggest group I had joined until then was about 15 people), and from what I gather from conversations with other riders, it was the first time for many of the people too. Most of the riders were guys; the girls numbered around five I think.

Broken down, there were about 50 mountain bikers, and about 10 roadies. Vastly outnumbered, I had thought of turning back and doing a ride on my own. The night before, that was the plan, until a pal Edwin called up to join me. Fine, two dudes. Then he called again and told me about this Merdeka ride. His estimate? 10-plus people. Har har. Talk about an understatement.

Anyway, mountain bikers or not, Edwin and I decided to join the ride. The planned time was 8:00am, but of course, as you know in Malaysia ... we pushed off at 8:30.

We stopped four times along the entire route, which was as follows :

The yellow oval represents the start/finish, while the squares were the rest stops.

As we pushed off from Sunrise Tower, we formed a string along Jalan Tanjong Tokong, and as you can imagine, 60 people make a very long string. Curious motorists slowed down to have a look at presumebly what some (non-cyclists) might say "alien-ish looking people".

One disappointing thing about this ride was this : Although this was a group ride, the group broke up hardly 2 km into the journey. The state riders went first (as usual), followed by the fast riders, the average riders and finally, the beginners and newbies. It was disappointing because riding as a group is always more fun, and now with the group split over a distance of a few kilometres, it feels like just another solo ride.

When the group started splitting up, I stayed at the back for a while. In fact, I think I was in the last group! I must have missed the pre-ride briefing, because I thought that this ride would be a non-stopper, so I was a little "kia-su" lah (whew, that was a hard admission to make! :) and decided to crank up the pace. Overtook some MTB-ers, and before I knew it, I had arrived at the first stop where the majority of the group were already there, resting and waiting for the rest.

I chatted up the first MTB-ers that I came across, and lo and behold ... they are roadies in disguise riding MTBs! Sheesh, talk about hitting the right targets.

We push on ... now comes the Teluk Bahang Dam climb. It can kill ..... We reach the top of the dam and wait for the others to come up. Then, group pic! And some well-appreciated 100-Plus :-)

Going on, came the 5km Tropical Fruit Farm climb ... my favourite climb. As the climb comes right after the Dam, the group was still bunched together, but as expected it broke up soon into the first kilometer.

Going downhill, I was doing about 45km/h, which was really fast (and risky!), then again, I knew if anything happened, there'll be people around to help (I hope! :-). From then on, it was a 12km jaunt to the next stop, Balik Pulau town. The wind was really in your face, and I struggled to maintain a steady pace.

Thankfully, I ended up sharing pacing duties with another guy riding an MTB. I must say I was duly impressed ... with the guy and with the bike! He was the only one riding a Cannondale with a single swingarm front suspension ... being a non-MTB-er, my eyes nearly popped out when I saw the fork - whew! What in the world is mountain bike manufacturers up to nowadays?! We did 30km/h all the way to town. Never found out his name though.

At the Balik Pulau town, the leaders decided to go up the biggest one of them all ... the Tun Sardon climb. A 4 kilometer killer with an average gradient of 10% ... and if you just yawned at that, try going up it yourself!

However, in a group, thing seem much easier. I know I was doing roughly the same speed as when I do go up alone, but I was feeling quite ok this time. Alone, I would usually die by the 3km mark! :-))

Finally, we reach the top. This was the final, and longest stop since the time gap between the first and last rider was huge! I estimated we were there for about half an hour or so. Another round of drinks. And this time there was the spectacular view of the island to take in from the peak.

We go down the hill. As they say, fabulous uphill, fabulous downhill. This is where you can actually hit 80km/h on a road bike. Scary. After that, there were a couple more climbs around the Bukit Jambul area before we reach (finally) flat ground from Green Lane onwards.

We finally reach Sunrise Tower. Checking around the scene, it appears that many riders had gone straight home, and the only ones there were those who drove their vehicles with their roof racks on.

I look at my watch. Amazingly, it was already 1:00pm! What started out as a 60 km ride would eventually take 4.5 hours. That would mean the stops came up to around 1.5 to 2 hours. Whoo wee ...

Looking back, I felt that the stops were just too long! Long breaks have a disadvantage - your muscles start relaxing and you lose the "spring" in your legs. It can be leg breaking going up a climb after relaxing for 20 minutes. Staying as a group would have solved this problem (we can limit the stops to a maximum of 10 minutes each), but then again, the fast riders would probably never agree to this.

Also, I just wonder how the mountain bikers must have felt at roadies overtaking them. It's not that we're faster or fitter, it's just that our bikes are lighter and naturally we will go faster. Especially going up the hills. So to all MTB-ers, musch apologies if you thought we were showing off! :-)

Finally, I do hope that there'll be another expedition soon ... so how about the Deepavali holidays?