gainleem
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Rain or Shine
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Singapore
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Ride Report by Rich Herberth 5-0
Today was the Plentong epic in JB, which Ching Soo, David Gan, Ping and I rode. Here's my version of events...Sorry, its long.
I sprang out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4:45am to the sound of my phone ringing. It was the taxi driver letting me know he couldn't get through to Ching Soo who was scheduled for a 5am pickup. Would we be late? CS was on time though and they got to my place and we made our way to Woodlands checkpoint and over the border, no problem. It was still dark when we arrived at the venue. I was instantly bitten by a few mosquitoes. Despite the early start we arrived in good time, no rush faffing with bikes and kit.
The start point was housed in a basketball court. CS and I positioned ourselves in the corner in order to jump the rope and get a head start on the riders at the actual start line. Sadly we guessed wrong and the ride started in the opposite direction, so we had actually jumped ourselves straight to the back. CS remedied this by short-cutting through some nearby shop houses and got himself right behind the landrover which was leading the ride. I got wedged in mid-pack. At the count of 3-2-1, we were off.
I knew it would be a mistake to race off, and guessed that a lot of people would sprint from the start and fade in the first couple of miles. The ride started with a little tarmac, over which I gained a few places, but my bike started making some strange new noises that did not sound good. It was definitely not the brake callipers falling off this time though. The first bottleneck led into some nice single track, but I was stuck behind some slow riders after stoppin g to try and work out what was causing the knocking noises. We headed down into a steep gully and across a wooden bridge, then back down to a foot soaking water crossing. I cleared it intact and dry, with the bonus of seeing some other people get both feet in the stream, hehe! My schadenfreude was short lived, as I ended up following a group which took a wrong turn, and led us back around the same gully, brigde and river crossing. Gutted. On round 2, there were far more people so I wasted about 20 minutes queueing up to cross the stream and this time got a wet foot!
Finally I got ahead of some slower riders, spotted the turn that I'd missed the last time and headed up onto some nice singletrack. Going at my own pace I managed to cover the ground quicker than I thought I could. After the time wasting 2 lap incident and the weird bike noises I'd lost a lot of places to slower people, so spent almost the entire ride overtaking them again. This was often hard on the sing letrack, but there were plenty of wider double track and road sections giving some overtaking opportunities.
There were some very nice trails on this ride, somewhat similar to the ones in Ulu Choh the week before, but with a larger range on nice swooping singletrack. Climbs were mostly short with enough grip to ride, and there were lots of smiles on the long downhills on a mixture of dirt roads and winding singletrack with some small jumping opportunities - my favourite. The temperature was cool and there was a slight breeze, perfect conditions, although I was still soaked in sweat for the entire thing.
Luckily there were frequent water stops, some of which also had bananas and 100+. Just like in Singapore, it had been raining here for several days, meaning huge puddles of murky stinking water all over the place. Bikes and riders ended up very dirty, and my drivetrain lost all its oil in the first 30km and ended up being lubricated solely by dirty water, whic h drowned out the noise from my bike's rear end and allowed me to focus on riding.
On a slightly uphill bumpy clay road, about 30ish km in I started to tire. I decided to stop for a cake, an out of date powerbar and a big chug of carbo drink. This was just the motivation I needed to keep going until the end. The final 20km went by in a flash of dirtroads, muddy ditches and slippery roots. Not far from the end I spotted Ping waving at the side of the trail, another nice motivation, although I immediately took another wrong turn into a farm and had to back track.
The last km was on tarmac, and ended back at the basketball court where it all began 4 hours and 45 minutes earlier. Some smiling ladies put a medal around my neck and handed me a voucher for some noodles. Finally it was over. 55km was tough but very good fun. Ching Soo finished about an hour ahead of me. Very fast! I thought my pace was pretty good, but I couldn't have gone faster. I can't wait to do another event like this.
Position: Unknown, but in first 100 over 55km.
Crashes: 2x over the bars, 1x slip on a slimy corner
Injuries: cuts and scrapes
Bike damage: none
Time: 4:45
Avg heartrate: 147bpm
Cals burned: 4,240
Ride food:2x Bananas, 2x expired powerbars, 6L water, 8hydration tablets, 2x cans of 100+, 2x banana cakes.
Freebies: Plastic medal, t-shirt, snacks, noodles.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
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