10 Questions About Cycling Taiwan

I stumbled across an article today in which Paul McMurray, a Canadian with 11 years of Taiwan experience, briefly introduces Taiwan cycling. This is a pretty good run down. There are only two points I found really annoying. The first is in framing Taiwan by its relationship to China. I don't find this necessary and in many ways it serves to, again, reduce Taiwan to a subordinate of China. You rarely hear Japan located by its relationship to Korea or Russia. Taiwan is actually close to Japan and the Republic of the Philippines as well. I think too much emphasis is placed on China when dealing with Taiwan and it merely reflects an unrepresentative policy which was promoted for several decades and is being rolled out again. Regardless, it is worth a read.

Read the full article: here

Plan For Sunday

With rain clouds scheduled to rift by Sunday, we have the all clear for a hilly ride through Nantou with some out of town guests. This will be a run-up to the Cross-Island tour scheduled for later in the month. That would be over 2200 meters of vertical climbing and 100 miles (167km). If at any point it looks too ambitious there are several outs. It should be fun. Anyone else want to join?

Bike route 522099 - powered by Bikemap

Election Season: When Everyone's A Jock!

The CNA through Taiwan Focus has found the journalistic integrity to campaign on behalf of the KMT:

Taipei, June 1 (CNA) The secretary-general of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) has agreed to take part in a triathlon Oct. 30, even though he will be running the party campaign for municipality elections at the end of November, race organizers said Tuesday.

In Taiwan, athletics and election stunts go hand in hand. Does anyone remember the ghoulish-looking Ma Ying-jiu taking his round island bike ride while crowing about being naked under his clothes so he could embarrass himself in front of someone's teen daughter in an effort to suppress his private image as a milquetoast, in exchange for a more botoxed and HGH-looking image of youth and virility? They've even got King Liu in on the charade to promote policies that threaten to undercut Taiwan's smaller manufacturers.

As we build toward the municipality elections, keep your eyes open for the bicycle to again feature prominently in electioneering and high talk of bike trails and green commuting to fill the ad space and party-owned news network coverage. Be sure to cast a cyclical eye toward all this posturing as there is only one real Taiwanese political athletic He-Man：

Spike The Bike

With accusations flying against the biggest names in the peloton and current points leader Alejandro Valverde suspended for two years for doping, what more could happen to tarnish the sport. If all the athletes are presumed to be doping... then it is still a fair fight... right? Until you spike the bike.

Oh yes my friends... now there are rumors flying that Fabien Cancellara was riding a "doped" bike when he won Roubaix and here is how they say it could have been done. Bullshit... or not!

And Now For The Rest

I don't have too much to worry about for the month of May as work and family commitments have limited my ability to follow my inclination... on some damned fool crusade... to destroy myself on the seat of a bicycle... all in the name of a good time. But the month of June I hope to tear it up something awful.

When I get these crazy notions in my head to push myself to my physical limits or train to achieve some seemingly arbitrary goal, I risk the dangers of overreaching and overtraining; two common conditions that occur in ambitious athletes.

After a major physical effort I am more prone to sickness, injury and I have even felt a type of general malaise. It happens to us all. The stronger we get the more it takes to push us to that edge. Still, rest is a very important part of training and it can make a huge difference in performance increases. So, today I will rest and then hit tomorrow hard and fast, do some climbing practice on Thursday, before resting up for a hill century on Sunday to make sure my glycogen stores are filled and I am ready for a long day in the saddle.

There is a great article on training here with an excerpt below:

"Overreaching lasts from a few days to 2 weeks and is associated with fatigue, reduction of maximum performance capacity, and a brief interval of decreased personal performance. Recovery is achieved with a reduction in training or a few extra days of rest.

Overtraining (overtraining syndrome, staleness, systemic overtraining) is the result of many weeks of exceeding the athlete’s physiologic limits and can result in weeks or months of diminished performance - symptoms normally resolve in 6-12 weeks but may continue much longer or recur if athletes return to hard training too soon. It involves mood disturbances, muscle soreness/stiffness, and changes in blood chemistry values, hormone levels, and nocturnal urinary catecholamine excretion.

Stress factors such as the monotony of a training program and an acute increase in training program intensity lasting more than a few days increase the risk of development of overtraining. On the other hand, heavy training loads appear to be tolerated for extensive periods of time if athletes take a rest day every week, and alternate hard and easy days of training.

Pathologic fatigue is deined as fatigue and tiredness that cannot be explained by the volume of training. These are generally medical conditions such as infection, neoplasia, disorders of the blood, cardiovascular, or endocrine systems, and psychologic/psychiatric disorders. Included in this grouping are the side effects of medications and "chronic fatigue syndrome" - an ill defined medical condition. A recent article has muddied the water even further by describing muscle changes from years of high volume exercise training that may be related to this entity. Another controversial possibility is iron deficiency without anemia - although this is much more common in endurance runners than cyclists."

Basso Takes Pink: News Cycles

In cycling news today: Ivan Basso ascended the podium at the Giro d'Italia decked in pink after claiming one of the most memorable and epic Giros to date. The Giro, along with its twin sister, the Tour de France, make up two of the three classic stage races. Stage racing is a long game with strategies and tactics thought out well in advance that may be slow to materialize over the course of a three week race. Each stage can take several hours to complete and for the casual sports fan, that is just too long to tune in to follow. For those who feel nine innings of baseball is too slow, watching cycling is torture. Lots of armchair sports fans tune in to the final stage and that is about it. This year's Giro had me captivated day in and day out and here is why:

The Giro At A Glance:

• The opening flat stages in Holland threw some nasty winds at the riders, causing some pile-ups that threw the entire race into disarray. Early favorites like Sastre were virtually eliminated from the start. Other teams were crippled to the point of losing some of their more talented support riders and making the distribution of the workload more concentrated on a few.

• Again, the weather created chaos for the Strada Bianchi Stage 7 and a little bad luck and a few forced mistakes threw the contest back up in the air.

• Stage 12 saw the GC contenders hammer on each other to gain the upper hand in a stage that had originally been a bone thrown to the big sprinters in the group.

• Nibali's stupidly amazing descent on the slick roads of Stage 14 to give the Italians a taste of home filed advantage.

• The duel between Cadel Evans' thumping power and Ivan Basso's featherlight tip-toe styles of climbing up the Zoncolan on Stage 15.

• The Plan de Corones ITT mtn TT saw riders opt for amateurishly looking compact cranks with 26-28 cassettes to lamely struggle up the pukingly steep ascents.

• The insanely heroic descent made by Arroyo on Stage 19 on the wet roads that made the mighty, mighty Basso flinch.

• Stage 20 was amazingly beautiful. I caught some of it on an internet feed and it looked like a string of postcards. with a descent on the other side that crackled with crisp technical feats and the electricity of speed.

News Cycles:

Taylor Phinney of Trek-Livestrong won his second U23 Paris-Roubaix here. This is pretty significant as Phinney, son of the former Team 7-11 star and US National Champion Davis Phinney, and is actualizing all the expectations heaped upon him as America's next great cyclist.

Taiwan's Super Athlete, Craig Johns, covers the Hualien Triathlon and sadly announces his retirement from triathlons here. The local triathlete community can now breathe a sigh of relief that his reign of terror has come to an end. This does not mean the cyclists can have a reprieve as Johns will continue to pursue cycling which isn't so hard on the joints.

Nathan reports on our Sunday ride here. This is why a Garmin is great.

Michael C. loses a street brawl with a pothole here.

Sabinna schools us on component sourcing here.

Joe Friel tells us everything science really knows about muscle cramps here. The short answer is "nothing", but don't tell the sport drink and supplement companies. I always find discussions of cramping interesting as I suffer from cramping on occasion. I found the best solution is the kitchen sink approach. I take 3 Tums before a ride for the magnesium, a couple bananas before a ride for potassium, try to stretch my calves (usual culprit), adjust my fit, drink enough liquids with a mix of water and sport drink on hot days... basically everything short of voodoo magic.

Darryl has launched his awesome directory for bike blogs here. I have to hand it to him for putting out the effort to consolidate the bike-blog universe into an easy to use directory that is easily classified into category and location. Check the Taiwan blogs ;)

Virginia Xing blogs on her preparations for a weekend of racing (even if it was complicated by rain) here. I was happy to have chatted with her a bit on the phone the other day to officially make her acquaintance. I hope to ride with her in the future to learn a thing or two. If you visit her blog you can see how much effort she puts into her training... and with a fistful of little boys to herd. Truly heroic.

Anyone else have something to report?

Beyond Lukang

Dog Watching

I hadn't planned on doing any riding today and was feeling good from yesterday's ride, so I thought a little stretching the legs might be about it for a lazy Sunday. I work hard all week and ride hard when I can. I figured I deserved a day to laze around.

Then I got the call that Nathan M. would be on his way down to sell one of the bikes in his stable and intended to do a little riding before meeting the buyer. The biking addiction turned on and I was ready to fly out the door for another ride. Michael T. was also on his way down to my area and the weather wasn't rainy. Yes!

Nathan is a really strong and dedicated rider who brings his big-city Taipei style of cycling down to quaint little Taichung every so often. Nathan is fast and powerful, so I was eager to stretch my legs out a bit.

Old Power Line

We passed through Lukang and headed into the tangle of roads that cut through the mud flats and fish ponds along the coast.

Following the Freeway

I really wish I could fully describe where we went so that any interested readers could check it out for themselves, but the roads out there are just a scramble of little lanes and alleys that follow along the Number 61 Freeway. That's about all I can say to describe our route. I highly recommend just getting out there and if you have the time, try to get a little lost.

Nathan Opens A Can Of Whup-Ass!

I had a great time exchanging pulls with Nathan. We pushed the speeds up into the mid 40's and made use of the flat terrain to open it up... to run the carbon out... er whatever.

Navigating The Landscape

As we headed North, the headwind really picked up. I like to call it doing "flat hills." Both hills and wind involve a force pushing you backward that you must resist.

Overpass

We passed through all sorts of concrete bridgeworks and coastal construction projects. At one point Nathan and I exchanged pulls on a long, open bridge with a nasty headwind. We each managed to sustain a paltry 28kph the entire way and were both pretty much ready to turn the wind off by the end.

We wound our way back to the HSR station in time to meet the buyer and make a successful sale. It was a really nice day of riding. I felt great to be in good company with Michael and Nathan, and we had enough challenges along the way to give me the satisfaction of getting a good ride in. I love days like this.

Michael and Nathan Pose On A Dike

Nathan's Report with maps here