Century Week
5 Rides of 100 miles or More in 1 Week
This month I am lucky enough to be able to visit the USA. The Dean of my Faculty, my boss, gave me permission to visit my family, and it was a generous time period as well. I will be going to the USA for 6 weeks, but during that time I will not have either of my bicycles. It will also be cold. Too cold to think about riding. (Although many insane people still do, I see them every day!)
I needed to do a few things work wise, but really, in my heart there were just 2 things to do before leaving Thailand finishing up my 6th year here: I needed to visit my old school, see my favorite class graduate from 6th grade (I started teaching this specific class when they were in 3rd grade, they mean the world to me and this is a big day, sort of the end of a chapter in my life as well seeing as how much time and energy I spent in the 3 years I taught and lived there in Chumpuang with them), and finally, I also wanted the chance to see how far I could push myself regarding distance in 1 month on a bike. I had originally planned to mark it out from March 1st to April 1st, obvious enough, but when I got the chance to visit the LOVELY Southern-most province of Thailand for 9 days of English camp in Naratiwat, I moved the cycling attempt to March 10, the day I got back. I had some items at work to finish up, and then school was out actually, I had plenty of days of desk work with no students around. I had the free time, and I could even work in the visit to Chumpuang just perfectly, without having to even take days off work!
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| My Favorite group of kids, Congratulations! Finally graduating 6th grade... |
I planned to average 100km a day, for 30 days. I would definitely be taking some break days, and so the tough part was scheduling the days in advance which I would have to ride long, not knowing if my body would feel like it when the big days rolled around. All in all, I rode more long rides in a single month that I ever have before, and also set a new personal best for distance in a single week, 931km in 7 days!
The final week of this 30 day cycling stretch would be a trip to the neighboring province of Sakhon Nakhon, attempting to ride 600km in one long weekend. After the final ride of that massive week, I would take one day off, then take the train to the province of Petchburi (near Bangkok), and cap the attempt off with a Trip to Kaeng Krajaan, the National Park which I have been waiting to visit.
Many cool pictures from the past month, but I only really wrote about the “Century Week,” as I thought of it. I was not intending to do 7 Centuries (although I do plan to try eventually!), but I did want to get 5 if I could…. Here’s how it went:
Day 1 of my 7 Century Week, I woke up in my own bed, at the lovely time of 3:20AM. I was going to head South, to Chumpuang, from my new school to my old school it is exactly 100 miles. The way riding out though, using a back road at this early hour in order to avoid potential contact with drunk-driving, the way would be completely unlit (except for my bike light) for almost an hour. I wanted to be fully alert for this, so I woke up even earlier than usual. My goal was to ride 1,000km in this week, from Wednesday to Tuesday instead of Monday to Sunday, and this would take me through 5 Esaan provinces.
Dark, cool, quiet yet breezy, got ready with tons of fruit, a small bowl of oatmeal, and I was out the door - heading to Chumpuang!
The morning was great, the most memorable smells I can remember in a long time! I think I must name Kut Rang District as the nicest smelling place in all of Esaan! I love the smell of both Eucalyptus trees and cow dung (just a hint, not overpowering, triggers good memories), and Esaan has a lot of both. The trees were being cut down, I guess bringing even more of that recognizable smell into the breeze. The first hour was dark, nice and quiet with a cool breeze, and then after turning South-West another perfect 2 hour ride, a very slight wind at my back, just awesome.
Turning South to head down to Chumpuang, things started to heat up, and unfortunately the last 20km was a bit miserable due to the unending line of trucks bouncing down the 2-lane sand/dusty road. My old town is not very large, but it is sort of a waypoint between larger towns, and gets way more through traffic than local traffic. I hope the town is really benefiting from this somehow, because all I see are accidents and traffic problems, and more and more just waiting to happen. I worry about my students racing around on their motorcycles so care-free.
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| The Lunch that had been on my mind since the second I woke up. Literally. Southern Thai food, the super spicy pumpkin and fish curry on the far right is my favorite. |
This first day finished with a full on feast for lunch, Southern Thai food!! I am always excited for this place, and make sure to visit every time I am in Chumpuang… My Thai mom treated me as usual, to way more food than a normal person should be eating at one time - luckily I had just rode for almost 6 hours without solid food, I was ready to put away quite a few bowls of spicy fish curry for lunch.
On Day 2, I actually did not manage to get out for a century, I called this week “Century Week,” but only really planning to get 5 hundred-mile rides into these 7 days. I do not think I am ready for a full 7, the most I have done up to this point is 3 in a week, so 5 sounded about right… Today as well, I was expecting my friend to convince me to go instead for a mountain bike ride, Chumpuang has an amazing MTB course, so I guess it was a good thing that I was not trying to get in a full 700 miles.
This guy is my favorite person to ride with, the person who really got me into cycling again in the first place, and we had a blast cruising through the 7km sand and dirt track that he made, he actually spent the last 5 years perfecting this track totally on his own, cutting and digging it out of an old soldiers’ training camp area! Super fun, and VERY nice to be on an MTB for both my knees and my rear. My body’s just getting used to the road bike I borrowed for this week. Guess it takes some time!
Great time riding around in the morning, one of my favorite things in Chumpuang is having coffee at the town traffic light after a good 90-minute morning ride, laughing at any of the things that can happen in front of your eyes in a small town busy morning intersection, and then waving to several of my students as they ride their parent's bicycles, or walk, to school… great memories had already, and I’m always excited for more! After this morning coffee came a great day taking part in my old favorite class of student’s 6th grade graduation ceremony. This would be another entire article completely to detail the traditions that often come up, both old and new, in graduation ceremonies in Thailand so I will just leave it at this: I had a great day. Many people crying, many warm hearts, many farewells and well-wishing’s, a great day of which I was lucky to take part.
I stayed the night at my Thai mom's house (the lady treating me to lunch in the photo up there at the Southern Thai restaurant, at every restaurant really, and every market too. Thank you and I love you Mae Maew!!) The next morning I was out pretty early, its never good to wait until you can see light when in the hot season in Thailand, which is 9 of the year's 12 months, so my alarm clock is usually going off these days between 3:20am and 4:20am depending on what time I fall asleep the night before... Somehow I don't need as much sleep in the hot weather, I have noticed this for some time.
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| Made great time on the way to Khon Kaen. |
I had enough energy still to consider, and then immediately accept my own decision to add the middle 80km onto my plan for the day. The weather was nice, I felt good, the wind was still helping more than hurting, I had just turned from West to heading straight North… I decided to ride all the way!
Just one big stop on the way, where I had a bag of raisins, a bag of peanuts, an energy drink, 2 bottles of water, and about 16 small dried bananas. Fruit, and maybe even more is dried fruit, although you would then need to make sure you have enough water in you to help in breaking that down, but wow it really is an amazing fuel source. I am pretty much totally fruit fueled when it comes to cycling, I often have more fruit on my plate than is really comfortable for most people to think about eating in a day, let alone a single meal. I never eat dried fruit while at home, its just much more enjoyable to have the full flavor and full-ness from the fruit directly, but for riding, dried fruit is just so much easier to eat, so much less to swallow but all the same calories/vitamins going into your body - the price though, can be downside. Luckily for me, Thailand has quite enough bananas to go around, and so dried bananas here are quite cheap (and all the rest of the fruit I can get is probably what people would call ‘normal’ price for dried fruit anyways, stuff here is just cheap in general - maybe 2 times the price of the same fruit fresh).
Back on the road, got to Khon Kaen, smashed some lunch (eggs and rice, then pineapple and papaya), had some coffee, and promptly fell asleep for 15 minutes.
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| Parting gift from my Amazing Girlfriend, now that is what I call a smart gift-giver!! She new what I wanted, and it was looking like my plane would leave for the USA before the first round of durian hit the local market tables... so she paid for a very high priced durian from the 1 place I know - KhonKaen Tops SuperMarket |
Woke up, readied my bike, and set off at about 330pm. At noon, just getting off the bike after having completed my Century for the day (so I still had 65km remaining to get back home), I was nervous if my rear would feel like touching the seat again a few hours later… but things worked out fine, I was still riding well, and I made it about 20km down the road until - HUGE lightning bolts, super loud thunder, very close, and the sky opens up as the Thailand sky is known to do. “What? The rains shouldn’t be starting yet, ahhhh I am not going to be able to finish my week of Centuries!!” Haha literally my first thought, not what it should of been, something more along the lines of “Uh-oh, its 5pm, you are heading towards ever-increasing dangerous roadways and the sunlight is not getting any brighter today, maybe dangerous conditions to be cycling…” Oh man.
I said a few prayers, rode on slowly, knowing that getting stuck would be worse than getting wet - and man did I get wet. So many trucks passing who thought nothing of giving me complete and full muddy-water showers that I smelled just stunning when I finally got home. Even though there were several times when the trucks got too close for comfort, I managed to keep my composure, my angels protected me (or maybe I just have one very strong Guarding Angel), and I made it through to Chiang Yeun, the town halfway between Khon Kaen and my house.
I caught a lift with a policeman another 20km down the road, out of the way, but at least it was not raining!! I rode the final 20km home on beautifully dry, wonderfully low-traffic roads. Reaching the University again was awesome, today it was a sight for sore eyes all those thousands of motorbikes parked in every way possible, and I had an Esaan favorite meal to close out the day; sticky rice, Som Tam, and a veggie omelette.
Day 4. I will happily admit that I have no idea where my legs came from today. It was almost as if yesterday was the perfect warm-up for today. A 225km warm-up, hmm. I think everyone would like to say that! I went to work in the morning, and a student in the MSU bike club wrote me saying that he would like to join. Pretty cool, as he didn’t even know where I wanted to go. The crazy guy brought a mountain bike, yes we were heading for the mountains, but the distance I wanted to go would mean that we would pretty much use only the smooth roads. His bike being the heavy mountain bike would only mean that he would have to work harder, with none of the fun benefits (being able to go off road on any of the million small side trails that appear when taking a trip of this length in Thailand). Usually I take my mountain bike when I go for the multi-day trips, but this time I was going to enjoy the road bike. One can ride so much further (depending on how you ride, you may only use 50% of the energy for the same amount of time - HUGE difference), and also climb quite a bit faster (because the bike is lighter, and not so much because of the tire size (although it is definitely a factor as well in the case of poor/rough roads)).
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| My Ratapon and I at the top of Phu Pha Yon's crazily steep staircase. How anyone over 50 gets up here, I have no idea... |
So we set out together, knowing that I would be leading almost the entire trip. He did take the lead for about 1 hour of the 14 hours we rode (in 2 days), and I did not fault him at all. He was able to lead during the 2 big descents, and that was a huge help knowing that his sturdy bike and tire setup could lead the way down much more safely. We left in the Thai 2pm full-on-sun, but I was too excited at this point to care. We rode extremely quickly to town of Kalasin (40km), and on to the hilly section before Som Det (80km), before starting the main climb of the day. Again, somehow, who knows why, but I was not complaining at all, I felt fresh and awesome, very excited and ready for the 400m climb. It is not the steepest hill, but I love this area. Huge trees, these hills have been protected for awhile and so if there was any forest degradation (people stealing trees to sell, or build their own houses), it is not very noticeable. There are also huge families of monkeys around, and at times they totally cover the road. They are so used to cars that it can be tough sometimes to get them out of the way!
I managed to get 2nd in the climb, but looking back on Strava, I actually climbed faster in the 2nd half than the first. I lost to the leader by 50 seconds, still a significant gap out of the 30 minute climb, also making it obvious that this is not a highly contested climb :), but I was still happy with this effort. I am willing to bet that the guy in 1st did not ride 300km in the day and a half leading up to his attempt. So I felt great… and really, awesomely, I still did feel great! We went on to finish off the final 40km of hills and arrive at our hotel by 8pm. Not ideal to be riding in the dark, let alone hills, but there was very low traffic and I knew these roads pretty well after having come the same way by motorbike earlier in the month.
We asked some kids in front of the market about a place to eat, the market having closed already (small town), and we ended up at the home of a very friendly guy from the South of Thailand. I had an awesome plate of vegetables with rice, and then another plate of eggs and rice, and headed back to the hotel. This student had a lot of questions about Africa actually, mostly about cycling, but talking about road quality and options for travel inevitably leads to explanations of the bigger picture of life as well as far as culture, politics, social norms, and so he listened quite intently. It was great! We probably should not have talked for so long, but it was such an awesome change to have a discussion with a Thai about other countries… well really, I think most people everywhere just want to talk with a foreigner about the foreigner’s opinion of their country, not as much about the opinion of the foreigner’s home country. This guy though, had great questions about even comparisons, not focusing on Thailand specifically, and even more so, placing more importance on what I had to say. Maybe this is due to his respect for me, Thai will respect the position one holds (currently my position being “Professor” to his “Student”), just as much as what the person actually has to say. Again this is true for many countries and many cultures, but I think in Thailand it is taken even that much further.
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| Temple of Broken Gun Swamp... Huh? |
We made a big loop of 110km, back to where we left our hotel, and then began the climb up the plateau to head back to MSU. This climb was easier, as our starting elevation was higher, and the ride down the other side was a lot of fun. Thankfully by this time, the weather was cooling down a little bit, but the sun in the middle of the day had done its work. I was still having to lead, this time into the wind, and the negative thoughts were entering my head… After a year of long-distance riding, I can now recognize that sugar levels/energy levels in the body play a huge part in attitude, and so I could recognize this as just a lack of sustenance - but that doesn’t change the fact that everything starts to get uncomfortable pretty quickly. Shifting on the seat, trying to avoid sore spots on the rear end and thighs, not many options there other than just ignoring it, lower back pain, shoulder pain, wrist pain from bumpy roads without end, all the little things that are overlooked when the riding is fun, now we moved to the roads that were familiar, flat, necessary to cross in order to get home, but quite a big longer than the legs were wanting to go… the last 80km home were pretty tiring.
I have read the blog of another rider saying that he feels a similar thing happen, when the sun finally goes over the horizon....Super Powers appear! For me, it might be from fear really, it might be anxiety of riding on the increasingly dangerous roads (we were just taking the main road home, 2 lanes each way with a pretty high flow of traffic), it is not always necessary to take a driving test to get licensed in Thailand so think of some drivers…Anyways, I have had this happen pretty much every time I misjudge the timing on the final day. Annoyed with myself, and translating these feelings into power, I just ignore reason and go non-stop til I am home, whether rain, dark, fog... I was hoping to be home by 5pm, but by 6pm we were still 50km out. I stopped, smashed down a Coca-Cola (for me this is pretty much an emergency measure), had another water bottle, some bananas, and tried to focus. I got back in the saddle, and for the next 90 minutes I averaged 34kph! This brought the day’s total to 230km, and man was I ready to get home.
We had a big celebratory High-Five in front of the market... and went our separate ways. Even if I was leading, I know he still used more energy than I did, the tires make a huge difference on the open flat stretches, and of today’s ride there were at least 100km of totally flat, super windy sections (sometimes winds to help and sometimes to hinder… all good practice!).
Day 6:
I relaxed at home, did some push-ups and sit-ups, nursed my hind parts with some pillows, and worked on my computer from home today. Drank a ton of water, ate a ton of fruit, both blended and fresh, and did not even look at my bicycle. Ha. Sometimes a recovery ride would be in order, but my rear was sore enough that I decided it was better to rest everything than stretch out the muscles, but still have to endure another hour on the seat. Yes, I should just buy a better seat. But they aren’t free, and I would have to ride to the next town to get one anyways (nearest big bike shop is 40km away), and once you're out, you're out, and...:) .
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| Pretty Cool, #12 in the World (on Strava). I took full advantage of the fact that Thailand, being 12 hours ahead of most of the other Strava users, gives me pretty much an entire day up on everyone else in the competitions. In the end it evens out... |
Day 7:
I wanted to do another full Century today, but for the first time in several weeks, my free time was just not there. Even waking up early, managing 80km before work, I could not be honest with myself in ignoring a few more articles which some professors needed in a timely manner… For sure, my legs were tired, but I sat there looking at the clock every 10 minutes from lunch break onwards, and eventually just said to myself, “You have done quite a bit this week, rode 31 hours already and your previous high was 28, and that was on vacation! You can give it a rest, always have more time to try for the full thousand again!” Its true, there are many things more important than the numbers, and then there are also of course many things more important than cycling altogether! :) I managed to get in another 50km before dark, and after an awesome meal of fried vegetables and fish, followed by a mango, banana, and passion fruit shake, I enjoyed the chance to get to sleep at the wonderful hour of 9pm. It was a great week, and I am already looking forward to the next opportunity to see how far 7 days on a bike can take me!
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| I thought I was done for, and would have to turn back losing about 20-30 minutes of precious cool-morning weather. Fortunately, my KC buddy Brett showed me a thing or two about getting through petty hold-ups like this fence here... Putting the front wheel through first, then turning the forks, working one pedal through at the same time, work the handle bars vertically passing the obstructing bars, and usually the rear wheel just passes easily after that. |
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| My friend did great in the heat, pretty good on the hills, but Matt dude, that bike is crying out to be used more! Give her what she wants!! |
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| My favorite tree, the Peacock Tail Tree (in Thai) |
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