I'll leave this site here but will not add any more posts to the blog on this address.
]]>Great weather, so we decided to ride up to the foot of Shizaitou Shan (獅仔頭山) and then come back down and return to the river park via Xinwu Rd (新烏路). Once home again, we had clocked up almost 70km instead of the expected 45. That extra trip to the foot of the mountain and cruising around town, I guess.
Next week, we're joining up with our friend and a few others coming from Kending (墾丁) up the east coast. We're meeting them at Chishang (池上) and then going via Ruisui (瑞穗) and Hualian (花蓮) up Taroko (太魯閣), before rolling down to Xincheng (新城) and taking the train back to Taipei. Three days of fairly leaisurely riding. That'll be cool, haven't had a proper holiday in a year and a half.
By the way, it seems rules for bringing bikes on trains have changed again. We checked with two different people at the TRA information desk, just to make sure, and they both said that one can now bring bikes in bags on all trains, not only those with designated bicycle cars.
Once at the top, we found the new coffee shop that we'd been told about, a couple houses down from Helen's, which is basically open only at the weekends. Nice, spatious, all wooden furniture, and a refill at half price. Cool.
Facts Here is the map on my Garmin page.
This is a nice ride, because it avoids almost all city riding, and follows the Jilong and Xindian rivers. We entered the Jilong River Park at the MacArthur Bridge and went all the way up to Shezi, the only section where you have to leave the river park because of the bridge currently being built between Shezi and Shilin (?).
I've lived in Taipei well over 15 years, but this is the first time I've been to Shezi. It ain't Taipei, it's the countryside. If I'd been parachuted in there, I'd think I was somewhere in Taipei County, sorry New Taipei City, countryside.
We re-entered the bustle of the city at Gongguan, but you could of course continue all the way down to Xindian and a cup of coffee in Bitan, for example. The park on a Tuesday was almost empty, so it's perfect for some interval training, and the roads are good enough that you can push it into 40km/h (which is a good speed for me) without any problems.
When I got out on Dunhua South with the dogs and looked up, I saw a dark wall of clouds in the east out over the Pacific, slowly rotating northward, from as far as I could see north of Songshan Airport to as far south as I could see down along Dunhua, the sky above the clouds gray and cold. Looking to the west, there were clear blue skies, sunshine and not a cloud. Wonderful pre-typhoon (actually tropical storm) weather, but in all my years in Taiwan, I've never seen such a clear division between the incoming weather system and the clear blue skies over land. In the end, the system seems to have moved or rotated north or what it is such systems do, because it still hasn't started raining tonight. Although I hope it will bring lots of rain, since Taiwan's reservoirs are drying out and it seems we may be moving toward another summer of water rationing.
Anyway, on to biking. We used this lovely day to ride out to Xiao Getou together with Jin Laoshi, the first ride out there in a long time. Before we hit the Renai circle, D had a flat. We fixed that, and after 10 minutes she had a problem changing gears, it wasn't smooth at all. We fixed that, and then the battery in my heart rate monitor died. Jin Laoshi had a battery, and then we could finally start biking.
The hills in Shiding past Shenkeng were beautiful, with clusters of white Tong blossoms spread out like wads of cotton on the green slopes. Almost no bikers on the road and no cars, except for 18 huge empty green devil machine gravel trucks coming down the hill. They moved in packs, three or four together. There must be some construction going on somewhere. At least we managed to get back down again from the mountain while only two of them evil things had come back up fully loaded, so, in short, it was a wonderful ride on a wonderful day.
Just as we had decided to go to the gym, we realized that it was a great day and that it really should be spent on the bikes instead of in a stuffy gym, so we decided to go out to Danshui for a late lunch/ early dinner at our new Danshui favorite, the Waterfront, on the Danshui water front. The weather was perfect for it, and I even remembered to put on the heart rate monitor so I could see how bent out of shape I was after the ride.
Going out there was a breeze. Actually, it was more than a breeze, but it came in over the tail, so it made for a smooth, fast ride. Great, since there are so few people in the river park on the week days. I was able to just push on at a pace that was pretty good for me at this stage. I noticed that the balls of my feet went numb some times. I'm not sure if that means that I push down on the pedals more than I pull up, but it probably does, because when I think about it and try to even it out so I work with both legs at an even load, or as even as I can get it, that numbness disappears.
It's also a great feeling to just feel the rubber on the hoods against the skin, and the FSA cork-infused handle bar tape that I use also has a nice texture to it. I just don't like to wear bike gloves, I love that feeling of the handle bar against my hands, the flat top, the handlebar tape, the hoods, switching gears, all that. The ride back was a different thing. Thirty km against a fairly strong and gusty head wind slows you down and since we tried to push it a bit and get the training we had been aiming for if we had gone to the gym, I thought I worked quite hard, and toward the end, I was pooped. But that's just as it should be if I'm to get in shape again after over a year without almost any biking and virtually no visits to the gym.
Yesterday, we took advantage of the nice weather to do a shortish morning ride, halfway down to Wulai, 43km from door to door. This loop is in fact great for exercise. After a few kilometers through the city to get down to the river park entry at Gongguan (公館), the whole ride follows the Xindian river, first through the river park for about 10km or so, and then, after crossing the river on the Bitan (碧潭) suspension bridge, it follows the other bank of the river along Xintan Rd (新潭路) down to Pingguang Rd (平廣路). There you take a left and go out to the Xinwu Rd (新烏路) where you take another left to return to Xindian and the river park back into the city.
It is almost flat, with only four small slopes (although one hits a 21% and another a 15% grade) and a max altitude of about 150m. The fact that it is short makes it a great exercise loop since you can do it on a regular basis without having to take too much time out of your week. And since the inclines are short but quite steep, you could use it to improve your climbing skills as well as your stamina. Just go back down that little hill and hit it again (especially that 21% incline).
Here is the ride with all the GPS data on my Garmin page. The data can be exported either as a gpx or a kml file from this page.
And here's the Google map:
View Biking in Taiwan: Small Xindian loop in a larger map
Anyway, today I checked again, and because I didn't take the bait, the company didn't renew its registration of bikingintaiwan.com, so now I bought it. And I paid 9 bucks instead of the minimum 70 they wanted to transfer it to me. Now I just need to get some time to sit down and redo the site in wordpress rather than movabletype, and then it's time to get back on the bike again. I've already returned to the gym, with 10kgs to lose. Wish me luck...
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The last day of the Lunar New Year holiday. Brilliant weather. A ride to Danshui. First time on the bike since September last year. Sixty kilometers in three hours. Less than a year ago, we would have done it in two, probably even without stopping in Danshui. But hey, we're back in the saddle again. And because the weather was brilliant and we were still on a holiday, we stopped at a lovely place called The Waterfront in Danshui for a nice meal, a coffee and a piece of cake in the afternoon sun. 25 degrees and no wind. Absolutely wonderful. And we're back in the saddle again, as that old Aerosmith song goes.
I've never run a marathon in Taiwan or anywhere else, but found this pictorial report both enjoyable and really interesting. It seems Tainan really knows how to put on a well-organized international event. Read the Scientist Runner's report.
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had a problem with the view that you get yourself a nice bike, and if it doesn't really fit, you adjust your body and get used to it - it's a great bike after all!
In other words, the idea according to proponents of this view is that you adjust your body to the bicycle, rather than the other way around (because it's more important to have a bike that looks good than it is to feel good riding it?). That, however, will only result in sore shoulders, knee or back problems, excess fatigue, or all of that. On our first long ride on our new bikes over the Lunar New Year this year, I developed shoulder pains and serious numbness in the thumb, index and long finger on the right hand (classic signs of carpal tunnel syndrome I found out later) and in my left big toe that only disappeared after four or five months. The problem was that I had to overstretch in the cockpit into a position that was unnatural to my body, and that's the reason why I bought a new seat post with less offset, a shorter stem and new handle bars (twice!). 
Now I have the most comfortable ride I could imagine. In other words, adjust the bike to your body rather than the other way around.
The articles by Couzens take a more scientific approach to this issue, and he describes different ways of measuring joint flexibility and muscle length and so on and how that translates into bike fit. I haven't tried these measurements yet since I am really happy with the way my bike is set up right now, but I'll do it sooner or later, out of pure curiosity. Here are links to the articles: intro, part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4
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