Mersing Ride, 1-2 Mar 08

100% success! woohoo! :-D

Three riders attempted and successfully completed a 2 day unsupported Mersing ride (1-2 Mar):
Bernard
Eric
Sharon

Despite the bad weather forecast of thunderstorms in Desaru & Mersing, the intrepid trio headed to Desaru by the usual 7.15am ferry on Sat 1 Mar. At Changi Ferry Terminal, to B's dismay, he realised that he'd left his water bottles and museli bars back home! :-( Thankfully, he'd remembered to bring along his new digital u/w camera, so by the end of the trip, we had a photo-journal to commemorate our ride. E was also not in good health, inflicted with a sniffling cold and a persistent dry cough :-(

On the ferry, we met up with a familiar acquaintance, Pascal (from Mauritius) and his friend, who were planning to do a shorter Desaru loop ride, heading back on the 3pm ferry. Turns out that the friend was in YF's Mon class haha!

Check-in at the Spore customs side was unusually lengthy due to the island-wide man hunt for escaped JI terrarist, Mas Selamat Kastari. This caused a delayed start to our ride out from Belungkor at 8.45am.



Contrary to Desaru's infamously hot and scorching sun, we experienced pleasantly cool cloudy weather right from the start :-) Taking it real easy (newbie pace haha), in a remarkably short time considering our slow speed, we reached Bandar Penawar, our 1st top-up point in about 1h10min.

A 20min break for drinks, food (1 Carman museli bar for me, a couple of coconut buns for B) and loo and we continued on towards Sedili Kechil. At close to 10am, it started raining and we were drenched within 5min. B stopped to put on a disposable raincoat and we merrily drafted behind him as the raincoat flapped in the wind and created wind resistance training effect for B hehe...



New cycling attire?

Due to the rain, we were saved from the usual monstrously strong headwinds heading towards Sedili, but drafting behind each other on wet roads meant facing the constant spray from the wheels of the rider infront.

Our next mini stop to rest our legs was at the "beach", our usual photo taking point for new riders to the Desaru-Sedili route :-) I took a gel, while B and E ate up the coconut buns B had bought for b'fast in Bandar P.

Our next destination was E's fav chicken rice stall at Sedili Besar, where E & B had a plate of chicken rice + semi-boiled runny egg, while I had a bun + soya bean + ice milo kosong.


Egg-shell shades heh heh

E, who was feeling poorly couldn't finish his portion and went over to the next door grocery store to buy fresh tomatos to munch on instead. Bananas were apparently in short supply.

Setting off after lunch was brrr...freezing due to our wet jerseys + tights and the super cold wind cycling up the 4 deg bridge! The undulating terrain beyond was familiar and strangely welcoming with the lush greenery on our left and right. We stopped for a quickie photo as the panaromic landscape was irresistable :-)



Double-vision :-P

We quickly passed the usual "landmark" points eg the police post, Edwin+Sharon's stop, Yuen's ice-cream stop and reached the junction to Tg Leman (skipped this of cos!), then headed towards the Y-junction to turn right towards Mersing.

We stopped at a small coffeeshop (next to toy store selling inflatable supermans with wrong blue color cape!) for a short hot milo break along the way to warm our insides. As the coffeeshop's loo was too disgusting to be used, we cycled on for abit and then made a loo break at Johnny's stop, which had proper male/ female toilets.

Thereafter, we had to cycle on the shoulder of the main road with cars, buses and trucks whizzing past at high speeds but generally giving a generous berth to us cyclists. This was the most challenging part of the Desaru-Mersing route as we faced even more undulating roads for the last 50km stretch and were feeling tired and saddle-numbed already from the long day's ride.

We experienced intermittant light drizzles along the way and while the nice cool weather helped to keep us fresh and "hydrated", the wet, cold and clammy feeling increased our discomfort esp our soggy socks and bike shoes :-(

Nearing Mersing, B spotted a shop selling bananas finally! We stopped for E to buy a bunch and we ate a couple as substitutes for energy gels :-P

We slowly made our way onwards and were mighty glad when we finally crossed into Mersing at about 5.10pm, way ahead of our earlier projected time of 6.30pm :-D

E was really suffering by now, having coughed up enough flam throughout the ride to fill a 1.5l bottle I reckon, and his fuel tank was almost empty already, so we decided to have an early dinner at our regular roadside makan place. Our sumptious dinner consisted of stir-fried leafy vege, old cucumber soup, hotplate egg+tofu, stir-fried wild boar and steamed fish for a very affordable RM$60. I gulped down loads of vitamins for "recovery", while B and E drank DIY Vit-C juice + orange gatorade mix instead. E bared his torso while getting changed into B's comfy and more importantly DRY IML tshirt at the makan place :-P

It rained again after dinner but stopped shortly after. We decided to split up - E headed to Timotel hotel to check-in and wash up, while B and I went "shopping" for groceries. At the clothing shop, B ended up bying an ah pek shirt to sleep in, 2 more "mini-me" sized M tees for himself and E and berms for E. Next was groceries, then to the pharmacy to get E's cough medicine + lozenges.

Laden with big and small plastic bags, our 5-grand bikes were temporarily transformed into market bikes as we headed back to Timotel.

High-end market bike hehe

Glad to finally step into the hotel room at 8pm+ and finally got changed out of our damp attire into nice fresh clean clothes. The room soon resembled a laundrette as wet clothes, socks, shoes were strewn all around on any available surface, hopefully to be dried by the next morning. All thoughts of bike cleaning flew out the window after I sank my tired limbs onto the comfy bed (I'd requested for 3 single beds arranged dormitory style in a row, costing RM196). The guys occupied their time by watching this really crappy B-grade Stallone action flick. For supper, B and me had a small Cadbury fruit+nut choc bar each + tuna chunks from the tin (B shared with E). We'd bought apples as well but only E ate 1, claiming he was too tired to wash the rest for us haha! To prep for the next day's ride, I mixed my drinks in advance- 2 bottles of Powerbar Endurance (fruit punch flavour) + 1 bottle of orange Gatorade.

We turned in early for the nite after much discussion about carbon wheelsets (B & E highly recommend Corima wheel, as an alternative to Zipps) (I counter-offered 1.2k for a togoparts seller's offer of 1.4k for Zipp 404 clinchers and the deal fell through... oh well...), hoping to get as much sleep and rest before the next day's long ride.

E snored throughout the nite and even muttered in his sleep *groan* Being light sleepers, E and me could only snatch bits of sleep while B slept soundly in slumberland zzzz...

I woke up at about 7.10am, headed to the loo for a wash-up and got changed into my still damp cycling attire. Popped my morning vitamins to start the day, then woke B up at 7.45am. E was still sleeping so B & I went for b'fast 1st. E joined us shortly after, looking remarkably fresh for a sick man :-p but didn't eat very much as his digestive system still wasn't running too well. B'fast done, the guys changed into cycling gear, we collected our bikes from the hotel's conference room (our usual storage bike space when we stayed at Timotel) and we set off an hour later than our planned time at close to 10am. A 5min stop to fill up B's & E's water bottles and off we went.

30min into the ride, rains came pouring down *groan!* So much for our attempt to dry our clothes the night before! B stopped to put on the disposable raincoat again, this time improving on the "aerodynamics" by poking holes in it to lessen wind resistance haha... Further up, E stopped at the grocery store to buy more bananas while B & I took shelter under a nearby bustop. We groaned in unison when we realised we'd left the bag of apples in our hotel room fridge at Timotel :-(

Thankfully the rains dried up after about 20min and we enjoyed fantastic weather from then on. Clearing the 1st 50km at a real slow and easy chit-chatting pace, we stopped at Johnny's stop for a meal + loo break.



B & E ate a full plate of rice + some vege + meat dishes, while I ate a Nature's Valley Cinnamon bar + ice milo kosong. By then E has consumed more than 10 bananas from the day before and along the ride that morning! He ate another one for dessert after consuming the rice, gave one to B and a slice of pineapple to me.



We continued our ride in amazingly cool weather conditions, similar to that of Camerons :-) B & E rode in front, chatting all the way, while wheel-sucker me happily drafted the two. After about 1.5h, B & E decided to exchange bikes for fun and I continued my slow solo ride ahead.




After about 20min, B & E caught up and lo and behold, B had gotten a puncture on his front wheel! I tried to re-sell to B the spare tube I'd bought from him earlier that morning, at 50% more of the price he sold me but B was having none of that haha! B kept the punctured tube to bring home for closer examination later as we couldn't the location of the puncture. The change took about 20min (I practised how to use a CO2 canister hehe) and we upped the pace after that to make up for time. Fortunately, we were aided by strong tailwind and we reached E's fav chicken rice stall at about 2pm. Thankfully the sun was out by now and helped to dry up our jerseys abit.

We stopped for a quick 15min drink + loo break then off we went. B pulled us at 30km/h from Besar to Kechil, then E took over. Shortly after passing the Kechil bridge, E exclaimed that he'd gotten a puncture too! Apparently a nail had penetrated his tire and punctured the tube underneath. Luckily he'd brought along 2 spare tubes as well and CO2 canisters. A 15min change and off we went again. B continued to pull us for a while then E took over, going at a pace that made B and me work hard and upped my HR ALOT, despite having the help of strong tailwinds! Upslope, we were going at 26-7km/h and on flats, >32km/h! Cresting the last long upslope, we coasted downslope at 50km/h for me, then we reached the flat coastal roads.

By this time, B was feeling fatigued in the legs, having wacked on Fri morning's Joyriders ride and pulling E and me for 1.5days. My legs were also tired already and soon we were dropped while E kept up the pace. I pulled B at a measely 27km/h to reach E about 200m ahead, who had slowed down and was waiting for us once he saw we were lagging behind. We continued riding two, sometimes three abreast at about 23-24km/h until we reached the Desaru roundabout. Stopping by the roadside, we had a 15min stretch + banana break. Timecheck, we had plenty of time left to head back to Belungkor for the 7pm ferry.

Clearing the last 2 Desaru slopes was a huge relief and we cycled slowly to Bandar P., reaching at about 4.05pm. Unfortunately, our usual coffeeshop was closed, much to E's disappointment as he was looking forward to the yummy Malay style dishes he favoured. Luckily another coffeeshop just ahead was open for biz and we stopped for a longish 1h break. B ordered a chicken pao, E had fresh peeled oranges and I ate another Carman museli bar + milo kosong + soya bean pkt drink. Both ate a hardboiled egg each too. The coffeeshop's loo was rosak (spoilt) so I headed to the bus terminal's loo instead for a poo :-P

We left at 5.15pm and B led the way along the busy main road (this stretch is always my least fav part of Desaru rides). E, who'd stopped for a pee break, soon caught up with us and pulled us the remainder of the way until we reached the junction to turn right into the 16km road leading to Belungkor. I made the right turn, narrowly missing being hit by an oncoming truck (so B claims, but I thought the truck was still a fair dist away when I made the turn!).

Filled with a sense of accomplishment and happy to be nearing the end of our ride, our pace was brisk along the 16km stretch. B and I were ahead at first while E continued to ride conservatively to maintain a steady below 140bpm HR. At one stretch, B pulled me along a slight downward incline at about the 8-9km mark until we hit top speed of 50km/h then we slowed down, only to be overtaken by E!

E & B then speeded up, and ended with a last 2km time trial upslope, hitting a HR of 168bpm for E and 172bpm for B! I rode aerobically for the last stretch, spinning to cool down for the last 1km. B was waiting at the junction of the road turning into Belungkor and took my pic for the photo journal.

E had riden straight to the sea edge just to check out if the makan stall there was opened. He was still having thoughts of getting a nice cooked meal to make up for the one he'd missed at Bandar P.


Looking good after 315km

We reached Belungkor Ferry Terminal at 6.10pm (took about 54min from Bandar P. to Belungkor). Hip Hip Hooray, WE DID IT! Against odds of bad weather, B's still recovering gastroenteritis, E's sick condition and my lack of cycling training, we completed our mission for the weekend and in pretty decent time too :-D

B's fav Ramly burger stall was opened and he ordered 2 for himself and 1 for E. I muched on my dried figs haha... We got changed into dry clothes and happily packed away our wet cycling gear. My right ankle was aching badly (B suspected it was achilles tendonitis ; I suspected it was because of the long hrs of riding with a "locked ankle" due to the lack of free float offered by the Shimano ultegra pedal :-( ), not to mention my aching upper quads and sore groin!

Despite all this, we were in high spirits on the ferry home :-D

Total dist cycled: 157.5km x 2 = 315km
Av spd Day 1: 23km/h
Av spd Day 2: 24.5km/h
Total cal burnt (for me): 6000 (3000 on each day)
B burnt about 10,000 cal I think!