it's not gonna be a joke...

eventually they (HKCA) decided to spit out the details about Sunday's race: it is going to be 120km , 8 laps of the hilly Bride's Pool circuit.



it is going to be a carnage...

• there is not a single meter of flat, 
• the distance is 400% more than the usual distance of local race...
• the field is a strange mix of full time Pros racing full time for the National Team and amateur and master riders of all ages...

It is obvious that it is already set from the start to protect the current roster of the National squad: they compete in international races of 150/200km and a local amateur used to race 40/50km at most is not going to have any chance to make into the top 5 and gain a place in the Team...

me..., I will probably only last 3-4 laps and then crawl to the finish or DNF... 120km is double the distance of my any recent ride...

final act

a brief update,

Sunday will see the final act of the cycling season and maybe also my "final act" as cyclist... it will all depends as how I will perform in a real race.

Sunday 27th: Hong Kong National Championship, Elite race..
Like in all the other countries, Sunday will be Nationals also here. It is the one and only real mass start road race in Hong Kong, on a "real" course...

Odd facts about this race:
- foreigners are allowed to race, but obviously can not win the national jersey and they will not even officially entered in the classification..
- everybody with a license can enter and there is only one "Open" race: Elite and non Elite, Master or whatever... So it makes like going into a race where Contador or Ivan Basso are mixed up with beginners in their 50s...
- it is already tuesday afternoon and there is no announcement on the race start time, race distance or whatever... so it seems the race might be in Bride's Pool road... I guess very early in the morning and maybe the race distance will be around 60-90km (??)
- also the small number of Pros from the HK National Team (who obviously do not take part in the silly local races, but only race internationally) will join the race, so the level will be much higher than the usual stuff

about myself:

1.  I was able to manage a real good string of training sessions... for 3 weeks I really took the things almost seriously and my condition remarkably improved. As a clear evidence, I managed to cut down my climbing time on TaiMoShan to 20'47" (a PB by 2 minutes) which is very near to times recorded by friends of excellent cycling level
2. the work and family commitments put a lot of stress and in the past days I am really fatigued by the sleep deprivation and so on... seems that all my good shape is gone away, but I hope that resting well in the next few days will bring back some shine... today I had to quit the workout because I was dead
3. my bike seems to be even more fatigued than I am. In the last days I got all the kind of problems (chain, cassette, BB, pedals). I am trying to sorting out as much as I can, but something seems hard to repair: pedal are very noisy and cluncking. Since I do not apply strength to the pedal perpendicularly to the axle, it is usual that the bearing get damaged/worn out quickly and the pedal axles gets loose... now this happened to my Keo pedals too and I am figuring out how to replace the bearing or tighten them at least to outlast sunday's race
4. based on sunday's outcome, I will decide what to do for the next season. Due to the level of the race, I do not expect to finish in the first group, but based on how far I will be dropped, I can see if I am competitive for the racing programs which our team is planning.