Langkawi International MTB Challenge; Pre-race thoughts

14/10/12

Yesterday Ed and I arrived into Langkawi, one of Malaysia’s most beautiful tropical islands.  I will be lining up alongside some of the fastest MTB chicks in the World on Monday for the start of the International Langkawi MTB Tour.  The race will involve a variety of distances and terrain over the next 6 days. It will just be awesome to get the opportunity to race against some of the World’s best while not having to negotiate 100 or so other riders, like at the start of a World Cup race. It will certainly be interesting to see how far off the pace I am.

The conditions here are hot!  Certainly the humidity and keeping one step ahead of dehydration are going to be telling factors throughout this race.  Today I certainly plan to start loading up on a little magnesium and those other essential electrolytes to keep the muscles happy. Speaking of supplements, I have come over here equipped with Torq’s latest product, a new recovery powder called Recovery Plus.  The Recovery plus has been designed to be used in conjunction with the standard Recovery powder. It has high amounts of HMB as well as Sodium Phosphate and Beta-Alanine, all of which have been shown to greatly enhance the recovery process.  I figure I need all the help I can get with the week ahead!

Ed and I decided to hire a car for the week, so we can get about the island and check out the sights in b/w racing.  So after bartering for the best possible price we hopped aboard our car which, by the way, makes a funny whistle noise every time you use central locking. No-one bothered to tell us that when you hire a car over here, the petrol tank has about 2km worth of fuel in it and it was at around about 1.5km into the drive, when we noticed the petrol sign flashing.  Luckily there seems to be no real road rules here and Ed pulled a few crazy cross-country U-turns in order to get to a petrol station in time.

All of the rider’s bikes are stored in the basement section of the hotel here where we are staying.  It is proving to be a bit of a ‘man-shed’ at the moment where the guys hang out and talk about bikes. Needless to say, Ed has quite enjoyed taking at sneak peak at some of the latest and greatest equipment. I’m not sure that it is really the place where I should be hanging out given my ‘blonde moment’ today when I asked Ed what sort of bikes the girls on the Colnago team ride??

After all the travel yesterday and still some feelings of jet-lag, I opted for just an easy 1.5hrs spin on the bike this morning.  I plan to use tomorrow’s prologue as a bit of a ‘hit-out’, before stage 1 starts on Tuesday. So, after filling up on a buffet style breakfast, I headed out for a spin. I mainly stuck to the road, and at one point was offered a draft behind a local on his dodgy looking scooter. I decided that this might not be a good idea and just a tad dangerous, and sent him on his way!  Once out of town I noticed more of the interesting wildlife. There were many bright, exotic looking birds and the cheeky monkeys were out in force. I did sneak in a little time off-road just to get a feel for the conditions.  There was plenty of mud around with the tropical down-pours that seem to occur every few hours and also many sections of slippery roots and rocks. Apparently the course has been made tougher this year, with rumours that there will be quite a few climbs that are un-rideable and some more technical sections.  So I guess I’d better keep the legs up for now and start to load on carbs for the days ahead!