| | Author | Topic: Tour of Egat Thailand 2008 May2 shopping,May3 welcome dinner,MAy4 stage1 report (Read 69 times) |
Dear Friends just came back from bangkok, i know you guys want to read my report but i was with my wife and the first two days i have to bring her shopping at the Siam Paragon...Big C..Central World...night market...etc. ...the lucky travel group laughing when they saw me carrying 10 kilograms of goodies and my forehead dripping with sweat..i told them its as if i went for a 2 hour bike ride already as my wife wants to buy anything in sight. May 2 afternoon Philippine team had a short warm up near the Royal River hotel..i hook up with that computer geek Thomas Weigand the owner of BAmboo LAke Village resort in changmai...he was the one doing GPS reading and elevation chart "hey raymond it took me 10 hours to plot GPS coordinate and google earth readings to come up with the elevation chart of stage 2. but you from the philippines had been friendly...I will share with you the hard copy you may take a look i stay at 782 you are at 780 so we are neighbors at the hotel. Thomas rode long sleeves, a mt bike helmet with sunvisor.. a cheap TREK 1.2 triple cranked bike with a gps counter. I told him "thomas the other guys might tease you they bring in superbikes to Egat" "ray, to me the head of the cyclist thats 60prcent more important as that means the cyclists has to have the will to finish. the strong legs is 20 percent. the bicycle is only 20 percent. I compete in EGAT today for the first time to learn for the learning experience. I come back next year to win it. I have 6 other bikes. I will bring 3 of my best bicycles to win Egat next year" I laughed we headed back to the hotel Thomas gave me his copy of the stage 2 elevation chart. I showed it to Joel G and rest of my team. and Dante Valdez saw it too..."boss ray, thats the Tour of Thailand stage thats heading to the National PArk where the hills are super steep..where there are Tiger crossings and Elephant crossings... be sure you are not left behind" i said "wow the last guy gets to be eaten by a Tiger for lunch! thats got to be a real incentive for me not to get dropped" so everybody laughs. on MAy 3...our first day of official functions... we were given a welcoming dinner...wow we had a great time and the food was fantastic... just wait ill post fotos today. wow the foreign competition was intimidating. open cat had what seems like semi pros handsome Spanish guys in pink t shirts. And the lady cyclists..they wore sleeveless sandos tank tops revealing six packs and sexy belly bottons.! I told Carmela..."carmela thats got to be the champion Christine from Singapore look at her musclular figure" and carmela said " ray, i thought we all came here just to survive and have fun...you are sizing up the competition. ..i dont want to look at them anymore...they look very strong!" trisha said "but guys we're more beautiful than them!" so everybody laughs. May4 let the games begin...we rode 5 kilometer to EGAT where we signed up. the Minister of Energy was a woman and she took time to talk to us (i got to talk to her ) afterwards she and some of the board of directors for Egat rode bicycles in front of the peloton ...signalling the start of the races...after about 500meters we were sent off to the PTT gasoline station which i thought was 20kms but turned up to be 25kms..so race havent started we rode 30 already. race starts at PTT...our 40 and up cat was released (for the first time on the history of egat) with mountain bikers on city slick tires! so everybody edgy. i only have one person to watch out for he is architect quin baterna #460 and so i kept shouting at the mountain bikers..."give way..give way thats my man" and the mountain bikeres laughing. At 50kilometer of the PTT starting line...i was in the middle of peloton....i saw somebody crashed i saw a mt bike flew over our heads and last thing i remember was i did an endo falling on a cyclist in front of me. a spectacular crash over 16 people involved. I saw i have cuts but i want to continue. the first stage is crucial confidence building stage so i stood up continue to pedal. I was with a German rider from Siam Tours and a mountain biker who also crashed and 3 of us help each other until we reach finish line. Quin baterna the manager of team Logic Gate thankfully didnt crash went on to finish ahead of me..and so the race was on again for the two of us in Thailand. at the finish line i was informed that my teammate philip go suffered a bad crash and was taken to the hospital on an ambulance. He later texted that he got bumped in the rib area..couldnt breath and had to have x ray taken. the attending nurse was a male nurse from Cebu so he took time out to txt my wife later that philip was ok..no broken ribs...and will be brought back to the finish line. team CNC boy "The admiral" Tiples also got hit from the side and crashed his colnago Extreme C with brand new Campy Bora wheelset sideways he was later found by mechanic Dante Valdes in knee high grasslands. Dante told him the bike was OK and if he wish he could continue. the admiral told dante "wait check me out first if im ok..im so afraid i broke my collarbone again!" dante checked. the admiral had bruises on the hip but was able to continue. he overtook me and my german partner and was able to hook up to the peloton and had fantastic finish. after lunch we had to ride another 5 kilometers to our beautiful villa style resort. clean up then ride back 5 kilometers again for the ITT competition 3pm. I saw the admiral fix his ARGON time trial bike with full aero equipment "ray i might as well bring two bikes...its a waste if we have good equipment and leave the bike behind. This is EGAT" he said at the ITT well almost all the foreigners had the beautiful aero bikes. I tried my best but there were strong headwind on the 4km up front and 4 km back. i got barbeques by teammate tiboy reyes and the admiral boy tiples but im sure i finish ahead of my good friend arch quin who said he really was tired after the first stage. we rode together with the philippine team back to the villa..had nice story telling and had couple of beers and then went to sleep. to be continued. raymond see teamrocka1bikeshop Tour of Egat 2008 |
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1 comment:
To set things straight... The "male nurse from Cebu" is actually from Bukidnon. thank you.
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