[Randonnée] Sh-MGS-Sh <24h, 17th October 2015!

Yesterday I had a pleasure of taking part in a challenge – randonnée from Shanghai to Moganshan and back in max 24 hours.

I teamed up with John which was the best idea ever as we worked together, took care of and motivated each other to finish this hard ride. There was some kind of competition but I can’t call it a race (and you guys know I don’t race). It was personal challenfe and test for us (at least for me and John as we never did such a long distance). We all (16 people!) started at midnight from Factory Five where we had a preride briefing. Rules were simple – you know where to start, you have one checkpoint where you need to take a selfie (as an evidence plus of course log of the ride from strava/garmin/whatever) and go back to Factory Five. Most of us took a very similar route (Huqingping/318 and go south near Huzhou). Flat part to Moganshan was ok. We had a small crisis around 4-5am as we were sleepy but we had to pedal! Hitting Deqing County in sunrise was absolutely stunning. We were following mostly the main roads but finally we had to turn right and try to find the climb to the summit. We got a bit lost when Garmin tried to guide us through some company’s roads (gate was closed so we had to go back). Then the hard part came – climb to Moganshan’s summit. That was my first climb ever and we took the short but steep way as we thought we can push for 5km… John could, me not which I learnt the hard way. I had to unclip and walk almost half way up and this is not easy in carbon road bike shoes… On the way we met Nelson, author of the challenge as he was already going back. Short talk and we had to split. We reached the summit, took a selfie, rested a bit and went down. On the way we met other participants. Way back was hard. After the climb my knee said bye bye. John got an eye infection and riding in such condition is not easy… We decided to finish or at least try because going back from Moganshan would be expensive. It took us a fair amount of time to do it as we had many stops on the way back home. But we’ve managed to get back in 18h (<15h in saddle and around 3h of all breaks, which was too much but we had to do it (yeah I know - no excuses). Our final result was second place, 2h behind the winner of this challenge Nelson Trees (who is supertough, kudos). Unfortunately not all of our riders could finish (injuries mostly) but guys no worries - you did an astonishing job and kudos for that! Kudos to all people riding, we had all kinds of the bikes - from nice racing road bikes to fixies! How tough you need to be to go there on a fixie?! Ultratough... Last guy (Josh) came in around 26h which was a bit over of the suggested limit but he did a fantastic job taking care of Laura. Respect as this is much more important than the overall time! Now time for recovery and we will see what new challenges time will bring. P.S. John thanks for everything! Few pics from that ride: