Prior to coming onto this cycling press trip in Taiwan, I had no idea I'd be placed in the "Hardcore" versus the "Leisure" group — or that we'd be expected to participate in the Taiwan Cup 200K Self-Challenge, a "fun" race designed to essentially cover the same cycling route that the professional and international cyclists would complete a day after we did.
In the pre-dawn hours outside our Parkview hotel in Hualien County, Taiwan, the Giant support crew leader, An-an, worked in the dark to get our road bikes ready. The other five male journalists (Dennis, Doug, Ryley, Bin, Jason) and I come prepared with racing jerseys, padded spandex shorts, bottles of water, and a resolve to simply do the best we could. After all, I haven't gotten on a road bike in at least half a decade.
After a brief warm up around the parking lot of the hotel, we sit on the ground with our bento box breakfasts. Lily, our Mandarin "mom-like" tour guide asks us to pair up for the 125-mile and anticipated 12-hour ride ahead.
"This way, I can give each group a walkie-talkie in case anything happens!" she tells us, chirpily.
***
Before we know it, the guns are signaling the start of the race. Jason, Dennis, and Ryley take off at the start of the pack. Bin and I trail a little behind, and Doug and Lily bring up the rear.
The sun begins to rise on our left, illuminating a vastly tropical landscape and we can feel the encroaching heat. We cycle past a large water buffalo that Bin and I nervously hope is well tied down as we our approach. The group of cyclists around me make our way across bridges of traffic, and in a short while, we begin to leave the cityscape towards the rural backroads.
Shortly up the first hill, Bin's chain breaks. I slow in front of him, but he motions for me to keep going. At first, I pedal slowly, giving him time to catch up. A few minutes later, I pass the Giant support van and shout to An-an that Bin's cycle is in need of repair. An-an puts down his camera, gets into the car, and heads to help. (He's so even-keeled and mild-mannered that we are certain he's a saint.) I keep going.
The curves bring beautiful vistas at every bend. Unlike the ride we completed two days prior up Wuling Mountain, which happens to be the highest point of Taiwan's road system and regarded as one of the country's most difficult roads, every uphill trek is greeted with a breezy downhill. I trudge along, wondering how far I'll be able to go before I'll have to call it quits. (The longest distance I've ever ridden was 26.2 miles on a beach cruiser with my younger brother.)
As Bin said at the start of the race, "I'm just going to go to the point of failure!" and I figure that's a pretty good approach.
Before I know it, an hour and ten minutes have passed and I'm reaching the first 25-mile checkpoint. There are five checkpoints scattered throughout the race for cyclists to refuel on snacks and liquids. Because I feel quite good, I decide to keep on going. Bin hasn't yet caught up with me and I assume the other three riders must be much farther ahead.
"Besides, if I stop now," I thought, "I'm not sure I'll get back on!"
The next 25 miles bring much of the same, alternating between slower moments where I can take out my phone and snap a few idyllic shots, and faster coasting along nicely paved roads. The night before, I created a "Taiwan Cup" playlist and am grateful for the pumpy tunes that are keeping me company.
Another hour and twenty minutes go by. I begin to calculate how long it would take for me to actually finish the entire race. 'If I keep up this pace, maybe I might have a shot at finishing?' I consider. I double-check my water supply, stand up and balance on the pedals to stretch out my back. I continue to remind myself that this should be a fun ride rather than a competition, so I just get jiggy with it and shake my tushie to get blood flowing in the sore parts.
'I can make it to the third checkpoint before stopping,' I think to myself, as I ride past the second 25-mile checkpoint. The cookies I hid in my jersey pocket before the start of the race can provide enough sugar to keep me pedaling on. Though the slices of watermelon and mounds of bananas look appetizing, I whiz on by.
Unbenownst to me this entire time, Lily was becoming increasingly alarmed that she hadn't seen me at either checkpoint — and neither had any of the other journalists in our group. They'd all been waiting at each 25-mile marker and when I didn't pass them by, Bin thought that I may have turned around and gone back to the hotel. 'If it's anything like the other day when we were cycling uphill, she couldn't possibly be ahead of everyone,' he later told me he'd said to Lily.
Lily began to phone everyone: the race organizers, the officials, the hotel, even calling my cell in hopes that I had turned it on for some reason and would receive her message.
"Be on the lookout for cyclist 193!!" she urged everyone.
And so, the entire race was on the lookout for a female foreigner with bright blue shoes who had the number 193 plastered on her bike and helmet. Ten miles short of the third checkpoint, I hear joyous screeching passing in a van to my left. It was An-an, with Lily in the passenger seat, yelping in excitment that they had found me.
"Judy!! Here you are!!" she shouts, almost jumping out of the car.
An-an pulls up a short distance ahead, and I follow. We both stop, and he immediately gets out to open the back trunk to offer me sustenance.
"You are number one," he smiles at me in accented English.
I'm sure he's just being nice, supporting me with an "A-1-thumbs-up" the way that Chinese people so often do, and that maybe he doesn't really know what he's saying.
Lily races out towards me.
"Do you know how much we have been looking for you?!" she exclaims. "Ohmigosh, I have been phoning EVERYone. We had no idea where you were! And here you are, ahead of everyone else!"
I shake my head. "What?"
"Yes, all the other guys are way behind you!"
"Really?" I ask, incredulous.
"Yes!" she fills me in on her escapades. "I had faith in you! They all thought you were behind, but I knew you wouldn't have turned around! And here you, first in front of everyone!"
It's amazing how much excitement this petite little woman can generate. I am shoving fruit and cookies and crackers into my mouth. The sweat has crystallized into salt on the sides of my forehead.
In a short while, Jason rides up to greet us, then Dennis and Ryley. Doug, who's been riding with Lily since the first checkpoint is taking professional photos of us all, telling us that Bin is bringing up the rear. Jason says that he feels good enough to keep going, and so do I, especially after refueling.
I stretch my lower body in a forward bend, then get back onto my bike. "I'll meet you guys at the next 25-mile stop," I say as I'm pedaling away, thinking that the next stop is just a few more kilometers away.
Unfortunately, it was much farther than I thought. I had been reading the green kilometer markers by the side of the road, thinking that they just happened to coincide with the distances of the race, and it turns out, the two didn't at all correspond. So, when I reached "100" on the sign by the side of the road, it was by no means an indicator of how far I had ridden in the race. There was still another 15 miles to go.
By the time I arrived at Checkpoint Three, a headache began to throb in my temples because of the midday sun and I was ready to call it quits. 'Welp, 75 miles is a pretty good effort,' I tell myself, especially since I had seen fewer than a handful of other female riders throughout this distance of the race.
As I pull up to my final destination, I'm greeted by an older man in an official neon yellow race jacket, encouraging me to take a break. "Have some water, some bananas," he says to me. Then, his eyes light up. He immediately starts exclaiming, "Wait, Rider 193!! You are Rider 193!!"
I look at him confusedly.
"We have been looking everywhere for you!" he tells me in Mandarin. "Everyone thought you were lost, that you had gone down the wrong road! Sheesh, here you are. They said to look for a foreigner, but you do not look like a foreigner!"
This is true. I tell him that my group simply thought I was behind them, when actually, I was in front.
"Aiya," he exclaims. The other officials at the checkpoint are also shaking their heads and staring at me. They use their walkie-talkies to relay the message to everyone else that I'm all right. "We had all the police looking for you, too! Come, take a seat in the shade."
He motions for me to hurry. I put my bike down and take a few steps towards him, then I'm stopped by another Taiwanese cyclist.
"Dui bu qi. Can I take a picture with you, 193?" he asks.
"What?" unsure if I understand his Mandarin correctly.
"Can I take a picture?" he makes a photo-clicking gesture with his fingers, then points to himself, then to me, then to the both of us. He, and apparently a lot of other cyclists, had heard about the search for 193.
"Um, okay," I respond.
He hands his camera to another cyclist, then poses with me, pointing at my helmet with the 193 stuck on the front. When the cyclist is ready to hand the camera back to him, he says, "Wait, one more, one more!" and gets on my other side, then points at me in an ostentatious gesture again. I make a customary "Asian-photography-peace-sign" with my index and middle fingers.
"Thank you, 193!" the cyclist waves to me, as he prepares to get back onto his bike. "Thank you!"
Later, I discover that 193 is the same number of the road we had been riding on throughout the race, so either the fellow cyclist thought it was a funny coincidence or, maybe because of all the hullabaloo that Lily created, he was documenting the odd occurrence of running into the race's mini-celebrity.