Will Dickeson Blog: Surviving an Asian bike race 101

Here I am at the Tour of Hainan in China and I thought it might be worth going into some detail of Asian racing that cyclingnews etc. don’t quite cover.

This is my 3^rd year of doing Asian races and its definitely a different world from the likes of Tour of California and the Sun Tour.

This is a run-down of my day today, stage 3 of the Tour.

-          Woke up at 7:30 and packed my main bag to take to one of the transport trucks by 8am.

-          Went to have a look at breakfast. Despite the language barrier, was able to argue my way in as I had left my meal ticket in my room. They have to be strict as there is a chance that some random skinny westerners could be wandering the hotel in search of a free meal.

-          Breakfast was disappointing so kept it to some steamed buns and bread with a hardboiled egg.

-          Returned to room made a couple of brews with my ‘Handpresso’ and read the race bible with the KOM and sprint distances etc.

-          Got changed and ready to leave the hotel at 9:30 to sign on by 9:45.

-          Carried my day-bag to the start as our Chinese driver had decided that he had to get to the start earlier.

-          Completed sign-on and found the public toilets which were the usual filthy Asian ‘squatters’

-          Played with the race radios and got them working and then the gun went off to start the race with no warning at all.

-          Raced, survived the dog on the road, the construction that caused a short detour through mud and rocks, the meter-deep concrete ditches that line the roads and the car that forced me onto the footpath as we went into the last corner.

-          My Jellybelly team mate Brad Huff won the bunch sprint, we all gave interviews to local media answering questions of how the Tour of Hainan is a very hard and very beautiful race and is much better than the Tour of Langkawi.

-          Found the hotel with the help of a vague direction from our translator and by following another team’s car.

-          Overcame the complete lack of washing machines in this country by showering in my kit and using the hand soap to try and get it wearable again. By using this technique I pretty much get through the whole tour with only 1 set of kit, but then probably have to bin it at the end.

-          Got a quick lunch from the “dinning place” and ignored all the mystery meats that were mainly bone and skin and made a couple of sandwiches with bacon and grilled tomato – probably the best meal of the tour for me so far.

-          Back upstairs for a 30min massage from one of our super ‘swannies’ and then raided their room for more food, mainly Oreos and other weird Chinese biscuits.

-          Went to my room, watched the only English speaking channel – 24 hour news service and then switched to good old CCTV5 – the sports channel - and watched The Shanghai Masters Tennis tournament.

-          Remembered my clothing was still in the bathroom, used the rolled up towel drying technique but the humidity  and our useless air conditioner probably means it will still be wet in the morning.

-          Went down for dinner and tried to ignore the 30 minutes of speeches in Chinese from local VIP’s while picking out bits of bone from the sweet and sour pork.

-          Had a bowl of cereal back in the room and then had a team meeting to discuss how today went and what our tactics will be tomorrow.

-          Watched the 1st half of Hot Fuzz on my roomie Bernard van Ulden’s portable DVD player and then got too tired and shut it down for the night.

So that’s one day in the life of the Tour of Hainan. It’s definitely an experience racing here in Asia and I think it suits me because I don’t get too worried by all of the difficulties involved with language barriers, questionable food and public hygiene. I’ve pretty much learnt that if everything is smooth and well organized here, it’s a bonus and the rest of the time you just have to roll with it and laugh.