mondy mornin' ridin' buds

I thought I’d tell you guys about my ride this morning, it was pretty unforgetable for me :slight_smile:

I decided on the weekend to stop my ping pong training from 12-2pm each day and start to get some good form on the bike again, so today i left he house at 9.30zm ready for my first weekday 3.5hr ridefor a while. Everything went beautifully, I hada slightly sore throat so i was taking it easy, drinking lots of water and listening to nick drake to keep things in the can. I’m riding around a lake surrounded by nice mountains, the temp is around 10degrees and the morning mist is slowly burning off. 90mins in and i need new tunes so i pull over and get MIA cued up and as I’m about to roll off again, two very large dudes cruise by, silently. so i start up and start to catch up, but then i look over my shoulder and see another 10 or so burly dudes, all riding track bikes, all steel and with toe clips… it was a stable of keirin riders out for a morning roll :slight_smile: so i kept my normal pace, they stopped, blah blah blah, i ended up seeing them again a bit later and did a uturn to ride with em. they were being followed first by a mini-bus, then a truck with tray if anyone decided to call it a day, i guess. so i roll onto the back of em and everyone was very cheery, very happy to smile and say hi, but then a call comes from the minibus and the pace starts cranking. i was on my jackson with rohloff, running a 46/16 in 13th gear and 700x35 tires…and was spinning around 100rpm. we hammered around the lake and then blasted onto a freeway (!!) which might not sound too crazy but in Korea, freeways are certainly not for the feint hearted, in a car. anyway, eventually we started shelling guys and i was third to go. but in the brief time i spent in the bunch, i made some observations that i thought i’d share: Korean keirin bikes seem to be mostly lugged standard or OS tubing, look identicalto the japanese ones. i saw a pair of pro maxs and a pair of superbe hubs rolling along. almost everybody had campy pista cranks on (i dont know if they’re NJS at the mo?) and a couple of guys had TIGd bikes that looked like maybe genius or some other non standard circular tubesets. I didnt notice if those frames had the little sticker that the others did (i guess to say it was inspected and ok to race on)…
so i hope next monday they’ll be back and i can talk to em a bit more, maybe get in the earof the bus driver and tell him to cool it.
The rest of the ride was the same as the start… nice and aerobic. but even if i never see those dudes again, i am really glad i had the chance to see them cranking it like that.
i’ll take a camera with me next week.

Good times John! Hey pop over to Vietnam late Nov so we can hit some trails :wink:

P.s. Ping-pong? :expressionless:

Sounds great!

Awesome. :sunglasses:

ping pong… man its intense!! but after a month of 10hr training weeks, its starting to get a bit too techy for me, too many small adjustments to make and my non-existent korean is not helping matters.

i forgot to mention the bike brand for korean keirin… i saw three today. interpro, corex and cello. lots of nice fades around the tubes. overall, more exciting paint than the NJS ones i’ve seen.

when i think burly, i think of a fat dude…these weren’t fat dudes were they?

any tips in regards to ping pong? i’m in an amateur competition and need an edge…

EPO

LOL

Boo Schumacher. boo.

What a Cunt that guy is

ha! nah, not fat dudes on the bikes, but very thick nonetheless.

ping pong… my number one tip would be to have some good rubber. you get a lot of free points playing semi-spaz opponents just by giving far too much top spin for them to handle. I have Yasaka ExtendHS both sides.
I missed the morning ride today, so will hev to wait to check em out again. i was out there last tuesday morn and saw one of the guys out on his own.

for those interested i also won a Merlin on the bay today… and I’ll be back in the Can riding it in December.