Last Monday I survived KOM: The World’s Most Strenuous Uphill Road Bike Race
I wrote this post on September 12, 2021
I was half-way through the race and my heart was thumping so loud that it was drowning out the sound of crickets and the rapids from the Liwu River far below. I was barely moving - a fast walker could have passed me - and the whole bike creaked from my 79 kilos of weight bearing down on the cranks as I stood on the pedals shifting left/right/left just to keep in motion. So steep, so slow… amazing I wasn’t just flopping over onto the road, or over the guardrails and down into Taiwan’s deep Taroko Gorge.
For hours, at least the last 40 kilometers of the race, calf and quad muscles on both legs felt like they were just one sloppy exertion away from freezing up in an agonizing muscle cramp.
I was popping extra-strength Paracetamol like jelly beans. Actually, not swallowing them but letting them dissolve in all their bitter sandy glory in my mouth as I moved pathetically from one altitude and distance marker to the next. I was in zombie mode; too wiped-out to do the simplest of calculations of how close or far I might be from the finish line.
Taiwan’s KOM Race (standing for “King of the Mountain”), is the world’s most insane mountain race, in one of the world’s most beautiful settings, the ~6 million year-old Taroko Gorge. Over a distance of 90 kilometers, cyclists climb from sea-level to an altitude of 3,200 meters (~11,000 feet), often with road gradients steeper than 20%. The steepest gradients, reaching inclines of 27%, are all in the last 10 km of the race, where the air is noticeably thinner, and the tempo of your breath - if you happen to be racing - becomes a long chain of of loud and desperate staccato chants for mercy.
I started the race with intention and the pace to be toward the front of the pack. A few hours later I had no idea of my overall position, except that the peers I’d meant to ride with were ahead of me. I was just trying to finish without the humiliation of walking, plus the fear that getting off my bike might set off a muscle cramp.
Finally, ever so slowly, I made it to the finish line. Too wasted to even sprint over the finish line like a champ, I was just trying to keep my head up to see the last few meters ahead of me. But I finished this beast of a race. And it turns out I finished 7th for my age-group, 75th overall, and in 6 hours and 20 minutes, which is all better than I was expecting. Do I want to do this again. Fuckyeah!
Below are some photos of me during the early stages of the race - these are around 10% inclines, not the humiliating inclines later in the race - and some photos of me at the end of the race.
Twice towards the end of the race (but before I’d even made it over the finish line!) I welled up with emotion and almost started crying. But I just told myself, don’t do this… you don’t have the energy for tears! And you haven’t even finished yet!
This was my first time to the Taroko Gorge and I was there with friends from my cycling group, the Taipei Slow Cyclists, but no family. Next trip must be with the family. What a magical place.
