Cycling Outdoors Adventures: OCBC KL Ride 2013

OCBC -Cycle around KL city roads

Date : Sunday 20th January 2013

This is a brief account of my first OCBC ride.

This would be my first cycling ride around KL city roads since secondary school days where we would go on cycling treasure hunts organised by the Scouts. We would spend the night cycling around KL streets looking for clues and solving the cryptic clues/messages to get to the next point until the final check point. The objective was to be the first to solve all the clues and reach the final check point (a mini version of the the immensely successful reality TV series “The Amazing race”).

“This would be fun”, I thought it would be a novelty as the KL roads would be closed just for us cyclists. It was also a “deja-vu” ride for me: to relive my younger days of cycling in KL.

This year the starting point was at the front of the KLCC entrance facing Jalan Ampang.

OCBC KL 2013 ROUTE

Three of us office colleagues registered as a group. In the end only I turned up for the event. One of my office colleague backed out a week before and I managed to find another colleague, KK to take his place. The other colleague did a no-show on the day. He later said that he did not feel up to it.

My other cycling buddies also took part. There were four of us. This would be Ed’s second time. The rest of us Boon, Eric and wife,YL, KK were first-timers on this OCBC event, like me.

The pre-ride goody bag collection was done at the newly completed office building, The Intermark along Jalan Ampang.

On the morning of the event, I parked my car in the office car park and cycled to KLCC. KK had no bike and I had to bring in two bikes (my old and newly acquired MTB).

And they are off.... start of the 48km category.

Anyway the OCBC event started about half an hour later. According to the schedule, the 48 km challenge ride was to start off at 6:15 am. At 6:15 am we were still waiting at the starting line. While waiting for the official start I noticed one car whizzing along Jalan Ampang. There were two bikes on the car roof. These guys were really late!

There was confusion at the starting line as the organisers did not know how to organise the riders. Initially they attempted to group the riders into their respective categories but in the end everyone just started off in one big group.

majestic twin towers in the background

On the 48km ride, looking back I think I witnessed four accidents over the 4 laps that I cycled. At the very first lap going down along Jalan Raja Chulan there was a section of the road that was flooded. When the oncoming cars drove passed us the cars actually splashed water over to our side. This stretch was also going slightly downhill hence one would have a tendency to speed especially on the first lap as the adrenaline would still be pumping. “Bad mistake!” This was where I saw the first mishap.. There was a depression in the road and one would not be able to see as :1) it was covered by the water; 2) it was on a downhill stretch. I reckoned the Marshall in-charge of that stretch was not prepared initially. I noticed on my subsequent laps the marshall was more vigilant and more pro-active to warn the riders coming downhill of the hazard ahead.

Ed, Eric and wife used road bikes while Boon, KK and I used mountain bikes. Everyone of us cylced off at our own rate. So in the end we all lost sight of each other.

To complete 48 km, we had to cycle 4 laps. Boon and I had earlier timed our training stints' speed and noted that our speed on the flat would be 24+ km/hr but that would drop drastically down to less than 10km/hr if we were cycling uphill. We estimated that it would take us less than 2 hrs to complete 48 km if we changed our tyres from “knobbies” to “slick” tyres, which we did.

Now, going around 4 laps proved to be more difficult than it seemed. After cycling around two to three times, one’s memory seems to get distorted (must be my age...hehehe). I was not the only one having memory lapses.

The traffic jam at KLCC

On the third lap (I think), one cyclist cycled up and asked me, “Err..Excuse me, how many rounds are we were supposed to cycle?” I told him 4 rounds and jokingly asked, “Why? Did u do 5 rounds already?” He gave me a confused look in return. I think he wasn’t sure himself (hahaha)

After that, for a moment; I too lost my own counting self-confidence and wondered if I had completed 3 or 4 rounds? Luckily my “Endomondo” apps confirmed that I did 4 laps. No more no less :-)

Boon too had the same issue:

“...I really thought the whole ride was only 2 laps......until I realised it didn't make sense, why was everyone cycling so fast and some riders seemed to have passed me more than 3 times.....then I figure out there was another 2 more laps to go! Wah-liao man! Then after a while I forgot how many laps I have completed....so did not know whether to go an extra lap of 12 km or go into the finish lane. So complicated man.!!!” He jokingly complained that I left him behind.

Satisfaction of job completed

Initially Boon and I were cycling together but after the second lap where we witnessed an accident, I lost him. I thought he had sped on ahead as usual and throughout the remaining laps I was pushing myself forwards to catch up with him.

The plus

The 12km route was a fairly easy route except for the short stretch along Jalan Tun Ismail near the Bank Negara where the route climbs up. But what goes up must comes down, so there was a nice descent back to Jalan Sultan Ismail. Overall the 12km route was relatively flat and easy to cycle. (see route map)

The minus

There were far to many accidents.

When I arrived at the finish line in front of KLCC, there was a huge traffic jam(see video below) of OCBC jersey clad riders lining up to collect their medals and to return their timing chips.

Amidst the huge crowd we found each other via our mobiles and waited for the rest of the gang to arrive. After the customary group photos, we then loaded our bikes into our respective cars and drove off to Jalan Ampang for our hearty reward.

Our Reward : Breakfast !!

Note: - as usual double click on the photos for a larger view

My time: Overall 1:58:53
Lap 1 :- 0:28:53, Lap 2 :- 0: 25:30, Lap 3 0:26:51, Lap 4 0:27:24

The video below tries to capture the carnival-like feel of the OCBC event at the finish point of the 48 km event. The other shorter(24km community ride) event was just about to start when I reached the finish point at KLCC.