The Pesta Penang 2003 road race
by Darren Lee | images by Shaharin Wan

The Before

I was nervous. The Pesta Penang race is a big deal to me (to us actually). It was "home", and you expected to do well (or worse, other people expected you to do well). If I were to judge myself this year, I would have said that I was worse off than last year. My training had been sporadic, and in the weeks leading up to the race I sometimes did no training at all during the weekdays and then tried to kill myself during the weekends just to make up for it. Not exactly the correct methodology. On the last week I went out almost every weekday just to "keep the motor running". It wasn't easy to concentrate because I had Lincoln on my mind, and I think pretty much everyone else. Linc was involved in a serious accident while out training, ironically for this race. Head injury, broken shoulder, broken ribs, broken hips. Boy, I wouldn't wish what he went through on anybody.

The day before and my heart rate was higher than normal. I managed to distract myself during work but after that the race was constantly on my mind. It had played on sporadically, but in the last few days, every scene of last year's action was repeating itself, including the excruciating final climb up Tun Sardon.

I drove up to Melvin's place to collect my race number. There I bumped into Andrew who had also come up to collect his number. He looked spiffy in his long sleeve shirt and slacks, the old boy. For a guy who rides once a week (and sometimes none at all), I admire his tenacity and spirit for joining the race. I wanted to say to him something to the effect of "oh, boy, are you going to suffer BIG TIME, muah! ha! ha!", but I decided otherwise. Hey, I might be the one suffering big time.

I woke up at 6:00am and decided to emulate Melvin in Thailand. I chanted to myself "let's go racing babey!" and then promptly went back to sleep. After a few more snooze alerts from the alarm I crashed out of bed and got ready. At 7:00am I headed down to the mamak stall for breakfast where our support guys Edwin and Finian joined me. I had a roti canai, but I wasn't sure it would be the ideal breakfast for racing. Well, whatever. I passed my other two bottles to Finian and did whatever I could to further lighten the bike, chucking my frame pump into the car.

I rolled down the road, still tense, towards the starting point. As I passed Subaidah's mamak I saw the familiar truck of Kulim Lee. I made a turn into the restaurant and saw him having breakfast with Zamani, Sham and Shahrom. No Bujor though, he was in Singapore for a mountain bike race. Kulim Lee gestured to me to join them but since it was already 7:30am, I decided to leave them.

At the starting point riders and support crew were already milling about. This year I was really pleased to see many of our Penang cyclists taking part, or helping out. I saw Chen and Din in their FBT team jerseys (sponsored, no less!). Shaharin, Daniel were there and so was Azmi. Nizam and Budak came along for support. As usual I made some time to clown around with the Henchmen, Jia and Faizal. Edwin and Finian arrived soon after and joined us. Naturally, Lincoln dominated our conversations and my thoughts turned to him and Kris, who was still in the States, two people who were missing this year. Gosh, I missed Kris' ultra-funny jokes! They do lighten the situation. I greeted Swee Loong but to my surprise the rest of Desmond's gang (Desmond, Chan, Soon Hock, OTE etc) failed to turn up. Some of the more famous BikePro fellas were also around and so were some promising Penang juniors, Firdaus and Fauzan.

Maybe it's because of my nervousness but I've been having the urge to "water the flowers" all morning. I'd already done so at the mamak stall but now I had to do it again. I looked for a suitable spot but hey, Gurney Drive isn't exactly ideal for these kind of things. I crossed the road to accomplish my mission.

At ten to eight I opened a can of Livita "Akar Asli/Tongkat Ali" energy drink and started sipping it. As expected, the jokes about the effects of akar asli came fast and furious, especially from Kulim Lee. Unfortunately, most of them cannot be reproduced here.

Andrew, in our identical CycasRevoluta jerseys, was beside me and I started passing all sorts of comments about jerseys, bikes, and pointing out people I recognised. Melvin had moved up towards the front, in line with his strategy to stay out of trouble. He looked back and I yelled "see you at the finish line!". Certainly not me first, of course! I had high hopes for him, as he had done the Tour of Thailand and the Perlis Open. I passed more time chatting with a super-relaxed Shahrom about his training stint in Switzerland, all the while wondering when the race is going to start. As usual, it started late, and at 8:17am, the riders up front began jeering the officials for their tardiness. I've never seen such a thing before, and it was rather amazing, really. About a few seconds after that, we were flagged off by a harried official.

(I wrote so much and we haven't even started the race!)

We rolled down the end of Gurney Drive. Actually, it was more like, we sped down the end of Gurney Drive. 500 meters after the race started the speedometers were already showing 45km/h. My first objective was to get to the Teluk Bahang roundabout unscathed. Accidents were common along this stretch due to the winding and narrow roads.

The pack more or less stayed together and I drifted somewhere between the middle and the end of the pack. By Tanjung Bungah there were already some close calls and I decided to move up. Unfortunately, I chose, at that moment, to be behind a junior and I was trapped behind him for quite a while until Batu Ferringhi. The kid was swerving around, effectively taking up the space to his left and right, and I decided it would be crazy trying to overtake him on the winding roads, with all the riders beside me, and I might just cause an accident.

Speaking of that, being in the bunch has its advantages, mainly because you get to draft, but it has its many disadvantages too. If an accident occurs, there's a high chance you might get caught in it. By the time we reached Teluk Bahang a mini pile up had already occurred behind me. I could only recall hearing someone shout and the sound of pedals scraping the road as people went down. Oooh. A green Tour de Langkawi bottle slid through the peloton. Boy, these bottles should be banned! I saw the same thing last year and these particular bottles seem to be very slippery.

I went over a huge road undulation at Teluk Bahang and I thought I was going to puncture. I felt really annoyed with myself because although I had ridden this road countless times I was still running over the same potholes. Darn it, concentrate!

Complications occur when the road narrows or when people try to avoid a pothole. The bunch compacts into one lane, everyone starts yelling, and another close call happens. Think of a yo-yo. The bunch compacts and then stretches into a thin line as the guys at the back (like me) struggle to accelerate and catch up. During one of those accelerations a panic alarm lit up in my head. Despite all the stuff I've eaten, my legs felt empty during those accelerations. I was only hanging on to the bunch, being propelled by the draft it was creating. I thought my worst nightmares were going to come true as this happened so early in the race. And the nightmares did come true for a while. (At the foot of the Dam I saw Andrew in front of me but Melvin was already long gone). I pressed the gas pedal and pounded up the climb, overtaking a fair number of people but by the time I reached the top I was exhausted and many of the people I overtook zoomed back pass me and left me for dead.

How's that for gaya? Adli (left) smiles while going up the steep Dam climb.

I pedalled on and Erwin Towle appeared beside me. He went up ahead and I followed him down the sharp right descend. Erwin was going to take the inside line of the turn, but to my horror a Johor-registered Wira suddenly turned up and took the inside line instead. Erwin was forced to ride the outside of the road at high speed and in doing so he went down, locking his rear brake before shredding the bottom of his ANZA bibs. I avoided Erwin and a few guys behind me started shouting profanities at the car. Once again, a car driver has misjudged the speed of a cyclist.

Although I started the Fruit Farm climb at 24km/h, soon I was doing an extremely pedestrian speed of 21km/h. It was shocking and I thought either my eyes or my speedometer were playing tricks on me. By now the group in front had disappeared. I was all alone and wallowing in mediocrity but soon Swee Loong overtook me and started pacing me about 5 meters ahead. This I was really grateful for. Thanks Loong! We pretty much stayed together for the rest of the climb, joined at various times by a few juniors here and there.

At the last switchback of the Fruit Farm climb, I knew I had to claw back as much time as possible so I raced up the remainder of the climb (lactic acid pain ... ouch) and left everyone behind. I know I was doing this at the risk of pissing off Swee Loong, for I could hear him asking me to keep a steady pace before his voice tailed off. It was a risk-all-gain-all descent, and I went down as fast as I could. I caught some juniors but I had to yell at them before passing them as they were taking the racing line. At the waterfall fruit stall Kulim Lee passed me by and I wished I was sitting in that comfortable Ranger!

Andrew at the Fruit Farm climb.

As I passed by the "Kris Corner" (THAT corner which sent our buddy Kris to the plastic surgeon) I saw a junior who had crashed badly. I later found out that he had a concussion. Shudder.

At the bottom of the climb I had a mini group of myself and two juniors. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record here but juniors really need more education about racing and doing pacelines. Maybe it's due to their enthusiasm but they can set a really high speed before blowing up and dramatically slowing down. I wasted lots of effort trying to keep up with them and their super variable speeds. I urged the two kids to work together with me but maybe they didn't understand me.

I started the first Betong lap with my small group (now numbering about 5 people). Soon it grew to 10, and then 15 (at the peak we had approximately 20 people as we kept picking up riders who've been dropped from their respective groups). The large group made racing much easier. Erwin caught up with us after his crash and so did Swee Loong. Boy, was I glad to see them. I discovered that I was riding with Tony Harvey (winner of the next day's Veteran's criterium) after Erwin started talking to him. I was also mighty glad to spot Faizal and Ad in my group, familiar faces!

We kept a good pace of about 35km/h and upwards. I would credit Erwin as the strongest rider in our group and its main driver. In fact, he was in the wrong group because of his crash! Everytime the pace slackened, he would ride off the front, make everyone chase and return the group's speed to its original. Without him, we wouldn't have recorded the time we did. I learnt a lot from him that day. On the other side of the spectrum, the juniors were once again messing things up (bear with me, please). Many of them didn't really work in our group, and their erratic riding and variable speeds were disruptive. One particular junior, having already annoyed me with his bad fashion sense by wearing purple striped shorts, was starting to diss everyone else off by swerving around, all this while riding in a paceline, duh! At one point Faizal had to make an emergency evasive manoeurve to avoid him as the junior just swerved suddenly to the right for no apparent reason. Needless to say, he was given a talking to.

On the second lap I peered at Faizal's water bottle and discovered he was using mine! (I had written my name on all four bottles to avoid confusing Edwin). I wasn't pleased because I had filled up that bottle with 100Plus which I had intended to guzzle on the third lap. As Finian and Edwin passed by I shouted to Edwin something about him giving away my bottle. Later on I discovered that Edwin had just recycled my other empty bottle and I still had my 100Plus well and intact. My apologies old friend! I peeled open a PowerGel and took a gulp. It tasted like ultra-sweet caramel. This was the first time in my life that I'm taking it. Not exactly something wise to do, but Melvin had assured me it would be gentle on the tummy. I shared my first pack with Faizal.

Proof I was there :P

We passed by Maybank Balik Pulau three times and each time I could see Kulim Lee and gang having drinks at the nearby mamak stall. Gah, how could they be relaxing at this time? On the third lap Shaharin came out to the side of the road and took a picture of us, with me in front. At last, proof I was there! At the peak, we had in our group a few Thai juniors (we later dropped them towards lap four). I checked out one of the Thai kids and saw the darnest thing - he was riding without shoes, just with socks pedalling overturned SPD-Rs! I looked again just to make sure.

At last, 3 2/3 laps of Betong were completed and we were heading down towards Tun Sardon. In contrast to last year, the Betong laps this year went by in a flash. At the end of Betong, the cramps that I've dreaded so much had yet to appear. But they did hit Swee Loong, and he drifted off the back on the final lap. As is always my custom, I started Tun Sardon dead last and this time I wasn't only last, I was about 30 meters behind the next last person. Actually, I didn't intend it that way - in the flat final 2km before Tun Sardon I had thought everyone would slow down to rest and prepare for the climb, so I took the chance to cruise and stretch. But everyone just kept up the pace and I found myself being spit out of the back and having to chase hard a few times just to catch up. I found Faizal beside me and we started cracking really bad jokes about how we were the pros, how we were going to start at the back but we'll show them, yada yada yada ....

Despite the pain, I relish Tun Sardon as the finish. It is always great fun to see the outstation riders racing up Tun Sardon only to see them decelerating to single digit speeds when they reach the first 10% section (and the subsequent shock on their faces). As I was behind I could see my group suddenly blowing apart and the guys at the back doing impromptu zig-zags across the whole width of the road. And I could hear them complaining (or maybe shouting obscenities, who knows!). I had to laugh, really. Erwin and Faizal were already charging up ahead so I concentrated on catching the rest.

Power to the bike! Melvin drops his group on Tun Sardon.

Ja checks the damage at the back.

I counted the number of people I overtook but soon the efforts of the past 95km were taking its toll on me so my main concern became to finish the hill and not care how many people I passed (or not). I managed to keep Erwin and Faizal in view until the end of the second 10% section - after that they just disappeared.

The disappearing act of Faizal.

As the third and final 10% section started I was approaching a rider when he suddenly unclipped and got off the bike. Cramps. Boy, that was close. The same thing happened to the next rider ahead of me. Kulim Lee and Finian had already passed by in their cars, and I knew they were looking at my tortured face. I soon passed a guy telling me "final 100 meters". Boy, that didn't help! I thought he was the finish-flag guy.

The End

In the final 100 meters I saw two riders in front of me. I sprinted but failed to catch them. That was of secondary concern, however, and I crossed the line exhausted but happy. *Dit* went my watch and to my great delight I discovered that I had shaved 7 minutes off my time last year. I felt even more jubilant to discover that the winner had recorded a time 10 minutes slower than last years, so all in all my time lost to the winner had narrowed to 13 minutes ... only!


The face says it all. From left - me, Melvin and Finian.

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