One of the websites I grew fond of in recent months is GoSwim.tv. They provide tips for people who want to improve their swimming technique and they also provide visual assistance in the form of small videos which explain the drills in detail.

Since the connections in China are terribly slow, I downloaded some of their videos and will put them here for your viewing pleasure. If you like them, please pay the website a visit!

And while I am at it, you might want to have a look at the very informative website of the swiss limmat sharks. Sadly enough, the Chinese government is blocking access to this trove of information, so I have to give you a proxified link Swiss Limmat Sharks(for those with dedicated lines, just remove the first part of the link and you get the original link).

Those of you who have joined last years event will remember it as a glorious day for the TRIBEIJING Team, since all the age group wins went to our team mates. We hope to be able to put together a similar group again this year to give the locals a lesson in speed. Below are the race details and the registration form.

Date: July 22, 2007
Venue: Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, P.R. China (GE Link: )
Contact: Ms. Jin Wen

Telephone: 86-10-68826378
Fax: 86-10-68862596
Email: triathlon@ctsa.org.cn
URL: www.triathlon.org (ITU Website) & http://triathlon.sport.org.cn/en/
Mail Address: No.15, Laoshan West Street, Shijingshan District, Beijing 100049, P.R.China

EVENT DETAILS

Entry fee: non for overseas Elite athletes
Entry Deadline: July.13, 2007
Prize money: USD 15,000 & RMB 50,000 (split up into different categories)
Distances:
- Standard Distance 51.5km (Swim 1.5km, Bike 40km, Run 10km)
- Sprint Distance 25.75km (Swim 0.75km, Bike 20km, Run 5km)
- Fun Tri Distance about 7.2km (Swim 200m, Bike 5km, Run 2km)
Categories:
- Elite Men/Women
- Junior Sprint Men/Women
- Age Groups (Standard Distance & Sprint Distance)
- Fun Tri Groups

Start Mechanism: Beach running start
Swim Conditions: Sheltered sea bathing place, 2 laps (Triangle)
Predicted Water Temperature: about 25℃
Bike Course: Almost Flat, asphalt road, 8 laps (nasty turns!)
Run Course: Flat, asphalt road, 2 laps (same course as bike)

TRAVEL AND ACCOMODATION

We strongly advise not to take the flight to Shenyang because transport to Jinzhou takes about as long as a car ride from Beijing. Jinzhou can be reached within 5 hours from Beijing. We will send around a mail to the TRIBEIJING mailing list to organise travel.

Please read the attached documents for more information about accomodation.

RACE DETAILS

RACE ENTRY FORM

For those of you with hopelessly outdated browsers or ridiculously high security settings, Please follow the links below to read the documents on an alternative server:

Race information

Registration Form

Following my publicly declared love of the climb starting at the foot of the Huang Hua Great Wall on this site, I will now officially withdraw that love.

After 20 ascensions of Huang Hua, moaning about the delapidated road surface (has it been re-done??), I’ve fallen head over heels for a new mountain, called “Miao Feng Shan” ( 妙峰山).

Miao Feng Shan (MFS) is about 50/70km West of Beijing, behind Xiang Shan. The most time-efficient way to travel there over the weekend is by following the 6th ring all the way West until it literally stops. Get off and turn left into the valley to the town of Jun Zhuang Zhen. You drive about 10km through small villages and then arrive at a big T junction. Turn right on the main road called “G109″ towards the West and go 5km until the pretty entrance archway of MFS.

There is ample parking next to the fruit stalls at the foot of the climb. From there you have one main road leading straight to the top of the mountain.

You have all in all 3 main climbs on this mountain. Route 1 to the traditional summit at 1070m altitude, the West peak, takes 20km from the archway. Only 13km out of these are climbing, but they are strenuous.

Route 2 takes you to the newly opened and much higher East peak to a height of 1180m. From the archway you will ride 22.5km to the top, hence a full blooded climb of 15.5km.

Route 3 follows 3/4 of route 1 but at the last major 180degree switchback, you go up a near impossibly steep 3km to the East peak over a rough surface.

The first 7km are (false) flat, perfect for an easy warm-up. At km7, you will pass a major junction in the village where the roads branches, with one road going down and one up to MFS. A big blue sign stating “MiaoFengShan 13km” is a good place to press the stop watch to time your ascend. From that point onwards you’re in for a great climb.

The first 8kms of the climb, over near-perfect asfalt, are the toughest part of route 1. It will only level of as soon as you hit a main touristic village. From this village you get a delicious choice of poisons. If you turn left, following the main road, you will get a 5km stretch of balanced steepness to the top of the lower West peak (route 1). A large earth-trodden parking is the finish. You could go on for a few hundred meters to the main entrance of the temple area but that is very much a spectacle of Chinese tourists and souvenir peddlers.

If you turned left at the village, through a small archway, you take route 2. Here you will negotiate a steep 2km before you reach the first of many switchbacks to the top. The 7km from the village to the top will surely take your breath away literally and figuratively. This route has some very steep sections and magnificent switchbacks. So far, this route is the most impressive climb that I know off around BJ.

After a very steep 2km you reach a the forest plateau where you grind your way to the top of the ridge. Great 180degrees switchbacks over the place!

On windy days you will be very exposed to the wind on this narrow ridge. At this point you are well over 1000m. The height rewards you, though, with great views of ChangPing and the plains or northern Beijing. The final few kilometers of the higher East peak are very beautiful and remind me a lot of the Maritime Alps. You are riding towards a peak of 1180meters and it’s a stunning scenery. The road has a few quicks descents towards the end but, beware, the final 2km are very steep once again. The endpoint is a viewpoint a few meters before (and higher than) the parking on top.

Steven “Floyd Landis” Ose and myself have done the two routes back to back a couple of times, totaling 85km in total. That’s a great day out in the mountains!

But there is one last challenge to be done on MFS. I encourage everyone to look up the mountain route on Google Earth where the whole ride is visible to the meter.

You will see that halfway up route 1, 3km past the tourist village, there is a very steep side road that goes up towards the East peak. This is route 3. It seems only a few km in length but it is incredibly steep. Notice all the switchbacks on GEarth.

To incorporate this climb, I propose to do route 1 and then route 2. Upon descending route 2 to the tourist village, turn back up towards the West peak (route 1) and after 3km turn into the side road going straight up to the East peak again.

For the absolute die-hard amongst us: go up and down the mountain 3 times (route 1 = 40km, route 2 = 45km, and route 3 = 44km).

This last triple ascension i will call (poetically) the “Great Crown” and the shorter version the “Small Crown”. Doing either deserves a big “chapeau”!!!

FYI:

From the Archway to the top of the West Peak (route 1) my current PB is 58′ 48”. Steven Ose PB for this route in 51′ ; set during a race in ‘06.

My PB up route 1 from the blue sign after 7km where the climbing really starts is 42′ 14”.

From the Archway to the East Peak (route 2) my current PB is 1h 13”. Steven Ose PB for this route is 1h 12′.

My PB up route 2 from the blue sign after 7km where the climbing really starts is 55′ 00”.

by Tom Lanhove

The video is highly compressed, but the filesize is still quite big (28mb), so be patient or download the file to your desktop and open it with our .flv player of choice (Standalone FLV Player. No installation needed, just double click and point to the downloaded file)

For anyone who is interested in a DVD of this video, please send an email to the website administration. Shen Wenhui will send you a copy by mail.

Lance (guilty until proven innocent) and all the other American riders are doing it until they join the hill races in the old territories. In America it is a very important step on the way to become one of the few chosen riders, in Europe we don’t really talk about it that much, but TREK is bringing it on in China for the third time in three years; I am talking about the TREK Summer Criterium Race Series

To all those that have never been to a criterium race let me give you a short description. Imagine a bunch of cyclists pouring onto an F3 race track, lining up in the start area and then starting to pedal like idiots in circles for an hour. See the fun in it? We certainly do, and that is why we will be at it again starting from June 6th at 18:00 on the Goldenport F3 Race Track close to Beijing International Airport.

The race will start at 18:30 sharp. Be there at 18:00 for registration and warm-up. Race duration is 60 minutes + 1 Lap.

Race Dates:

Jun 6
Jun 13
Jun 27

Jul 4
Jul 11
Jul 18

Aug 1
Aug 22
Aug 29

Sep 5

Venue: Goldenport Race Track Beijing
Time: 18:00 sharp
Duration: 1 hour + 1 lap
Fee: 40RMB
Directions: (Golden Port on Google Earth)

I used to be a lousy swimmer. After two years of getting friends with water, I am becoming an average swimmer. Because I still think that chasing the black blurry line under my belly for lap after lap is about the most boring exercise in my weekly routine and is somehow connected to the more masochistic part of my brain, I try to add a new torture to my training from time to time. I’d like to share a great little addition, which has helped me getting closer to solving the problem of balance in a bad kicker:

Actually, I have no clue how foot shackles look like, and so far my searches for detailed instructions have come up empty. But upon finding this word the first time a few weeks ago on the (bilingual) website of the swiss swimming federation, I have been trying the technique in my own swimming sessions and I have to say that I am impressed with the result.

As you can see from the picture, I took a bike tire to give my feet at least some freedom of movement. Once you are in the water and have lost the draft of the first push, you will realize that your arms have to do much more work than usual to get forward movement. In the beginning, my feet seemed to be touching the bottom of the basin at the end of each lap, but miraculously, after a few hundred meters, my body started to do new movements to counteract this sagging of my rear. My back stretched longer, my arms started to grasp further ahead in the water, the angle of my arms before the stroke became steeper and my ass did movements I had never before experienced swimming. After a few sessions, even my bad breathing side started to improve, I didn’t swallow half the pool anymore and I got more confidence breathing on both sides, which greatly improved my swimming rhythm.

There is no exercise attached to it; just bind your feet and start experimenting with your body. I am completely convinced that I just entered a new stage in my swimming experience just by crippling the part in my body which has been hiding the real culprit of my balance problem; my mid-section.

The website of the swiss swimming federation can be found here. It is a huge compendium of information about swimming in both german and english. Sadly enough the website is blocked in China (I guess the reason behind this is the fact that they write quite openly about swimming and doping in China), but if you follow the link provided, you can open the site through a proxy to read the articles. Swiss Swimming Federation. The original (blocked) URL is: www.svl.ch

The TREK Time Trial Series 2007 will start this weekend with a 22km individual TT.

The Individual Time Trial this Sunday is on the connecting road between KuanGou Government resort and the main road that goes up to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. It is an “out and back” TT which will be a total of around 20+km. You might consider riding out from Starbucks (about 1hr 5-10min to start point), do the TT and then return.

Time：May 20th 09：30 AM
Location: Huairou District, Kuangou
Map: (Only very bad quality available on Google Earth)
Distance: 22km

Registration：Call Windspeed 010 8562 2509，or register upon arrival on Sunday。
Fee: 40RMB (You get a discount if you register for 3 Events: 100RMB).

This year TREK China will organize three events, so mark the dates in your race calendars:

First Stage: Sunday May 20th (22km)
Second Stage: July 7th (33km)
Third Stage: September 1st (44km)

A bus will start from the Chaoyangmen Windspeed Store at 07:30 AM sharp. Call CUI Kai for details about transport: +86 13601311343 (崔凯)

You may have picked up a leaflet at your local Shimano Dealer already, but for some of you this might be news.

The Shimano Biker’s Festival is being hosted in 5 cities in China Between the 1st of July and the 12th of August. The procedure is similar in all cities, but tribeijing.org will only focus on the Beijing station.

Stations:

Guangzhou
July 1st
Registration Deadline: June 16th

Nanjing
July 8th
Registration Deadline: June 24th

Beijing
July 15th
Registration Deadline: July 1st

Shenyang
July 29th
Registration Deadline: July 15th

Chengdu
August 12th
Registration Deadline: July 29th

Beijing Race Station Details:

Race Categories:

- Individual Road: Beginners (10km), Mid-Level (25-30km) and Open (30-40km) category

- Individual MTB: Beginners (10km), Mid-Level (12km) and Open (15km) category

- MTB Relay: 4 laps

- Others: There will also be races for youngsters and elderlies of both sexes.

Regulations:

- Your bike has to be race fit. It will be checked before you enter the course.
- You need to wear a helmet and gloves during the race.
- You should know the basics of riding a bike.

Prizes:

Who cares. This is just a great opportunity to meet fellow two-wheelers!

Course Map:
(Download Google Earth here: GEarth)

Registration Points:

Any Shimano certified dealer in your neighbourhood (see Shop Locator: Click here)

Registration Fee:

Shimano-Club Members: 40RMB
Others: 100RMB

Registration Form:

More Information:

Official Website (Chinese only)

This shortcut has been lying on my desktop for too long, so here you go:

Ever wanted to design your own dream bike? Are you fantasizing about the most radical position ever to hit the roads? Then we have the right application for you. No learning curve, no fees involved, just wait for the javascript to load and get wild!

Start wasting time here: BikeCAD

Time and Location
May 19th 2007
Gaoyakou

Organizer
Windspeed Cycling

Course and Timing
Start：Gaoyakou Village on the open space by the public toilet (talk about a description!)
Finish：Finish line on top of Gaoyakou
Distance： 14km (ridiculous!)
Registration: 09:30
Race start: 10:00
Duration: 1 hour

Race Registration

Register with at one of the Windspeed Stores around town (directions here: Store Locator)
People with race number: Free
Others: 10RMB

Transportation
Windspeed offers transportation by Bus to and from the race location. Go to one of their stores to register for this.

Bus location: Windspeed Shuangyushu Store (directions see store locator above)
Departure: 08:00 sharp (be there at 07:30 to make sure)
Cost: 30RMB/Person

For a gallery of pictures taken during the week, visit the BUTT Gallery

On April 28, 2007, The Beijing Triathlon Association is organizing a Duathlon in Pinggu District 60km to the east of Beijing. If you are interested in participating in this event, please read the following document and download the registration form. The official map of the course is in Chinese and seems to be a relic of pre-digital times. I tried to follow the course in Google Earth, but the image quality of this area is pretty bad.

Please click on the image to view a fullsize picture of the course.

A friend of mine likes to point this out to others when we talk about our training rides outside of Beijing. Truth is, I do enjoy the thrill of swerving through narrow spaces and narrowly avoiding crashes by being super-aware of everything around me while pumping with all my legs can give to get from A to B in rush-hour choked Beijing.

Recently I found a website made by a guy who likes to tape his adventures with a helmet mounted camera. After downloading some of his videos, I couldn’t help myself but watched them over and over again.

This kind of camera is very high on top of my wishlist. I’d love to see how scary my rides look from a couch perspective.

Some of you might know that I am a big gadget freak and also spend a considerable amount of time flying through Google Earth during the preparations for my races.

Today I stumbled over the following article in “Wired” (www.wired.com) which talks about real time tracking of athletes during the Tour of California (Feb 18th-25th). Below is a quote from the article:

During this year’s edition of the pro cycling race, the Computer Sciences Corporation, or CSC, will outfit seven contenders with specially designed tracking devices. Information about the riders’ locations and relative positions in the race will be made available as a map mashup during each of the tour’s eight daylong stages.

This is exactly what I have been fantasizing about for more than a year now. I always thought that it would be excellent if for example my (virtual) coach could follow my training on a map or if I could track my workouts without having to manually input all the data from my Polar watch.

Hopefully they will build this stuff in one of the GPS enabled watches soon, I can’t wait to update my stock of gadgets.

Maplinks:

GM:

GE:

The list is a translation of a document which can be found on the website of the Chinese Triathlon Association (CTA)

This list will be updated as soon as we get new information. As always, I suggest that those of you with access to Chinese language support head over to the guys at Dongfanghong to check out the rumour mill in the forums (DFH).

We may not have an Alpe D’Huez, a Galibier or a Mortirolo to satisfy our sadistic cravings for epic long-distance climbs. Nor do we have stunning Alpine scenery or quaint little stone chapels along the way. And I haven’t seen any names of cycling gods in white paint across the mountain roads. No “Allez Tom Boonen, Der Jan, or Go Lance” around every hairpin bend. At most we get a Mao-era slogan on the cliff-face or a meaningless “慢” (Go slow) sign. But to state that we are starved of a great climb would be dead wrong.

Most of us already know the climb starting just below the Huang Hua Great Wall. It is just 60-something km north from Pinnacle Plaza and a fairly quiet place to cycle. Of course it will take you 30 km of boring flats, an irregular 20km climb from the Xing Shou village at the bottom of the mountain to the scenic viewpoint and about 10 km of smooth valley road just to get there.

The climb is exactly 15,76km long. I start counting from the middle of the bridge next to the convenience store in the valley, and end my meter all the way at the top of the climb (right next to the road sign). There is no way to ascertain the height of the “col” or the average levee, so I take some estimated guesses. I think the top is at about 1300 meters, because the highest peak to the west of the climb is ca. 1500 meters.

I take the liberty of dividing the climb into three parts.

1. From km 0 to 8: The road passes the fantastic scenery of the Great Wall. Every time I look at it, the Wall and the lake become more beautiful. The climb is irregular with some sharp up-swings but mostly long steady “faux plats”. I reckon it has an average of 5% levee until your reach the wood-cutting farm at km 8.
2. From km 8 to km 12.5: Now the road becomes really strenuous. These 4.5 km will test you with an average levee of about 9-10%. Most painfully in my opinion is that you pass the villages during this section of the climb, so they can all see you inch your way forward with bewilderment in their eyes. And a laowai, and on a bike, and in a shiny uniform, and breathing like a horse… They shake their heads in honest disbelief. During these tough kilometers you find no real point to recover which makes it very difficult. From now on the roads start making quaint hairpin bends, worthy of an Alpine climb.
3. From km 12.5 until the top: The road now drops to a steady 7%. The scenery is spectacular on a clear day and the road twists and turns to the summit. The road is quiet but overall quite rough on the tyres. Provided you pay attention to the trucks or cars coming down the mountain (which you should hear them coming miles away), you can cut the corners like the pros. Some 2 km before the end the climb, the road has a steep section towards the concrete viewpoint platform. That is the last main punch of the mountain. Once past that point the road drops again to a tolerable levee.

I have done this climb over 10 times, most of them by myself against the clock. Here is my data for those interested:

Height: 188 cm
Weight (at the time of PB): 78kg
Bike: Trek 1000 (aluminium frame)
Gears used for the climb: 42 x 14, 16, 18, 21, 24
Personal Best (PB): 44’ 18’’.
Personal Worst: 57’
Average Speed over 16km: ≈ 21 kph.
Temperature that day: 24 degrees

By Tom Lanhove

I remember there was once an article in that’s BJ (www.thatsbj.com) that listed all the bike stores in Beijing where you could purchase a decent bike and also would also be likely to find a mechanic who actually knows how to work a wrench and fix a tire. I put it aside no never find it again, so I had to start all over again and put together a list of bike stores all over Beijing. The good thing about it is that it also includes maps and google earth directions, so your purchase is only a click and a taxi or bike ride away!

In the future I might even write a short introduction to buying a bike, so frequent the site once so often to check out the progress.

All locations mentioned in the list below with one click in Google Earth:

Windspeed Dianmen Store

66 Di’anmen Dongdajie, 100 meters west of Nanluogu Xiang, Dongcheng District
Phone: 010 8403 6967
地安门东大街66号,南锣鼓巷往西100米路南
Map:

Windspeed Chaoyangmen Store

Chaoyang District, 10 Ritan Jinghua Road
Phone：010-85622509（Chaoyang Store 朝阳门店）
010-82622915（Shuang Yushu Store 双榆� �店）
URL：http://www.windspeedcycling.com
北京市朝阳区日坛晶华一层10号
Map:

Windspeed Shuangyushu Store

Haidian District, Zhichun Dongli, Building 14
Phone: 010-82622915
URL: www.windspeedcycling.com
北京海淀区知春东里14号楼
Map:

Windspeed Shunyi Store

Shunyi District, Eurovillage, Pinnacle Plaza
Phone: 010-80465538
顺义区花梨坎日祥广场
Map:

Giant Beijing West Flagship Store
Chaoyang District
Qijia Huangzi 2 Guo Heng Jiya Mansion, Building E
Phone: 010-62379740/62377295
URL：http://www.giant-beijing.com.cn
朝阳区 祁家豁子2号 国恒基业大厦E座底商
Map:

Giant Beijing East Flagship Store
Dongcheng District, 77 Jiaodaokou Avenue (22 Middle East Side)
Phone: 010-64034537
URL：http://www.beijing-giant.com
东城区交道口东大街77号（22中东侧）
Map:

Merida Store
Phone：010-68016789
Xicheng District, 18 Fu Wai Da Jie
西城区阜外大街18号
URL：http://www.merida.cn/index.asp
Map:

Ore Store
Haidian District, 18 Fuxing Street
北京市海淀区复兴路甲18号
Phone: 010-63957778
URL: http://www.ore.com.cn
Map:
Map 2nd Store:

Taishang Store
崇文区天坛东路2号
Phone：010-67012046
Map:

BJGOLDEN Store
Chongwen District, 6 Tiyuguan Lu
北京市崇文区体育馆路6号（100061）
Phone: 010-86002824
Fax: 010-67122121
Contact：杨洋（13901329274）
Email: bicycle5803@sina.com
Map:

Discuss this article:

While we are still preparing for the weekend and looking forward to the 24th of September, there is already another opportunity sneaking up on us fast; the Beijing Marathon will let thousands of people lose on the streets of Beijing on the 15th of October 2006.

Siegfried has been in touch with Yang XU already to verify our registration fees. Our expat fee will be 80RMB for the full marathon (60RMB for the half marathon) if we sign up with Yang at swissôtel.

Event: Beijing Marathon
Date: October 15, 2006
Time: 08:00 Tiananmen Square
Race Course: Click here
Runners Guidebook: Guidebook (pdf)
URL: Official Website

We can organize a collective registration. If you want to register for the event, please click on the link below to go to the registration page and submit your details.

Venue: Goldenport Race Track Beijing
Time: 18:00 !!!
Duration: 1 hour
Fee: 40RMB
Directions:

A bus leaves from the Windspeed shop near Chaoyangmen.

由河北省铁人三项运动协会、秦皇岛市体育局主办，河北省体育彩票管理中心协办，秦皇岛市体育局、北戴河区政府、北戴河区体育局承办的“’06体育彩票北戴河铁人三项大赛”将于9月2日（下周六）在北戴河老虎石浴场、及区内公路上举行。
　　本次大赛亮点颇多，不仅吸引了众多名来自全国各地的“铁人”选手报名，还接到了来自英国、德国、瑞典、澳大利亚、比利时、美国等国籍的10名外国选手的参赛报名。这10名选手的年龄大多在20—50之间，Cath Mortin是其中唯一的一名女选手。他们的到来，不仅为本次大赛注入了更鲜活的力量，使本次赛事上升到了一个新的高度，同时也体现出体育健身� 国界、体育健身已成为全世界的一种时尚潮流。

In which we are already mentioned as the attraction of the race, although we haven’t even confirmed our participation yet.

While I’m at it, here is the english text of the rulebook for this race: http://www.hbtcw.com/news/news_content.asp?id=4842