This last week, I started my day how I usually do, by checking Facebook’s “On This Day” feature, which allows you to see things that you’ve done in past years on the same day. I came across some photos from the 2013 Guiyang Internatinoal MTB Invitational Race, which I was invited to attend exactly 4 years ago. I realized that I had many photos from this day, but had never written a blog about it, so I thought I’d break out of my slump of blog-writing procrastination and finally write the blog post for this amazing event!

First, some background information

This race was a large international MTB world cup style race with both a men’s and women’s field with riders from over 30 different countries. It was an invitation only race, with most countries bringing their national team members. Luckily for me, it was the end of the MTB season and start of the CX season and many people were focusing on CX, so there were some spots available on the US team, which I was fortunate enough to get chosen for.

The race was in Guiyang, which is the capital of Guizhou province in Southwest China. Having never been to China before, I was beyond excited about this opportunity. I even needed to apply for a visa to attend this race, which was a first for me.

Upon arriving in China, it quickly become apparent how much money was being put into this event. Not only did the organizers fly everyone in, but they also put us in a 5-star hotel for the entire week of the race. In addition, the entire city of the event was covered with numerous advertisement posters (like the one above which some unfortunately included George Hincapie on a TT bike..). It was a level above anything I had experienced before at a race.

This picture is of the hotel we stayed at, called Renaissance. We had a room on a pretty high floor, so the view was amazing.

My roommate and teammate for the week was Joseph Maloney, someone whom I regularly competed against in the MWCCC (midwest collegiate cycling conference) races.

After arriving, we both unloaded our bikes and got ready for the next day’s course pre-ride.

On the left was our translator and assistant for the week, Candy. Center: Joseph Maloney. Right: me

The Honorary Parade

The day before the racing started, we had an honorary parade, which was us basically riding around the city with a rolling police escort and road closure.

As you can see in the picture, there was some serious talent at this race, including the female MTB world champion!

This parade was actually a really cool event, since many local people around the city were cheering as we went by. A lot of people even asked for my autograph and to take pictures with me (thought that’s not all that rare as a tall blond guy in Asia..)

After the parade, we were able to take a bus back to our hotel with our bikes.

I also received my race number!

The course was close enough to the hotel that we were able to ride to it. Like everything with this event, the course decorations and setup was top notch!

On the race day, there was a large opening ceremony event where they announced all of the riders from each country.

They even had giant flags for a representative to carry from each country. Joseph ended up being our flag bearer.

Next to us was the Swiss team, who were pretty friendly.

We even had cheerleaders! That’s a first for me at a cycling event..

Race results

Did I mention that this course was the most technical course I had ever ridden in my entire life?? There were some sections that had extremely steep drop offs, which was something that I was not used to having since I mostly just raced in the US Midwest region.

However, after watching some of the others ride, and after some practice runs, I was able to ride the entire course without any problems.

There were actually two races, short track and cross country XC. Unfortunately, the short track was designed poorly and had a very quick bottle neck at the start. I had a near last row start in a 100 man field and by the time I got through the bottle neck, the leaders were already close to approaching, so my short track battle didn’t last long.

In the cross country race, I was doing quite good, and moved up from my near back starting spot to a top 30 position, but on one of the last laps on the short course, my wheel flatted on one of the big drops, and unfortunately that was the end of my race.

On a plus note, I got a pretty cool looking wound and my mtb handling skills and confidence greatly increased from this event.

For some reason, Joseph and I still had some energy at the end of the race and decided to duke it out with a push up contest (which I won btw).

Overall, it was an amazing trip and experience for me. Even though I’m 4 years late with this blog post, I still have many fond memories from this trip and am very grateful to of had such an amazing opportunity. I’d also like to say a special thank you to the amazing volunteer staff with this race (who was mostly local university students)

That’s it for this adventure.

BTW, this all happened in the middle of the school semester, so I had to skip a week of classes to attend this race, but thankfully my teachers were understanding and lenient with my assignments. Never a dull moment as a student athlete..