Bukit Timah Bike Ride

I'm not going to bore you with the details, but here goes.

This morning I rushed off to Kallang to meet 3 pals to go to Bukit Timah Trail. Actually wasn't too keen on it because I didn't really feel like tiring myself out and risking even more abrasions. But still I went. I mean, I gotta be a reliable pal yeah? And this is a rare chance for me to go for a long ride with people. Long rides alone can bore one out of one's mind.

Met the 2 other pals in Kallang and speeded off to Bukit Timah Road. Owwww. Urban warfare! R was leading and he sent us into riding in the wrong direction of the road and bombing the pavements. Stuff that I swear I'd never do by myself.

And so we waited at Sixth Avenue for D in a small prata shop. I didn't buy any. Eating too much in long bike rides makes me feel nauseous.

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And so the 4 of us met and we speeded off to King Albert Park to have lunch. Macs. That's like the official eating place of anyone on their way to BT Trail, since they have open-air seats. The foldover thingie is not bad, I like the taste of that shell thingie. Better than just yet another burger!

Then we headed to BT proper and boy oh boy, was I unprepared. Sorta died along all the slopes, had to walk my bike up and down, and the skidding rear tyre wasn't helping. It was seriously worn and affected my ability to brake properly or take narrow ruts safely. Almost lost control at one part and had to ride up a slope and 'fall' gracefully on my palms rather than losing control totally on one of the steeper and longer downslopes.

Bah I felt weak and wretched. Was feeling nauseous and woozy towards the later part. Guess I'm not too used to offroad.

Why did I forget to change over to the new tyre? I wonder.

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Oh and halfway through there was this open area where you can see the granite cliff really clearly. Took photos with my camera phone, but the one I took failed - dammit my phone made that shutter release sound, so I moved it away, but it was only after I moved it that it started recording the picture! Bah. Can't stand laggy cameras. It's a SE k750 if you want to know. Oh and weird, my hair turned up brownish on the photo but not my friends'.

And after feeling really tired and listless we reached the end point. Got some water to refill our bottles, and I bought a bottle of Gatorade to replenish the electrolytes. I find that on long bike rides, sports drinks help alot. Maybe it's just the sugar, but I won't know.

What struck me about the ingredients of Gatorade that was one bottle contained only about 60mg of potassium, which works out to around 1.5mmol. The average person beeds about 60mmol of potassium a day. When we exercise and work hard we lose sodium through our sweat and all, but we do lose some potassium too. And being dehydrated, our kidneys throw out potassium in order to keep sodium in the blood - so that it can keep the liquid in the blood vessels by osmosis. So it's sorta weird that there's only such a miniscule amount of potassium in the drink.

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Soldiered on, while I was wondering how soon I would fall off from a cardiac arrest from the lack of potassium. Parted ways with the rest since they going to NUS first, so I went on and went home via the Bukit Timah Road/Adam Road/Lornie Road way.

And yay, the sweet sweet sugar in the sports drink kicked in! Not only managed to keep a good constant speed along Bukit Timah Road but I swear I kept a 30kmh average on Adam and Lornie Road. Those 2 roads aren't bicycle friendly - so one has to go as fast as possible in order to keep up with the traffic and not to be overtaken dangerously too many times.

And the rest of the ride was quite boring, just the typical. And the typical tiredness follows, and everything else's typical. Why am I blogging about typical things?