Yesterday the Danang Sport Cycle Club held a mountain bike race up Son Tra, a lovely forested mountain right in the city. It’s a worthy opponent – equivalent to about 3 Ainslies, with some steep pinches (Strava says 23% at the top – I was having trouble turning the 28 over). I don’t have an MTB here but was allowed to ride my roadie on the course for kicks. The road is basically like a big footpath, quite doable on a roadie, but given the local skill levels it was probably a good decision to ban roadies from racing. The usual craziness at the start was all there: quasi traffic control stopping the whole beachfront road as we assembled. The big motorbikes were there, and the team from Saigon had brought a war era Jeep and a yellow Humvee. Nice.  

Then we did a sort of parade through town to the real start line, where we held up more traffic, including trucks going to the port. No complaints. 

And then it was on!

Not everyone got to the finish line in great shape

But all the pain was forgotten at the awards ceremony on top of the mountain.

Danang put in a great showing, with second in Women’s, First in Men’s under 46,  Second in Men’s over 46. Go team. I even got a Souvenir Flag for completing the course.