I MESSED UP on Thailand's TOUGHEST CLIMB... DOI INTHANON -- Ride Across Thailand Day 4

Today is Itanon! Although it is freezing cold. Well, I say freezing cold. It's pretty chilly. Fun one. Not so fun because it was just so cold in the rooms. My feet were physically cold so I didn't sleep the best. I slept all right. But yeah, now I'm heading off to ride to the highest point in Thailand. It's about 100k to the bottom of the climb. It's about a 40k climb and then we get to the top. I'm very excited because there's lots of different things I want to talk to you about today because this is going to be a very, very, very, very special, nostalgic, lovely, amazing ride and day. So I'm really excited to go but it is chilly so I'm going to set off. I've got all my warm layers. All my warm layers include my jersey, a gilet and then my raincoat but I've only got on this. So I'm just going to get this up and then set off. Can you see that? There's like, can you see that coming? Oh, it's actually cold. I think it's about 10 degrees so let's go and be on our way. Oh wow, look at that. Cold, chilly, pretty. It's that cold. These are like my, it's like a disposable pair of gloves that I just reuse. Sorry, keep them in my repair kit but my hands are so cold I've had to put them on. Little tip if you do want to keep warm hands. I will eventually take this coat off but I've just seen a sign. Doi Invernon. That way I am very excited to get on this climb. I don't know why, why do signs make you so excited? I love it, I love it, I love it. I want him to follow me. Do any of you ever do this? I've literally just got off my bike, come up to the lights and I'm just stood here and I'm not on my bike, well I am but do you know what I mean? My foot's on the floor and I'm just like, I've got here from Bangkok just by riding a bike because I was thinking if I didn't have my bike I'd just be stood here and I'd be like how did I even get it? It's a weird thing to say but I just feel like how good is the bike that we can get? So far, just on a bike and I'm in the middle of Thailand. I just love riding my bike. I think I've got about, what am I, about 90k so I'm going to start on the climb pretty soon I think. The ride today, I can't even tell you how much nicer it is not being on those. I mean I knew before I didn't like flat roads but this just cemented the fact that I just love rural roads and climbs. Okay, I'm on green. Because that's also what's good about the bike is you don't have to go to all the tourist spots. This just gets you through so many different places you would never normally go to if you weren't riding a bike. I love traveling and I love riding my bike and this is like the perfect way of doing both. Signed 47k. It's going to be to the top of it. Welcome to go into the national park. I'm at the first checkpoint. I mean I've not ridden like a kilometer but this is so, so amazing. I'm so excited. This is the first checkpoint. Let me give you the little story though on why I'm so excited to come back. I'll try and make this as short as possible. When I first started cycling, a couple of months after, I came to Chiang Mai because there was a cycling festival. So I came and like I said I'd only been riding for maybe a month, two months. I was over 100 kilos. I was not great on the bike. I was at the back of all the rides but I didn't care because I was just learning how to ride and getting used to climbs and yeah I just really liked the atmosphere and some of the group that was there came out and did, because we stayed in Chiang Mai, come out and did a 200k day to Inphanon and back and it was about probably two and a half, three thousand meters and I was always so in awe of it and I was like I really want to get to a point where I can do that in the future. So over the next year, I don't know if it was a year or two years, maybe two years, I like started in between the festivals. I used to come back every year. I built my endurance up and so that one year, I think it was 2017, I, me, well me and a group of friends decided to come and ride Inphanon. There's a video, I'll leave a link to it below. We all rode up together and it was honestly, when I say it was the hardest thing at that point I'd ever done, it was just, it was brutal. There's a picture of me and I look absolutely exhausted, wasn't the word. I was sunburned, I was tired but I was so proud and then when we got back, I think it was my friend Anthony had bought like a little, um, little badge at the top that said do Inphanon and how many meters it was. I was like oh I really want one of those and so I was like oh shall we go back up and get one. So then we went, there's a different way, I think there's three different ways to come up and there's a harder way. So we came up the harder way, got to the top and the shop was shut and I was so disappointed. There's a video of that as well, I will leave that below if you want to go and watch the first few times I've been up Inphanon. Eight years later, I want my badge and so that is why I'm very excited to come back and do Inphanon again. Hopefully feeling, well I'm guessing in those eight years I have built more fitness but I do remember, I actually watched the video last night as like my little prep for it. I remember the last 10k of it being really steep, there were sections of like 13% for a while and it's 38k, 2,300 meters I think. So on we go. You can't ride down it anymore, I, obviously seven years ago you could but now we cannot. So I'm going to have to get like a taxi down or something at the top, like a tuk tuk or something but we'll figure that out in a little bit. So can you see now why I'm so excited to come back here? It's so nostalgic. Oh this looks steep, look at that, bloody hell. A little bit, like 18%. See I don't remember it being like that but I've done it before so I can do it again. Got to eat. Right don't judge me, they've said I can leave my bag here so I have to carry all this crap up there. Like I know it's naughty, is it cheating? Is it cheating? I'm still going to ride it, I just don't want to carry all this crap so I'm coming straight back down here. Oh I'm leaving all that. Woohoo! Also do you know why I love Thailand? Seven years ago that cost 300 baht, which is about six pounds. Guess how much it cost today? 300 baht, the exact same. I've messed up, I'm so glad I've just checked now. I'm not going back that far, I need to go back and get my bag. I'm coming down there and going across there, I'm not going anywhere near that fall so I need to ride back. I've only gone a couple of kilometers. Damn it, I was so excited but yeah I can't. What an idiot. What a faff, it's quite a chunk of it as well. Oh what an absolute silly, silly, silly thing. So I've got to go down, I've just climbed all that. Serves me right for being lazy. The lady, I don't know what it is but it's very cute, she's given me like a little stamp. I don't know what it means, it's so cute though. Right, bag packed, let's go. I do honestly think that because it was so long ago and I've done so much riding since, I just find it a lot like easier. It's just not easy, it's still steep and hot but I'll get to the top because I want my badge. I'm just having to stop for some water and I'm just stood here. I think the locals must think we're idiots, we're like these morons on bikes, sweating away. I've literally just ran to the toilet, necked a bottle of water, I'm buying a Coke, well a Pepsi and they must just look at us like, you silly farangs, like what are you doing, like killing yourself, like even just huffing and puffing and sweating. Oh about 18k left. I mean what makes the climb hard is that it's either one or the other. You're either going like flat and downhill or you're going up a really steep section, there's no wheel in between. About 11k to go, 937 meters. I've got like a flat downhill bit. It is pretty solid, I'll be honest. It's the hardest one I've done in a long time. I think it's harder than Stelvio, it's more tough than Bontu. Oh it's so steep, some of it. It is tough but it is very, very pretty. Do you know how else I know it's going to be steep? I mean I've got Garmin Climb Pro on so I know. I can just smell burnt clutch. Oh that smells so bad. That's what Climb Pro is saying, last little steady section then it's red a lot way, a lot of the way I'm steep, a lot of the way. This is 11% and it feels flat. Oh my god, that is brutal. 16 still. Absolutely solid. Stopping, yeah last time I could see a slightly easier section coming up. I can see a little level of it. Oh my god, this is brutal. That section back there, probably the hardest bit of road I've ever in. I think that's harder than Zoncolan. Zoncolan I can't even remember. Oh brutal. 4.26k to go, 350 meters. I've got 1.5k to go and so it's only 39 meters. I think that's most of, well pretty much all the climbing that is. That was so tough. I don't know if it's because I've got extra weight on the bike or because I've just done 600k last three days but oh my gosh that was so hard. It's just steep sections for a very long time. Oh I can see the one kilometer marker. Highest spot in Thailand. Am I happy to see that sign? No, where's my little badge? And now we go to the highest point of Thailand. The only thing is, I do like doing these things on my own but it's like when I think back and how excited we all were to be here. It's not the same to be here on your own but I'm just imagining all you lot cheering me on. We're at the highest point of Thailand. This is it. I'm not even gonna pretend that that was easy. It was so tough but when I was trying to look at like roughly how long I did it in and I think I did it faster so I think that saying is very true that you never get, it never gets easier you just get quicker because yeah that was brutal. I just wanted to add that one of the things that really helped I guess improve my endurance and you'll see it in the those old videos was my Garmin. I had the Edge 1000 and honestly that made it just possible for me to I don't know just explore more and so this is my little getting to know your Garmin section because there are so many features on it that have you know progressed since then that I just it has just made my riding so much easier. Still tough but just mentally easier if that makes sense. So there's a couple of things that I wanted to share today with getting to know your Garmin. Thank you so much to Garmin for supporting me and as you can see in that old video like I have loved Garmin for all these years. I absolutely love their products and I just I'm really really proud that they support me too. So the first one and I have mentioned this in another video is LiveTrack. LiveTrack is phenomenal and how it works is you set it up you link it to your phone and then as you're riding along you can set up who you want to send the LiveTrack link to. So I've got a load of my friends, my family, so they can actually track exactly where I am. Let me just read you some of the stats that you can get on it because it is crazy how many things I didn't realise it was that many so you can get current location, average pace, elapsed time, distance travelled, elevation gain, the planned route where you're going, current pace, speed, current elevation, heart rate and cadence. It's phenomenal and so for me I love when I'm out here on my own doing these things I love knowing that people know exactly where I am and then you can see you know where I'm going to go and then when I have finished my ride people know that I've reached my location which is just really nice and you can also make it it goes on auto start so it's not something that you have to think about doing every single time so it's automatic. I've got it on auto start so as soon as I start my ride it just sends an email they've got the track to the link. The other thing that I really love specifically on rides like today which are pretty tough is there is messaging. I think it's called spectator messaging. What that means is when whoever you've sent it to they can actually see you can send you messages and that pops up on your edge so I love that so today I've had so many nice messages of being like come on you can do it come on we can see you like just give it that last push and it's just so so nice and reassuring to know that other people know where I am and just give them that little bit of encouragement from the comfort of their own homes. Well I'm just slogging away up this climb but I absolutely love it and the other thing that is really really useful on tough rides like this is smart alerts and that's for food and drink so I used to have mine set up that it would come on you can either do it by your own time so I just used to use it like every 30 minutes but on this trip because it's so hot and I'm not necessarily used to this temperature you can use it on smart alerts so I've chosen smart which basically takes into consideration the temperature the speed and like because I've got power pedals it's taking that into consideration so that's working out that's cleverer than I would be able to guess how how quick not how quick sorry how much I should be eating and drinking so I trust that way more than I trust just feel so definitely take advantage of that if you've got one also I could I could reel off another 10 different things that I love about Garland that really helps I'll mention one more climb pro I love climb pro it is my favourite thing it no I just know where the steep sections are I know how long it's going to last sometimes on this today not always great I was like this is going to be a long section but I could pace it for it I just love that is my favourite thing honestly I think that and live track they are my favourite thing that they've ever ever ever ever done because it's just massively um helped with climbing and doing a longer ride so love it also another thing that I'm impressed with is that you can sorry this is only I was going to do two but I'm going to have another one in because you saw it earlier on the videos if you saw the early videos if you didn't you can actually update maps in the unit now it used to be that you had to go and like plug it in on a computer but now you can it's called map manager and so silly me I came out and didn't put the maps on and luckily um I've got the Garmin Edge 1050 and it's on other models now there's been a software update so you can do it and I'll leave a link so you can find out if your model does it but you can actually do it in unit which is amazing and I've just thought I wonder if I've got like all snot all over my nose because I've just been blowing my nose all the way up that climb so apologies if I have but what can you do top of the mountain highest point in Thailand right I'm gonna head down I need to find a taxi to take me down because you're not allowed to go down anymore I did have the the pleasure and the joy of riding it down in 2017 so I'll leave a little link to that it was raining it was pretty cold find somewhere to get down hopefully that's so cute I love that another road we're not allowed to cycle on is that one someone else has just stopped so I'm putting some of my bike in another one so I'm in my second lift back because apparently this way you're not allowed to ride either so they've basically stopped you riding on a bike down um or basically all the ways down into non which is this is another way down it I think this is the steepest way to come up it this is again epitome of Thai people they're just so kind and friendly and will do anything to help you I obviously paid the other guy I want to pay this guy as well just because it's so kind and they don't think anything twice of just stopping and chucking your bike in the back they're like yeah we're going there anyway honestly I mean it's annoying that you can't ride down because I'd rather just ride but I don't want to get into trouble or do anything that I shouldn't be doing because I want to respect what Thai people what what they've decided basically like it's just such a lovely trusting kind I don't know I just I can't get over how lovely is here I just love the people and I feel like this is how it should be like this is how we should live and be kind to each other and look after each other and I don't know it's just a very lovely culture I don't think there's a nicer culture of people I've not met them I've not traveled to somewhere that is it please let me know but I just think Thai people are the absolute best this is a bloody monster going back up this way I'm at my accommodation look at this view although I looked on apple maps it said it was permanently closed I was like have I got bed for the night I was like I don't need this and had to get back up all the steep stairs oh beautiful weather really good climb and a tough climb and my favorite bit of the whole day was getting in the back of the truck there was trucks and neither of them wanted any money and I was like no I insisted they were glad to go off and I just basically like just put the money in the front door I was like no take it you have to take it thank you so much um right thank you so much for watching leave a link to my Strava my Garmin Connect if you want to go and have a look at it and I will see you tomorrow for another fun adventure I've got all the food I've got I've got so much food and food okay goodbye