There’s a name for everything. Yesterday I learned about “false summits.” Those are the tops of excruciatingly steep hills – where you creep up on your bike in the lowest gear, sucking deep desperate gulps of air, pain searing through your hamstrings, your heart audibly booming in your chest, telling yourself, “I’m almost there, gasp, I can do it, gasp, I can rest on the downhill, gasp…” – only to find that you’re not really at the top. A little bend in the road and – surprise! – the incline continues.

Team Dai’s training ride this week took us to the Nam Ngum Reservoir. We met at 6:30 a.m. at the Patuxai Monument in town, as always, and loaded our bikes on top of a songtaew, which is an oversized tuk-tuk with a truck engine. I wanted to take a photo, but I had forgotten to take my iPhone out of the little bag velcroed to my bike seat, and I didn’t think about it till my bike was securely roped on the roof of the songtaew. Here’s a Google image of a songtaew (from home.arcor.de); just imagine a cloudy day with 12 bikes strapped on top of the songtaew and one inside with the passengers.

We drove for about an hour to Dansavanh. There, we unloaded the bikes and cycled to the base of the dreaded hills. Our goal on this day was to get a feel for tackling the mountains – both the challenge of climbing up and the control necessary for going down on less-than-smooth, rain-slicked, sandy roads. (We’re training for a 3-day, 400-kilometer ride north through the mountains to Phonsavan in March. See my previous Team Dai posts for details.)

Ready to go!

For six kilometers (almost four miles), we pedaled up – sometimes on such steep angles that my front tire lifted off the ground – and raced down. My triceps ached from anxiously gripping the brakes so tightly. Some riders clocked their descents at nearly 70 kmh (43 mph)! I’m sure I didn’t come close.

The ride took us to a pathetic casino at the edge of the reservoir. Decorated in an Egyptian theme, it featured hieroglyphics, sphinxes and other cheesy ornamentation. We popped in to the shabby lobby for a toilet break and then met outside for a short rest.

Here we are outside the casino. The Lao worker who took this photo struggled with my iPhone and took about 30 blurry images. This is the best, even though the whole team isn’t pictured. That’s me, third from the right.

Here, the team recharges with snacks and drinks.

This was the view before we took off again.

And then we doubled back on those same agonizing hills. When we regrouped, we all decided to ride back to Vientiane instead of taking the songtaew. After about an hour, we stopped at a roadside “restaurant” and ate some noodle soup, which gave us a much-needed energy boost. At 3 p.m., I pulled up to the gate of my house. Total distance today: about 80 kilometers (50 miles), although I think the hills should count triple.