The Langkawi International Mountain Bike Challenge

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The Jungle Bites Back

Cory Wallace / 19.10.2011

Stage 1 of the Langkawi International Mountain Bike Challenge (LIMBC) was a 62 km UCI sanctioned Marathon circumnavigating the Andaman Sea Island. In the sweltering heat of the Malaysian morning, 167 Elite riders sprinted out of the Langkawi Sports Complex and into the thick Asian jungle.

The first few km was nerve racking with riders from all over the world battling hard to stay close to the leaders, Bury Stander (Specialized), Karl Platt (Team Bulls) and Thomas Dietch (Team Bulls). I was somewhere in the top 30 as we hit the track leading into the pristine rainforest full of snakes, monkeys and a lot of small creatures we probably didn’t want to cross paths with.

One of the cool things about riding with racers from all over the world is that you don’t have a clue where you stack up against them. You could be battling for a top 5, or you could be battling for a top 50. Going into the LIMBC it didn’t seem like anyone outside of the top 3 had a clue where they belonged. As a result it seemed a lot of riders over shot their fitness levels in the opening kilometers as they tested themselves against riders they had never seen before.

About 10 km in riders began self-imploding and I began moving my way up in the field until I made a mistake of trying to pass a Japanese rider via a line with a long vine in the way. The jungle vine, the circumference of a spaghetti noodle, wrapped around my neck and dug in pretty good as I rode another 10 ft before it finally broke loose. Figuring I was in the clear I began hammering again only to feel like I was being lassoed by a cowboy as my speed quickly diminished until I was stopped.

Completely dazed and confused I looked down at my bike to see the same vine that had just choked me, wrapped around my rear cassette a thousand times, causing a complete gong show in my drive train. I have biked for over 20 years, but this was a first. Spending the next minute or two trying to pull all the vine out of my bike was a tricky process. My Kona teammate Kris Sneddon and I had joked about packing large knives with us on our bikes to deal with the jungle. Apparently it would’ve been a splendid idea.See All Event Posts