At the roaring 40s cyclists like me would take a longer time to recover.
We've endured more than 70km on the road yesterday and had to wake up early to begin our seven hour ride back to Port Dickson.
This was planned in such a way, we would have ample time to rest and continue with our rides.
The first order of the day, is a sumptous meal at Dung Fong cafe in Jalan Temenggong.
This is one of the many well-known coffee shops in Malacca and as usual, I had the fishball noodles while Michelle had a bowl of pork porridge.
So far, we've spent less than RM150 including meals and at this coffee shop, the bill came to RM12.00, not bad for Malacca's standards.
We set out at 08:15am, working our way towards Banda Hilir and towards Limbungan.
Our ride took us towards Tengkera, Klebang and this marks the beginning of a climb towards Sungai Udang...
I have plenty of respect for the rotiman on his black bicycle laden with bread and other goodies.
His range may be shorter than what I had experienced, nevertheless, humping such a load is no joke.
And my Ortlieb frontrollers and rackpacks are lighter by the day.
Its laden with recovery tools, my personal stuff, a small netbook and other essentials that puts this trip at level 3 of 'well-prepared' on this short tour.
I never liked to travel without my gear as there's a million things that can go wrong.
Anyways, we were making our way towards Sungai Udang.
Some 9km of hills awaits us before we reached the town and move towards the Sungai Udang Forest Park.
From there, Masjid Tanah is roughly about 5km.
We rode the day before and an endurance ride that spans about 145km both ways, one better be prepared.
I've munched on a Hammer bar and swallowed two Endurolyte pills. These worked all the time in preventing cramps and lactic acid build-up.
So, there I was, my bike in its lowest gear and I worked up 65rpms to charge up a slope, then another and another and another before we reached a Shell petrol station where we rested.
BOTTOM PAGE: The writer's 2008 Dahon Speed P8 which is rigged for touring with a front and rear luggage rack. This bike has clocked at total of 10,000km since 2009