Grow Your Jersey Collection One Ride at a Time – 2019 & 2020

The number of paid organised rides I participated in per year has stayed relatively constant since 2017. The count since 2013 is:

Eleven in 2013.

Seven in 2014.

Six in 2015.

Seven again in 2016.

Five in 2017.

Four in 2018.

I was in five organised rides in 2019.

The first was the CIMB Cycle @ Putrajaya event in April. I opted for the shorter 80km route because I had to be home early to help pack up the house prior to moving to a new apartment. Which turned out to be a good thing because it was a very hot day. The riders who did the 160km route got a proper roasting.

The RHB LEKAS Highway ride was in July. I don’t remember why, but I didn’t ride in that one. I got the jersey though.

My previous employer Repsol organised a Fellowship Ride in September. That ride almost did not happen because of the haze that had blanketed the country for weeks. The decision to go ahead with a shortened ride was made on the day.

The long-running Campaign for a Lane ride in Penang was renamed as the Toward City Cycling Penang. That ride was in October. As in previous years, we turned this ride into a weekend-long fiesta.

This ride came with a T shirt as well.

The Bentong-Raub Golden Ride 2.0 was the last organised ride I did in 2019. What I remember most about that event was that it took me more than three hours to drive the sixty kilometres home afterwards.

I’m not sure why I didn’t write the 2019 annual ride jersey update a year ago. It is no spoiler, though, for me to reveal here that COVID-19 restrictions meant that there were very few organised rides in 2020.

None of us knew what was coming when we lined up for the IIUM Endu-Ride 2020 from 29^th February to 4^th March. The full Ultra-Ride event was 1,200 km / 746 mi long. That was just a bit too long for the four of us who did the 280 km / 174 mi Endu-Ride from the IIUM campus in Kuantan to the IIUM campus in Gombak.

We got a T shirt in our goody bag for that ride.

On 18th March the Malaysian government implemented what was to be just the first of a number of Movement Control Orders. A series of quarantine and cordon sanitaire measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. That led to the cancellation of a number of rides with jerseys on offer which were planned for later in the year.

The absence of paid organised rides continued in 2021.

My guess is that the same will be true in 2022. I doubt any organisers will be willing to risk putting on a paid event while Omicron and the threat of further virus mutations exists. We will make do with our own long and overnight rides, COVID-19 restrictions permitting.