It started off as a casual conversation during one of our rides about doing a longer route than the recent RIBA challenge.

RIBA stands for Round-Island Bike Adventure, a 120km challenge around Singapore main island organised by the People’s Association.

Most of us that day took part in that challenge and someone mentioned about a challenge that’s longer than that: the TBSG RTI challenge.

More acronyms to explain.

TBSG stands for The Bromptoneers SG, a Facebook group for the local Brompton owners community.

RTI is this Round-The-Island challenge where you can get a medal if you complete the route around Singapore. The criteria is that you have to take photos at designated milestones and you must be riding a Brompton.

Another difference is the distance. RTI is further than RIBA by 40km. This 40km is how long you take to reach a particular lamp post called Lamp Post One (LP1) that’s situated at the southern-most point of this bloody long stretch called Tuas South Boulevard.

Going solo is not undoable, just highly challenging. That’s why we were talking about completing it as a group.

We decided to roll off at 4pm so we could finish it by earliest 4am the next morning, taking advantage of the lack of traffic and blazing sun if we were to tackle it during the day.

Met up with Michelle at Yio Chu Kang MRT and headed down to the starting point. Formed up with Raymond and Warren at Ang Mo Kio.

The starting point, and first milestone was Lorong Halus Bridge, one that links Punggol to Pasir Ris. It was a good 16km warmup ride from YCK.

There were 3 participants for the medal: Warren, Raymond and myself. Michelle joined us to support and cheerlead. I would say she’s very sporting to join us for the whole 160km!!

Our good friend, Derrick, handed us each a goodie bag via Warren, consisting of energy gels, sweets and toothbrush! Lol.. How very thoughtful of him.

We rolled off at 4pm. The weather was overcast and it had just rained earlier so we weren’t much worried about it.

Reached the second milestone without much fanare. Topped up water and did our check-in shots.

The stretch towards the third milestone has more ups and downs, especially the upslope along Admiralty Rd East. I trained there a couple of times previously and considered a good place to train your legs.

Reached 3rd milestone, Woodlands Waterfront, at about 4:55pm. I would later incorrectly estimate that we probably just needed an hour to reach Jurong Point for dinner.

Journey to the 4th milestone, Sungei Buloh Nature Reserve, was smooth. Except for one driver who horned at us for no reason.

We need to be more cautious along the stretch to  the 5th milestone as it’s single lane both directions with no pedestrian area. Dump-truck drivers who passed by were generally cautious of us too.

5th milestone is a busstop along the Lim Chu Kang road. In contrast, LimChu Kang Rd has an expanse of 3 lanes both directions with NO divider in between. Clear sky inundated with sparse clouds.

Next would be dinner pitstop. That was where Raymond’s wife, Evon, and Baoyi would join us. Not to eat - mind you - but for the ride down to LP1.

Dinner was at McD. my wife has prepped some pasta in case I couldnt find food.

We rolled off at about 9:45pm. Big thanks to Warren for leading the group. Tuas is a freaking huge place that feels like, in some ways, a megalopolis of its own. I may be over-exaggerating but it is actually far from civilisation!!

All you can see is trees and factories Hardly any humans walking around. And the monotonous straight road that doesn’t seem to end!!! Even TMCR fades in comparison.

TMCR happens to be Tanah Merah Coastal Road, a 20km stretch that loosely wraps around Changi Airport, and one that we would need to overcome later.

After what it seemed like eternity, we finally reached LP1, our 6th and critical milestone.

Beside LP1 is a workers dormitory. It seemed like there was some celebration or event going on, with loud music and all. But once that event ended, it was really just wind and nothing else.

Our 7th milestone was pretty far away at Marine Barrage.

We took an hour just to get out of Tuas. And by that time, we needed to replenish our drinks and energy. Had a short pitstop at a petrol station where we noticed Warren started to slow down a bit. I swapped places with him and lead the remaining stretch.

Baoyi dropped off around West Coast area. His company was appreciated.

Much more traffic as we near the city area and had to be more cautious as we switched lanes. We advanced at a slower pace and eventually reached Marina Barrage right after midnight to take photos with the cute water-droplet mascots.

Evon dropped off just right before we reached Marina Bay Sands. She still has 20km before reaching Bukit Batok!! And it was midnight!! Daring lady, I would say.

We had now cleared more than half of the route, and the rest was pure endurance. In terms of our energy and staying awake.

I was really struggling to stay awake along the East Coast Park stretch. Had to shake my head and chew gum and make conversations.

Talking about food did perk us up a bit, and we actually picked up some speed too!!

Our 8th milestone was NSRCC: National Service Recreational and Country Club.

What was between us and the ending point was only TMCR. As mentioned, it is another bloody long straight road that never seems to end.

But hey, the weather was good and morale was high despite the sleepiness. What could go wrong?

And it did.

Just about when we entered TMCR and rounded the corner towards that long stretch, heavy downpour ensued!! Freaking unexpected!!

We were damn lucky that a bus stop was just in front of us, and we took shelter there. We were now directly opposite Singapore Navy Museum.

The wind blew and the rain poured. We put on our jackets, expect for poor Michelle who didn’t prepare one. Afterwards, she would share that she doesn’t like to bring jacket and accepts whatever weather as it comes. Hats off to her. But now she was just shivering.

Slowly, everyone dozed off. I drifted in and out of consciousness as the position was uncomfortable but at least I not wet. Not dry either because my jacket is water resistant but not waterproof. It got wet after long rain exposure, but I was guessing that the tight jersey helped a bit in not retaining water.

Warren exercised to keep himself warm. Michelle fought the cold with her mental toughness while shivering.

The rain eventually got lighter after about 2 hours. We decided to push on to our hot Milos waiting at Changi Village (CV).

The first few minutes was pure agony!! The rain was okay, but the wind!! Not just chilling but freezing cold!!

At that moment, I recalled how my friend was experiencing in Italy while they descend the mountain: frozen to the bone and still needing to control the bike. We were nowhere near but it was good enough!!

The faint yellow blinking light at the end of the stretch became my only focus. In my mind, it was just left foot, right foot, just keep on pedalling. It was like I became one with the bike and nothing else is on my mind except to reach that goal.

Once we rounded that corner where the blinking light was, we knew we were halfway to CV.

Dawn began to break as we ascend upon CV. Hot drinks and shelter, here we come!! They had hot noodle soup, while I had kaya bread set with 4 eggs. We all had hot Milo!

We were warm and fed now, so off we go to the ending point. There was still light drizzle but our spirits were high.

At about 8am, we reached the end point.

The funny thing was that although we started our Strava at the same time, each of us had different distance clocked. As for me, I still lacked 200m from 160km.

Since we were taking the same path back to YCK mrt, I clocked that needed distance along the way.

Reached YCK mrt, brushed off excess dirt from the bikes and headed home.

And that was it! An entertaining and fulfilling RTI challenge with a group of great people.

Looking forward to our next ride, albeit drier and more chill! Lol

- Derrick