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I thought that this was quite clever.

Link

Just a quick post to link to an amusing article in the paper today. Hmm, I don’t think the idea will take off in Melbourne mid-winter…

Today saw the first serious Team Yellow Peril training ride, with four of the team present and three wearing yellow (HPG had to spoil it). I was starving in the morning and devoured a large serve of pasta and an average sized bowl of ceral. I figured I’d use up all the energy during the day anyway. Unfortunately, I only had an hour to digest and when we kicked off from Norm’s place, I was still feeling kind of full.

It was a perfect day for a ride, in the mid-teens, a scattering of clouds and a light SE wind. As usual HPG set a blistering pace at the start before anyone was really warmed up. Given my rather solid breakfast, I had a bit of a hard time matching this pace while keeping breakfast down. I managed to survive though and kept up with the others. Somewhere after Black Rock, we passed Mr Bianchi who joined our peloton. He truly had the whole Bianchi kit, the bike, the helmet, the jersey and even the matching pump! The scary part about his kit was his knicks which appeared to have a special window in the back that allowed a perfect view of his backside. *shudders*

About 1km from Mordy, I got sick of looking at Mr Bianchi’s backside, so decided to go for a sprint.I pulled out from the peloton and put the power on, maxing at about 45km/hr. Al & Norm decided to come with me, while HPG preferred the view of Mr Bianchi’a backside. I kept the pace at a solid 40km/hr for most of the way, but unfortunately, it appears that I hit the power just a little bit too early and by the time I got to pedestrian crossing just before Mordy, my legs were gone and my head was spinning. Not good… not good.

After a short break, we continued on to Frankston, on the north side of the tracks, which turned out to be a rather uneventful ride. HPG continued to push the pace, however with the slight headwind, he would pay for this later. We kept up a pretty consistent pace all the way down to Frankston and passed several other riders, including a kid on a MTB who was talking on his mobile. As we approached Oliver’s, I forgot to start my stopwatch, so didn’t record a time for the climb, but I’m pretty sure this was a poor time, because I hit the power a little bit too early. The surprise of the climb was Al, who came powering up next to me just before the top and probably could have beaten me to the finish if he didn’t slow down to chat. Norm came in soon after and we took a break at the top waiting for HPG. A short break became a long break and became an even longer break. Then the kid on the MTB passed by, but still no HPG. Turns out that his legs stopped working at the steepest bit of the climb. Shamed by a kid on a MTB!

We gave HPG a break at the top and took a sugar-break at BP in Frankston before continuing on in ernest, with the intent of making no stops on the way home. This time, just to provide a bit more punishment, we went south of the train tracks on the nice dead & potholed road. I guess that was pretty mean of me given how st00fed HPG already was, but we stuck at it. At this point HPG started paying for his pace setting at the start when he started to run out of gas. By the time we got back to Mordy, HPG was pretty much gone and Al wasn’t doing all that well either. We managed to stick together in a fairly loose group up to Black Rock where Al brought the group to a halt to water the flowers.

By now I was getting bored, so turned the power on again for the remaining 15km home, pushing the pace at around 35-40km/hr. Surprisingly, Norm still had the legs to keep up, however the few times he tried to share the work leading he slowed down considerably. No matter, I was really feeling it and happily took the lead all the way to North Rd. I eventually dropped Norm for the final 3km home and arrived a with a good 5 minute lead. Al showed up another couple of minutes behind and HPG a good 10+ minutes back after he bonked majorly along the final couple of hills (not really hills, just “slight rises in the road”).

All in all, I’m REALLY happy about the ride and it makes me feel good to know that all of the hard work that I put in during the week is paying off.

It appears that all of my posts these days are about cycling. *sigh* I thnk I’m becoming one of those bike riding loony activist types. I sure hope not.

Anyway, working in the corporate world, with a CEO who is also a cyclist (& part time bike commuter at that!), I hear a lot about how cycling is the “new golf”. There was also an article in the AFR a few months ago, alleging the same thing, saying that business deals are no longer made over a round of golf. Now this really bothers me because despite of the fact that I work in the corporate world, I would much rather my relaxation time is kept very, very separate from my working life. This caused me to think – What is it about cycling that’s attracting Mr Corporate away from golf?
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