wurple.net

With a wedding reception to attend on Saturday night, I definitely didn’t have the best preparation for this event. Despite having only a couple of hours of sleep, I did manage to wake up on time and felt fairly fresh.

Of course, that didn’t really help all that much leading up to one of the hardest days on the bike I’ve ever had.

*yawn*

We arrived at Lysterfield pretty early to meet Victor, but as it turns out, he’d also had a late night and as a result overslept. No big issue. We rolled on to ensure that we got a parking spot and proceeded to setup. Supposedly, we had to get there super early to ensure we could actually get a spot, but as it turns out, we were one of the first 10 to arrive. Bah. Could have slept another 10 minutes. Sweet, sweet, precious sleep.

Progressively, the rest of the crew showed up with Victor arriving not long before the race briefing. Despite my earlier suggestions, Victor convinced me to ride first, since he said he was still feeling a bit hung over. Bah. Not too bad I suppose, since I could use the excuse that the first lap is slower, with the crush of people at the start line, after I pull a bad lap time.

Anthony also arrived late, when his bike started to misbehave while riding to the venue. I’d have to admit that it’s not cool having a bike that won’t get out of the big ring while riding up to Lysterfield. However, being made up of two bike mechanics, Team Bean Pole managed to get his bike sorted out quick smart.

Turning my pedals in anger

Down at the start line, I was quite surprised at just how many people there were. Honestly, it didn’t look like there were that many people and campsites up on the hill. I didn’t really feel any of the usual pre-race jitters that I normally get before crits. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t actually turned my pedals in anger for quite some time. It could be because I was getting ready for a long slow ride, not a short intense ride. Or maybe it’s because I was so cold and sleepy.

Not really sure.

But while I stood there contemplating this thought, the race began. Uhhh… oops. Off we go.

I stayed about two thirds of the way back and just paced myself. I figured that with 8 hours to go, I should save some matches for the afternoon. So while people sprinted off, I stuck it in a nice easy gear and spun my way through the prologue. Into Redgum, I found out that I’m not nearly as quick as I thought I was. I mean, I know that I’m definitely not FAST through technical stuff, but I always thought that I was a decent weekend rider.

Errr… hmmm… maybe not.

People seemed to be zooming past me at all too regular an interval and I was not passing anyone.

I did eventually find myself in a decent group of about 8 riders and we formed up a nice group cruising through the trees. The bloke in front of me was probably a tiny bit quicker through the twisty stuff, but my HR was feeling good, so I was pretty comfortable. On to the first firetrail climb and I cruised past him quite easily. Yay! Something I’m good at. Well. I would have been good at it, if I didn’t start to overheat halfway up. Since the campsite was right up on top of the hill, I’d put my leg warmers on. Great idea while you’re standing still, but once the blood got flowing, it all just got a little bit too hot.

While I struggled up the hill feeling more and more uncomfortable, Scott cruised past me. I was, at least, still passing people, which means that despite my discomfort, I still had some advantage over people. Down the next fast singletrack section in Middle track, I was passed by all of the people who’d just passed me, however that was short lived for them as I cruised passed again in the next section of firetrail. At this point, I decided that it was a bit too much, so pulled over to get the leg warmers off… Which of course meant that ALL of the people (and more) that I’d just passed, now passed me again while I sat on the side of the trail.

Back on the trail and feeling MUCH better, I pedalled quite comfortably through the top section of Buckle. Track conditions were great and with a bit more confidence and comfort, I actually started to pass a few people. Halfway through this section, the guy in front of me washed out and stacked pretty hard. I pulled up, put my bike up against a tree and stopped to help him out. He turned out to be okay, but a gust of wind knocked my bike over and broke my one week old saddle bag. Grr!

Back on the trail and now with my saddle bag in my jersey back pocket, I cruised through the next section of firetrail pretty smoothly. Started to feel a bit tired up Blair Witch, but was still feeling okay. The fenceline behind Blair Witch however was nasty. The headwind in this section was so bad that to keep my speed above 10km/hr I actually needed to pedal downhill.

Not funny at all.

I did however manage to catch a few more people (including yet another stop when the person in front of me had a saddlebag malfunction too) and cruised through to a lap time (including prologue) of around 1 hour 15 minutes, which was one of the slowest in our group for a dry lap. Oh well. With all of the mishaps, it’s not surprising.

Maybe I should have kept riding

As Victor went off, I headed to the campsite, feeling pretty good and layered up to keep warm…. well kinda warm. With the wind and smattering of rain, it actually turned out to be quite hard to keep warm. I reckon I could have kept riding, but our race plan was to swap on every lap. On reflection, given how strong I was feeling and how much I suffered after I cooled down, another lap could have worked. Of course, I say that while sitting in a warm, dry lounge room, with lots of layers of clothes, a mug of tea and a gas heater.

Despite passing me early in the lap, Scott rolled into camp after me, having had a stack right before transition and leaving most of the skin from his elbow by the side of the trail. Ouch. Anthony also had a run in with the ground after an OTB left him with a very sore wrist.

Some food and good company did take our minds off the weather slightly, but it also took my mind off the time and all too soon it felt like I had to head back out. Victor managed to smash a lap in the low 50s, which I suppose was somewhat expected… although not really appreciated.

It all started coming together

Back on the trail, I struggled a bit to get warm. As I rattled my way down Redgum, I heard the call of “TRACK!” behind me in one of the tightest parts of the trail. Two Torq guys blasted past me in a gap that I didn’t think existed. I almost tangled up with the second guy, but they got through and were off in a flash. It blows my mind exactly how fast they were through here and how hard they lean through the corners.

Once again, I found myself being passed in the technical bits, but I’d warmed up and was moving along quite comfortably. When I start to get lost in my thoughts, I actually get a bit musical. Usually it’s whistling, although sometimes, I burst out in song. Some might ask how I can be racing and still have breath to make music, but you have to remember – I was saving myself for the remainder of an 8 hour enduro (at least that’s what I tell people when we compare lap times).

Not sure what I was whistling this time, but I was feeling pretty good and humming along nicely. Then came the all too regular call of “Track!”, when a bloke in a flannel shirt blew past me. Err… hmmmmm. Maybe I was going a bit too slowly. I picked up the pace a little, but I have to admit – Flannel Shirt Man (FSM) was incredibly fast through the corners. Try as I might, I couldn’t hang on to his wheel.

BUT…

All was okay, as we turned up the firetrail. Ah-ha! I was on to him soon enough as FSM walked his bike up the firetrail climb and thus began a friendly rivalry. Maybe this is what I need every lap so that I don’t slack off too much, because I’m pretty sure I rode Middle pretty darn well this time. None the less, FSM passed me again in the singletrack and once again, I blew past him on the fast firetrail section.

No spare effort for whistling new, I decided that I was going to try to keep FSM behind me for the whole of Buckle. What happened to riding this at enduro pace? Err… hmmm…. shush, don’t ask. I did manage to keep him at bay for most of Buckle, with the regular climbs ensuring that I’d always have an advantage.

I considered things I could do to keep him behind me. Hmmmm… tacks in the trail? Nah, too obvious. Maybe I could knock a tree down across the trail. With his skills he’d probably bunnyhop it. Oh okay, I’ll just pedal harder.

Approaching the triple log rollovers, I spied Heather in front of me. Maybe it was because I was too busy scheming on how to stay ahead of FSM, but my brain told me to sit behind H until we were through the logs. Duhhh stupid idea. H is a relatively newbie MTBer and instead of going over the log, she stopped to walk it. With not enough space to go around her, I had to stop and walk to log too, which of course would have to be the moment when FSM blew past me and over the logs.

Thankfully we were back on the firetrail soon and I blew past FSM again, this time hoping that the climbing in Blair Witch would keep him off my back wheel. It was around now, when I realised that I should have probably stuck with my plan to ride at enduro pace.

Climbing up Blair Witch in the granny gear, I’m sure I could hear my brain telling me “Geeeez, shoulda stuck with the plan. Now we’re both stuck here for even longer while you crawl your way up this hill. Hey, can you turn around and see if FSM has caught up yet? I’m bored! Ride faster!”.

Stupid brain…

I did however manage to keep FSM away and didn’t go crazy talking to myself. There was a tiny bit of suffering going on here as I pressed into the increasingly strong headwind. The cold was starting to get to me and my knees were getting sore. Wasn’t all too bad though and I managed to pretty solid time of just over an hour.

We’re off to see the wizard…

Following this lap, I was starting to feel peckish and knew that if I was going to survive, I’d need to eat.

A lot.

Now, this is something else I’m very good at. I can consume large quantities of food very, very quickly. Some would say that I almost inhale food. This proved to be a useful skill since I wanted to eat as much as possible, then give myself plenty of time to rest before the next lap.

So in the space of about 15 minutes, I ate half a pack of rice crackers, two G-C rice cakes, a Torq gel, a handful of fruit jubes, a can of 100Plus and some Shapes. Talk about carbo loading.

Feeling pretty comfortably full, I settled down to wait for Victor. The wind at this point, got stronger.

And stronger…

And stronger……

Followed by a bit of sideways rain.

And the some thunder.

What exactly were we doing out here again?

Everyone hunkered down. Our neighbours lowered their marquee as low as possible so that it didn’t get ripped apart. H pulled up, reporting that she’d seen a large branch crash down across the trail.

At this point, I started thinking of ways that I could avoid going for another lap so that I wouldn’t crash, drown in mud or have to answer the question “If a tree falls in a forest and there’s a MTBer underneath…”. None the less, I was ready when Victor pulled back into camp and thankfully (for me), it looked like he was hurting.

Evidently, the conditions were getting to him too and he mentioned about leg cramps, plus the fact that half of the people were packing up already.

*phew* Got out of that one.

That of course, didn’t stop Steve and Scott, then David and Tim going out for more laps. Madness. Of course, they all came back covered in mud and in the case of Tim, some bruises after sliding out on a log rollover.

As we packed up, we heard that the organisers also pulled the pin and decided to cut the 8 hours down to 5.5 hours. There was also significant amounts of carnage up the hill, with several marquees left by the side of the road in twisted wrecks. No doubt, these people were on more exposed parts of the hill.

But you know what? I didn’t really care. I just wanted to get somewhere warm and dry.

The aftermath

Having only done two hours of riding, I was feeling completely shattered after this. I was dozy in the car, had a nap when I got home, slept my normal number of hours and was still exhausted afterwards.

Doing it again?

Yeah, sure, why not. We can’t get weather like that TWICE can we?

So this weekend’s round of Chase the Sun is my first enduro. Eight hours riding around Lysterfield.

Well, actually. It’s four hours riding around Lysterfield, four hours of hanging around waiting for Victor to ride around Lysterfield.

No wait. Victor’s a LOT fitter than I am, so it’ll probably be five hours of riding around Lysterfield for me and three hours for him. *sigh*

Overpacked and undertrained

Being my first enduro, I have no idea what to expect. Eight hours is one of those in between lengths of times. It’s definitely not a short event and if I’m underprepared with warm clothing and shelter, it will be a very uncomfortable eight hours. Then again, it’s not a 24 hour event where I’d know that I need to bring a bootfull of camping gear and supplies to get through the night.

So last night, I was getting my gear together for the event. My goodness, I can’t believe how much stuff there is. Makes me think that I’ve overpacked.

It might pay off though, because I’ll have to admit that I still haven’t really got my legs back following the Malaysia holiday. Maybe if I overpack enough and provide enough good food for people to share, people won’t notice that I’m already struggling come the end of lap #1.

Err.. maybe.

I promise that I didn’t clean my bike!

Just to make things interesting, the weather is going to serve up some interesting stuff.

The BoM says (6:30am on 24/04/2009)
Forecast for Sunday
Cloudy. Areas of rain, easing to isolated showers later in the evening. Local
hail and thunder possible. Winds west to northwesterly averaging 35 to 45 km/h
tending westerly up to 60 km/h around dawn then decreasing to 20 to 30 km/h
later in the evening.

City Rain periods, windy. Min 9 Max 14

14 degrees, rain, hail, thunder and gusty winds.

Outstanding.

No really, I promise that I haven’t actually washed my bike. Why has the weather turned against me?

Welcome to enduro racing.

Generally, pimples are unpleasant, but just an accepted part of life.

Sometimes, they can appear in annoying places. The part of your nose where your glasses nose piece rests. Or maybe on your forehead, where your helmet rests.

Then there are spots which just drive you crazy.

Not quite a cold

Over the last week or so, I’ve been suffering some kind of a cold. Nothing too serious. Although all of the aches, coughs and pains were there in a pretty mild form. So when I woke up with a sore nose, I assumed that it was all related.

Of course, as the day progressed, I realised that it wasn’t a sickness related sore nose. It was in fact, a pimple. Now I’ve had pimples on the pointy part of my nose before, but this one is different – it’s on my nostril.

The pain! The pain!

Now a pimple on the nostril is annoying and painful

Having a cold made it extra annoying given how much it hurts to blow my nose.

I also discovered how much of your face involved when you eat a hamburger. Upon opening my mouth to take a bite out of a burger, I induced a new wave of wincing and eye watering that meant I had to resort to the pansy knife & fork method to consume my burger.

But they’re all trivial things.

My special ability

On a side, but related topic, I should introduce you to my special cycling ability. Everyone has them. Sometimes they’re good powers (climbing hills, sprinting, suffering for extended periods), sometimes they’re bad. Like mine… it’s not so useful.

Remember the character Toad from the X-men?

One of his mutant abilities is to spit out a gloopy green substance that sticks to anything. In a similar way, the moment that I start to exert myself, I start to sniffle. This sniffle quickly progresses to a trickle, which becomes a downpour.

Now I’ve tried sniffling it all in, blowing it all out, tissues, hankies, HPG’s jersey and many other rememdies, but I have yet to find an effective way to deal with the issue. As such, I usually resort to a combination of all of the above, with liberal use of the snot rag section of my gloves to soak up the remainder.

Sorry to anyone who’s ever borrowed cycling gloves from me…

Of course, having a pimple in this unfortunate location makes wiping my nose uncomfortable at best… and sometimes downright dangerous. Take for example, Sunday, where a group of us were doing a recon lap for the upcoming enduro. Now it was a pretty nice day, which thankfully means that my special ability did not manifest itself in its full power. None the less, I found myself climbing a hill early on in the ride and starting to sniffle. Of course, what goes up, must come down.

So down Redgum trail we went. This is one of my favourite downhill sections in Lysterfield because it’s pedally and not too technical. Just as the pace was picking up, I instinctively swiped my gloved hand across my nose, just to make sure I could breathe properly to make the most of this downhill. The pain was… excruciating. Blindingly painful. Eyes watering so badly that I had to stop to wipe my eyes.

And it wasn’t even a very good wipe.

*sigh*

Hopefully it all clears up before Chase the Sun on Sunday.

Another year, another Melburne Roobaix…

What a monster of a gathering this was – the number of people at Fed Square this year seemed endless. Unlike 2007, which saw a LOT of hipsters or 2008 which seemed to have a strong lycra contingent, this year seemed to have a much larger group of (for lack of a better term) “non-cyclists”. Not to say that I look down on them, but I wonder if they knew what they were signing up for.

Once again, I teamed up with HPG and Martin with the purposes of cruising through the course. With the number of riders, the start was absolute chaos, but this time, there were six different starting groups, which meant that it wasn’t mass congestion at the first checkpoint.

Straight up Queen Street to Queen Vic Market to record the number of bike racks in front of a building, then onward to the north west and inner north west suburbs which… I know nothing about. This was a proper adventure for the three of us, since none of us really knew where we were going, unlike last year, where the route took us through my brother’s backyard.

Checkpoint #1 really tested most people, with a ride along the dirt trail beside a train line. Big railroad rocks threatened to launch our 23mm tyres sideways or rip them to shreds. Of course, that didn’t mean tip-toed through. As with riding the cobbles, maintaining a good even tempo and staying off the brakes really is the best way to get through. Martin and I found ourselves cruising straight past heaps of people on MTBs who were mind-bogglingly slow through this section, despite being on fat tyres and suspension!

Checkpoint #2 saw us do a cobbled climb right past Cory’s backyard, where he’d rolled out the cargo bike and took a few happy snaps. Moderately challenging climb here, but nothing too scary.

Somehow we managed to cruise straight past checkpoint #3, but the next couple after this really put the smackdown on a lot of people. Talk about steep! The three of us weren’t really racing, but at times, running ~70GI, I found that I just had to race off on Martin otherwise I’d be trackstanding.

(Why do I just say Martin and make no mention of HPG? Probably because he was off the back and walking, with his massive 48T chainring… that’s how steep it was)

As we wound further north, down a stormwater drain (legit bike path!) and up a quick, steep singletrack climb behind the zoo, we found ourselves in the slightly more familiar northern suburbs cobbles and approaching Col d’Ugly. With two years experience, this area is becoming a bit more familiar and we found ourselves in the familiar, flattish alleys with multiple road crossings.

With Col d’Ugly looming we decided that it was time… for… a coffee break. We’d only been on the road for 1.5 hours and with only two checkpoints to go, we weren’t too fussed. Plus, HPG’s joints were starting to get sore, so a break went down well. A couple of long blacks, an OJ and some lollies (can I get some sugar?) meant that we were nicely relaxed… and cooled down for the ascent of Col d’Ugly.

Honestly, after the steep ones earlier and having done this climb now a few times, there weren’t really any surprises, so it became a bit of a nothing. Still steep and still ouch though. After this, the final checkpoint, it was off to the velodrome. Down the Merri Creek path and the wrong way around the velodrome (just to add some extra dirt roads), for the final lap.

Last year Martin used his track experience and used the banking to drop down on me and take the win on the line after I gave him a lead out. This year, I was watching for his stunts, so I tucked in behind him and let him lead me out. Into the final turn, I watched him pull up high in front of me, so I went early. Legs were a blur at 70GI, but Martin didn’t really contest this one, so I think I took it quite easily.

All up, another good, fun, bone rattling day on the cobbles.

While working my way through a massive pile of ironing tonight (if only business shirts were like lycra and could just be stuffed into a drawer without ironing… *sigh*), I caught up with some TV. Quite specifically, I watched a recording of the Paris-Roubaix.

But why?

Being several days after the event, I already knew that Tom Boonen had won… again.

So I suppose that some might ask why I even bother watching the race. I mean… knowing the ending… it’s like watching Star Wars the second time – you already know that Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Plus, it’s just a cycling road race right? A bunch of blokes in tights, pedalling furiously towards a line?

For the most part, I’d agree with that for some road races.

But no…

Stuff happens. Randomly. People crash. Tyres get ripped from rims. Bikes break. Mud. Dust. Baking heat. Pouring rain.

The Paris-Roubaix is an adventure.

And this year came up with the goods. George Hincapie, unlucky yet again, with a flat at a crucial point. Silence-Lotto showing, again, that they really need to work on the “team” part of “teamwork”. Thor Husvold crashing and splintering the lead group. Tom’s break. Filippo’s chase.

All good stuff, which makes the race worth watching again.

And in local news…

That’s probably why there’s one local cycling event that’s on my calendar every year – the Melburn-Roobaix.

Sure inner Melbourne isn’t quite as pretty as Northern France and as far as I know, there isn’t anything quite as terrifying as the Tranche d’Arenberg at 40km/hr. Yet, this bone jarring, filling loosening blast through the cobbled alleyways of Melbourne, still brings me back every year.

Looking forward to it… although I haven’t really ridden the fixie for a while, so I hope I’m up to it…

So it appears that I’ve entered an enduro.

Sure it’s only an 8 hour daylight enduro, but it is my first one and I’ll have to admit that I’m not really at peak physical fitness at the moment.

PLUS, it’s only just over a week away.

AND I now seem to have picked up some annoying cough that makes it hard to breathe in cold weather.

Given my general lack of MTBing over the last few months, I wonder how my body will handle about four hours of riding. Of course, I’ll actually ride a bike with suspension this time, so that will help, but I’m not sure if I can handle four hours of being beaten around.

Now I think about it… it’s going to be more than four hours. My partner for the event, Victor is generally faster than I am, so I suspect that I’m going to be spending more time out on the course than he is.

This will be interesting…

So I took the rigid for a ride around Lysterfield on the weekend. What was meant to be a nice, easy ride with HPG, turned out to be a bit more serious when we bumped into Anthony & Victor in the carpark. Victor was busy refueling in true Asian style, with a bowl of instant noodles.

The guys put me in front because they wanted to see me fall. Of course, there wasn’t much chance of that because I’d discovered the week before that the bike actually has plenty of grip. No worries at all. Unfortunately, the top end of Lysterfield is rather hilly, so it wasn’t long before they got sick of going at my pathetic pace and Victor and Anthony shot off. I was however mostly able to keep pace with HPG. At this point, I was realising that 60 gear inches is fine for a CX bike (if maybe a little bit low), but it’s massive for a MTB ride around Lysterfield.

None the less, I plugged on.

Some of the smoother, more open bits, I was able to keep up pretty well, but any time the trail turned up or bumpy, I was off the back again.

By halfway through the lap, I was a broken man. Lower back was sore. Shoulders and arms tired.

Suffering.

Despite all of this, I did actually manage to do the final climb up to the carpark without putting a foot down. It required a large amount of standing on the pedals, but I did eventually get there.

So there are still a few things to play with on the rigid, but all up, I’m pretty sure it’s not a Lysterfield bike at the moment.

Gah!

I thought that I’d nailed it.

I was so sure that last night’s clean had taken care of all those annoying noises.

Yet… one managed to slip past.

If anything, I reckon it sounds louder than before. Although I think that might be because it is the last remaining noise that it stands out so much.

Bah!!!

There comes a time in the life of every bike, when things start to get a little bit tired. Countless hours of spinning away silently give way to an annoying cacophony of creaks and clicks. Usually, it will happen some time during a very long ride.

And so it was for my road bike.

Saturday saw me return to the road for one of my standard rides. A 110km ride that takes me past my brother’s place, to the usual turnaround point at Mordialloc, followed by the whole thing in reverse. A good solid ride, which mixes the rolling hills of the East, a bit of city riding and the fast flats of Beach Road.

Unfortunately, Saturday was raining. Water being the way that it is, it helps to transport grit and grease from the road, on to your bike, then into those bits of the bike where you really don’t want it.

Not even halfway through my ride, the little creaks and clicks started. First it was just one small creaking that I traced to my left pedal. Then a few clicks from somewhere around the front derailleur. By the time I hit the 80km mark, my bike sounded like some hard rubbish special which has never seen a bottle of chain lube. Very annoying when you know there are still 30km to go.

So tonight, I set to work cleaning my bike. Basically taking everything off, regreasing and putting it back on. Follow that with a good clean of the drivetrain and… bliss.

Silence.

Just the hum of tyres against the road.

Lovely.

Rear flat and jammed chain in the same ride.

Annoyed.