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A while ago I wrote about how I love getting out and about somewhere new on my mountain bike and not necessarily enjoying being boxed into riding in a “mountain bike park”. This thought has really come to the forefront again as I’ve started to organise this year’s Mount Donna Buang snow ride as the discussion thread, which we’ve started, seems to have really captured the imagination of a pretty significant number of people.

Honestly, I’m completely gobsmacked by the number of people who are expressing interest in doing this ride, because only a few years ago, when I took my bike up Mount Dandenong in the snow, most people thought I was an absolute loony. Now, after having done it several years running, it appears that people are catching on. Heck, even though every year, we all say that it was one of the toughest things we’ve ever done, we still seem to come back for more.

Now I won’t go claiming that I’ve come up with something new, because this is clearly something that people have been doing for a while, but it does appear to have taken off a bit with this year’s edition.

It does get me thinking though because the ride doesn’t really offer much in the way of technically challenging riding and honestly, it’s just a big ol’ grind up a dirt road on a hill. I reckon it is that whole sense of adventure thing for most of the folks putting their hand up for the ride. It’s a properly challenging event with a certain amount of novelty to it.

Either way, I’m pumped.

Hope the weather plays nice… or nasty.

This video has been making the rounds lately, suggesting that Spartacus’ recent wins at Flanders and Paris-Roubaix might have more to do with technology than physiology.

Now, I’m no Fabian-fanboi, but to me, he’s been one of the really consistent performers the last few years and I want to believe in his ability. While watching this video, I can’t help but notice the way that it’s been edited. What’s with the cuts between the shots of the shifters and the cranks? Haven’t they heard of the whole ‘no camera tricks’ technique of taking one continuous shot?

In the mean time, I’m not really convinced by this video.

I’ve delayed writing this posts because it feels like someone has beaten my wrists into a pulp using cobblestones… probably because someone has…

With a new date for the 2010 Melburn-Roobaix, there was a lot of talk in the lead up about having to prep your bike for wet weather because cobblestones were slippery in the wet. I wasn’t entirely convinced. Given that I’m a bit of an old hand at this cobblestones thing and having been drenched in Albert Park a few years back, I stuck to my standard setup. My slightly too-big-for-me Rossin road bike fixie, running ~60 gear inches, lots of spokes and 23mm tyres. My only concession to the potentially wet weather was to ditch the cotton this year in favour of lycra.

Kicking off from HPG’s place, we detoured via Victoria Street for a quick dose of salmonella rolls to fuel up. At this point I realised that I’d forgotten my registration email and turned back to grab it. On the way back I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of bikes headed to the meeting point. Before long I was back on track and headed towards the meeting point. Interestingly before the ride had even started, I found myself in my usual position from previous M-Rs – sitting up at the front of a pack of hipsters, leading out the pack.

How is it that I always find myself in the navigator’s seat?

Anyway at the meeting point, a few of the usual suspects started to trickle in, including Martin, who for once wasn’t late and wasn’t riding retro steel. In fact, he’d ditched the whole road bike thing totally and brought out his On One 29er on fat slicks. Pfft. Slack. This year Andrew also joined us and this was to be our group for the day – HPG, Andrew, Martin and myself. The thing that I noticed about this year’s ride is that there was a lot less bling out and about. Prior years have brought some serious bling in both retro and modern road bikes and conversions. Sure, there was still the usual, although somewhat smaller, contingent of hipsters on their fixies, sporting brightly coloured deep Vs, but for the most part, it seemed that most people had brought something very practical. Maybe the forecast for rain had scared off the nice bikes…

But there was some nice stuff…

Before long directeur sportif Andy White stepped up with the megaphone and this year, without too much fanfare or so much as a race briefly, he got the ride underway. It was such a sudden start that I found myself still faffing about, getting my GPS logger started and putting away my camera when half the field was away. Heck, I hadn’t even looked at the map yet! Definitely a less exciting start than previous years. Thankfully there was a big climb out from the starting point breaking the field up a bit and allowing the four of us to start threading our way through the masses.

Unlike prior editions, it was basically straight into the cobbles and we found ourselves in a bit of a traffic jam. Absolute chaos through sector #1. Pretty scary stuff in this section because there was really no space to move around and it was really riding wheel to wheel at far too low a speed to glide over the bumps. In amongst all of the chaos, despite waiting for quite some time, we lost Andrew, but figured that he’d just follow the masses. Heading south from Hawthorn to Burnley it was still pretty congested and the second sector of cobbles was again a bit chaotic. This was compounded by the fact that someone had parked his ute in the middle of one of the alleyways and we had to walk our bikes past in single file. Sector #3 was more of the same crowds, taking us up to the break at Supreme Coffee just off Victoria Street in Abbotsford.

Despite having only just gotten started it was already time for a coffee break where Andrew managed to catch up with us and fueled by caffeine, we hit the road again. Of course, when I say road, I mean dirt. The next section started almost immediately, which progressed from a gentle dirt trail into a soggy mess, with soft, inch-deep mud which caused my wheels to slide all over the place. This was the only place where I had to put a foot down, primarily due to the older gent on his road bike in front of me who had to keep getting off his bike.

At this point, the obligatory lunatic on the unicycle went past…

There’s always one…

Sector #4 out of the way, we found ourselves climbing then descending on Yarra Boulevard in Kew where we were able to really open up the pace a bit. The crowds had cleared a bit by this point and the open road, plus a break at Hoddle Street gave me some time to study the map. As we wound our way through Collingwood (sector #5) and Carlton North (sector #6 and 7), our group hardly stopped and we blasted out of some of the cobbled sectors straight towards the next section. Martin took advantage of his massive tyres in these cobbled sections, blasting straight past us, through all of the bumps. Andrew was showing us some of his foot down DH MTB styles through some of the narrower twisty sectors. All good fun. Sector #8 presented an interesting navigation problem, being right on the crease of the map and involving a bit of tricky navigation involving the bike path and a bit of doubling back. This turned out to be an excellent section though – a flat and even cobbled section (with speed bumps!) where you could really get the speed up.

We continued to wind our way through the inner north past the zoo and on to sector #9 (?) – the dreaded Koppenberg. I remember this section of the ride last year, where I was introduced to some of the cobbled climbs of the inner north west. My form was a bit average that year and I really suffered through some of these climbs as my cadence dropped, so I knew that I had to hit this climb hard and keep the speed up. Maybe a bit quick this year though because I smashed into the start of the climb so hard and fast that I almost ran straight into the back of a bunch of people who’d decided to walk the Koppenberg from the beginning. I was well set up though with my hands out nice and wide to get lots of leverage and kept up a steady pace up this climb. Andrew cruised up next to me spinning a comfortable gear and we scaled the climb together with Martin and HPG not far behind.

It was now the homeward stretch and we found ourselves back on the bike path, winding our way along the freeway bike path towards sector #10. Andrew decided to mix it up a bit and dropped down into the drain next to the bike path for a bit of urban mountain biking and for a minute, we thought that he might not be able to get back out. There was a little unmarked sector along this section, as we climbed out of the bike path along a small, steep, rutted dirt road and through the grass to get back to the bitumen. Sector #10 was another nasty climb but we continued to pass people through here and just kept on rolling at the top on to the nearby sector #11 and #12. We really hit these two sectors running and before we knew it, we were angling towards the final cobbled laneway marked sector #13. At this point, we realised that we hadn’t stopped for our usual café stop and with less tham 1km to go until the pub, we pulled up to one of the marked Supreme coffee stops… which turned out to serve Grinders.

Some time later, fueled with more caffeine, sugar, baked goods and… beef soup (*looks at Andrew*), we were on the road again and smashing through sector #13 to the back of the Lomond. We realised at this point that we’d skipped the velodrome and saddled up again to do our required lap of the boards (or cement as it is in the case of Brunswick). I was determined this time to not let Martin drop in over the top of me and really hit the velodrome flying this time. Thankfully I managed to hold everyone off and cruise over the line comfortably ahead of the other three.

Another Melburn-Roobaix in the bag. Aside from losing each other at the start, there were no real dramas this time – no flats or mechanicals as we’ve had in previous years. Another really good fun day smashing through the back lane ways of Melbourne. In fact, we may have even convinced Andrew about road riding on this one, given the relatively technical nature of this riding. Enough typing for now – it’s made my already sore wrists even more sore…

It’s almost time for one of the most important races rides of the year – The Melburn-Roobaix.

Despite the fact that people ride all sorts of different bikes on this ride, to me, it remains one for my fixie. The wheels on my road bike have fewer spokes than I’d be comfortable with. Plus I don’t have a spare set of wheels for that bike in the event of something disasterous. The mountain bike would be just too slow and the folder… let’s not go there. So that leaves the fixie. Lots of spokes, steel frame, road geometry (no twitchy track geo for me, thank-you-very-much) and nothing much that can go wrong (short of a broken chain).

The first year I did this ride, I was right into riding fixed and actually commuted on my fixie. ~50km several times a week through the hilly eastern suburbs on a fixie really builds up your strength. As such, I found the first few editions of this ride verrrry easy.

As time has progressed, and I’ve gotten more and more into mountain biking, I’ve ridden my fixie less and less. In fact, I’m actually struggling to think of when I last rode my fixie. So with very little recent experience continuously turning the legs and mashing up big hills, I wonder how I’ll go this weekend. Hopefully I won’t suffer too much.

Not that it matters of course because it’s not a race… it’s a ride.

Right?

Last week I broke a gear cable while riding home. Interestly, despite the amount of riding I’ve done, this is actually the first time it’s ever happened to me. Either way, after rigging the bike up as a singlespeed in a middle-ish gear, I managed to get home in a somewhat reasonable time to survey the damage properly. As it turns out, the cable actually snapped near the shifter, due to some worn outer rubbing away at it. I thought nothing of this since I knew that this outer was a second hand outer which I scrounged up from the parts box in a late night bike building session.

Either way, I procured a new gear cable from the LBS and installed it on the weekend. Upon installation, I heard something new. More correctly, I heard nothing.

Which was quite a surprise.

Rewinding a bit – when I built my folder last year, I knew that there were going to have to be a few bodged up bits. For example, the rear frame spacing is 130mm, while Nexus hubs are 132mm. I also had to install an additional home-job bracket to get sufficient heel clearance with my rear rack. I also found that the Nexus hub ran slightly louder than it used to and didn’t shift down into 1st gear as easily. Despite LOTS of tinkering, I attributed this to the loopy cable routing and the fact that cable stop arm of the hub was installed at a funny angle in the vertical dropouts.

I’ve lived with this noise and less than optimal shifting for almost a year now and thought nothing of it. With the installation of this new gear cable, I suddenly found myself riding in complete silence.

Wow.

What a difference it makes.

Not only was it far quieter, I think… maybe… I-can’t-really-tell-without-a-power-reading… but I think the bikes actually easier to ride. Either that or I’m getting stronger, despite having made no change to my quantity of riding.

The best part about all of this though is that it actually makes it easier for me to sneak up on unsuspecting roadies. Yes, yes… one of my greaterest joys – chasing down roadies on my folding bike.

This is almost a reason for me to actually start servicing this bike… almost…

One aspect of the whole cycling and in fact, any outdoors hobby is that you start to become a bit of a weather geek. Not in the sense of being able to name the different types of clouds, but more along the lines of having a faithful devotion to watching the forecast, radar loops and latest observations. It’s not just a passing glance as you leave the house.

No, no…

It’s much more focused than that.

Most cyclists I know will actually study these pages with an almost religious fervor in an attempt to determine which bike to ride, how many layers of gloves to wear, which weight of thermal underlayer to don and how much to load into each pannier to achieve minimum drag depending upon the prevailing winds.

While I don’t quite get down to those levels, I do read up on the forecasts so I can ensure I have adequate cycling gear to get me through the week. I was however baffled today to read the following…

Forecast for Tuesday

Cloudy. A little rain tending to a few showers. Winds northeasterly averaging up to 20 km/h tending south to southeasterly during the afternoon.
City
A little rain.
Min 11
Max 16

What on earth is “a little rain”?

Does it mean that it will be a small amount of rain? Or would that be too close to the definition of a shower? Maybe it means that the precipitation itself will be small? Although that sounds like drizzle to me.

I’m baffled…

I like to believe that I’m a fairly easy going kind of guy. Sure, I get frustrated when someone cuts me off on the road or when my smoke alarm starts to give a low battery warning blip in the middle of the night.

But these things are passing.

For the most part, I’m not one to hold a grudge against someone. Why waste my energy making enemies right? Well, there is one exception to this. I do have one enemy…

It’s a corner…

My nemesis…

Specifically it’s the last right hand corner in the middle section of the Junction Track (Track 14) at the You Yangs. Quite possibly the worst description of a location ever. Anyway, over time, I have slowly built up my confidence on this track. I do remember in early days putting my seat down at the start and still having to walk most of this track. However, I’ve managed to build up the skills (or is it just confidence?) to ride through each of the different parts of this trail… except for this one corner. Somehow, the position of the rocks manages to confound me every single time.

And this time was no exception.

It’s all to do with the positioning of the rocks in the middle of this downhill, right hand switchback. Right at the apex of the corner, there are two rocks on the left and ride sides. No problem right? Just ride through the gap? Well no, it’s not that simple. Right in the middle of the gap, there’s another rock, which forms this really tricky triangle.

I know that the correct way to do this is to it is to swing very wide and cut through the triangle sideways. In fact, I tell myself that every single time I start this descent. However, being right at the end of the run, by the time I get there, I’ve totally forgotten and I’ve got in too sharp and had to unclip to walk the corner.

On Saturday however, in a moment of insanity, I thought I’d try something different. Maybe I could ride over that third rock that’s right in the middle. I mean I do it for every other rock. So I gunned it and attacked this corner… my nemesis.

It’s quite possible that I lost this round.

Despite my additional speed, there just wasn’t enough momentum to get me over that third rock. My front wheel stalled and I found myself being gracefully lowered, slowly to the rocky ground below. Alternatively, I might have fallen really quickly. I’m not really sure, because one second I was riding the corner and the next second I was on the ground.

I lay there for a moment contemplating my existence and admiring the clear blue sky above until I was roused from my daze by the sound of another rider descending the hill. I realised that in my position it was quite possible that this other rider would have to ride over me. Even worse, the other rider might crash in the same spectacular fashion that I did and end up on top of me.
Somehow that thought didn’t appeal.

So I was back on the saddle and pedalling again in a flash, to finish of the next 25km or so of riding, without further incident (to me).

I’ll get you next time last-right-hand-corner-on-the-middle-rocky-section-of-the-Junction-Track!!

It’s getting dark these days on the road, so it’s time to bust out the serious winter lights. After a small disaster where my DIY light mount failed on my rear rack causing me to lose some lights, I purchased a couple of new rear lights.

One of them was the Portland Design Works Radbot 1000. I feel complete as a commuting cyclist now because I have something on my bike which says Portland… home of the American urban cyclists dream.

Anyway, as a comparison, I made this video a while ago, comparing the new uber blinky with the ever reliable Planetbike Superflash.

Planning for the most important ride of the year is now underway.

No… it’s not the Around the Bay in a Day.

It’s the annual Mount Donna Buang snow ride.

Traditionally held in late June or early July, the occurance of this ride largely depends on the availability of snow at the Mount Donna Buang summit. Okay, it’s not really traditional, since this ride has only been running twice officially and once was in September… but that was an exception. It’s tradition for me because all of my other snow rides in the area have been around that time.

For the most part, prior editions of this ride have been announced a day or two prior to the event, when snow has been sighted at Mount Donna Buang. This year, I’ve decided to take a punt and try to figure out a date early on… let’s watch and see if Melbourne weather will mess up my good planning.

In the early days of riding, I obsessed over statistics. Not surprising given that I work for a major financial institution and for most of the day, juggle spreadsheets. Every ride, I made the effort to ride slightly further, do a slightly faster average speed or maybe climb a bigger hill. To support my addiction, I was constantly looking for the latest and greatest bike computer. Speed, cadence, wireless, digital, heart rate, GPS, logging.. blah… blah… blah.

Then, after losing my Cateye Enduro 8 on a MTB ride at Wombat and not long after, ejecting and breaking my Sigma 1606L DTS descending Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, I found myself with no working bike computers.

I decided at that point that I wouldn’t actually replace either bike computer.

I would ride… statistic-less.

It was a strange feeling at first.

I felt like I was always slacking off, but never had the data to back it up. Then I looked around and realised that there was heaps of far more interesting stuff to see around me. Much more interesting than a couple of digits flashing away on a little LCD. I also stopped stressing about not keeping up the right average speed and learned to ride to the conditions.

Free…

Not a slave to statistics.

It was great… in fact, I reckon it’s changed the way I ride totally. Recently, due to MCL competitions heating up, I splashed out and re-computerised both the MTB and the road bike. Despite the presence of this little digital overlord, I found that I was for the most part completely ignoring it. In fact, aside from looking at the final numbers to input into MCL, I can hardly even recall looking at it during the ride.

It’s a good way to ride I reckon… with no bike computer.