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…
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