With only 26 days till we roll down the start ramp at Meerendal Winery, Team Fixed Wheel has been training hard. With me having a couple of broken ribs and some torn rib cartlidge from my fall a couple of weeks ago, it has been hard for me to get the miles up but there isnt much I could do but grin and bear it. Time off the bike at this late stage is not good.
One of the issues with the ribs is that I cant ride the mountain bike. My ribs dont allow any pulling on the handbars......
However I am back on the road bike with a vengence!! Buzz is riding really well and with the 2012 race in the back as experience, I think we are in a much better place than 2 years ago. Knowing what is in front of me is a benefit as I can prepare better.
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| Some of the goodies from one of our major sponsors Specialized |
Ended up in Melbourne for the weekend with a whole day spare and nothing to do but ride the bike. Saturday morning involved our usual smashfest - Coast and Toast where we do 88k hard around the northern beaches of Sydney. Beautiful scenery with short sharp hills to break up the pack. I know my form is coming on when I went up my personal benchmark hill (McCarrs Creek Road) in my second best time of 19mins 48secs for a 10k section. I averaged over 320watts for 20 mins which I was pretty pleased about. I also had a little left over in the tank, so thats also encouraging.
After arriving in Melbourne, I rode in Sunday morning with my brother David and some of the Melbourne boys. It was a relatively easy spin down to Frankston and up into the foothills of Mount Eliza with a rollover on the way back for a coffee.
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| more of the riding down the Mornington Penisula |
After I headed back home, I dropped by at one of our Sponsors places, Hampton Cycles as they had a box of goodies for both Buzz and I from another of our sponsors, Specialized Bikes. They have been very generous in terms of kit, socks, gloves, Tyres and a Helmet each. After packing this all up, I then jumped back on the bike for another outage. The goal was to have a long day in the saddle and to see how I pull up the next day. The goal I set myself was 230k. The most I had ridden in one day ever was 216k, so this would beat the previous 1 day distance.
Once again I headed down the Mornington Penisula. It has beautiful country roads with little traffic. The idea was to do a big loop down through Frankston, turning right at Balnarring, climb over Red Hill and Main Ridge to the famous Arthurs Seat hill, used most recently in the Suntour UCI race. When I hit the bay beaches, another right turn along the coast road through Dromana, Mount Martha, Mornington and back through Frankston. It was around 145k in total and over the day with the 2 rides, it was 231k, averaged 30.8kph, over 1500m of climbing and 7.5hrs in the saddle.
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| A long day in the Saddle |
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