Training ride write up by Jarrad

After a mixed bag of weather for the week, the gods seemed to put on the perfect riding morning, albeit a little earlier than i’d prefer. Whilst i’m no advocate of changing the ride times, it seems that by the usual 0600 alarm sounding, i’ve already been up and about, washed the car, eaten breakfast and painted the house, maybe i should just close the blinds before i go to bed.

Anyway, enough of my ranting and dreaming of the halcyon days of daylight savings, i’m sure it falls on deaf ears.

Arriving at Coode St Jetty, numbers seemed to be quite impressive, and after El Prez’s briefing, we were off first for our stroll around the river. The group was probably around 12-14 strong this morning, down on last week’s numbers perhaps due to Jen’s reports of lactic overdose.

A brisk roll out and along Mounts Bay Rd was a nice calm warm up allowing for the usual early ride anecdotes (“I’ve been off the bike for 6 millenia”, “I’m coming back from a leg transplant”, etc.), everyone content to sit in and warmup until the rise up into Dalkeith.

Past Steve’s and now there was some movement and a rollthrough was on. Re-living a typical weekday ride the roll through worked (kind of) smoothly through, with the usual flourish upto Claremont. After a left at the lights, some riders forgot that it was a Saturday ride, and chose to sit up and recover from what was already spent. After a call to continue the roll through, Cpt Poser dragged all and sundry up the hill. Now perhaps the sundries forgot to hold on, or just simply packed it in, but either way what was supposed to be a roll through ended up with  four riders breaking off the front, and pressing on through Mosman Park. The Flying Fynn was next to take a turn at the front, with Ainsy, Poser and an un-named rider in tow, and with the short sharp climp up to the water tower at hand, Poser proved that his earlier comments to El Prez (“I hope they don’t go too hard up the hills”) were ALL LIES and attacked up the hill.

Ainsy and TFF made light work of this attack, and now, what were four was now three riders (so much for a group ride) pushing onwards to Fremantle. One of the three did, at one stage asked about waiting at the next lights for the bunch, however this was met with shaking heads and harder rolling turns.

As it was, by the time the three amigo’s had reached the river crossing, the lights dealt their hand, and the rest of the bunch, led by Jason “The Cobra” and Dannyboy had caught up. Cpt Poser, however seemingly had enough of bunch riding (quite rudely i might add), and as soon as the group consolidated over the bridge, threw an attack in up and over the hill. Given that like most hills, a descent soon followed, and so the group re-re-formed, with El Prez (soon to be El Mariachi) happy to grind through the rough roads of East Freo and Bicton.

Rolling on, the bunch got their roll-through on, although it became evident that Dannyboy and Reggie had become casualites of El’ Prez’s charge at the front (along with El Prez). Along Burke drive a semblance of co-operation ensued and the bunch began to behave as a good bunch ride, with Poserboy, The Cobra, Jerard and TFF (and probably a couple of others) working at the front.

Some route confusion about whether we head up Majestic was quickly stifled, at the bunch of now 9 got well and truly lost in Applecross, but with the obligatory suburban property inspections out of the way now, the bunch was back on Canning Hwy.

The bunch rolled through sharpish along Canning Hwy, although the work was perhaps shared by 3 or 4 riders, with The Cobra, Ainsy and Jerard (plus unnamed rider) pulling smooth turns. At this stage both TFF and the Poser were conspicuous by their absence, and in fact both were last seen drifting off the back of the bunch several times.

With the turn onto the Causeway and the run home remaining, all was exposed as a ruse, however, with Poser and TFF attacking the bunch at the turn. Poserboy put himself a the front and stuck the pedal to the, well, pedal to the around and round and set out to make a gap. TFF and Poser now rolling through and onto Riverside dr, a quick look over the shoulder confirmed that the remainder of the group were done, and they set about TTT’ing it home. With TFF putting more time in the wind, Poserboy recognised the stronger rider and the order was settled.

All up a fairly fast ride, on familiar territory, with beautiful weather.

Until next week,

Captain Poser