happy new year. lets do some riding. make sure you have a spare tube as there is usually stacks of glass on the road after “bottle-smash eve” celebrations.
on saturday we will take on the rolling hills of south street at speed, but will regroup afterwards to allow a nice leisurely ride past the nice scenery of cottesloe.
sunday will head down south to mt nasura to start the new month of mountain points.
ho ho ho.
on the twelfth day of christmas
my true love sent to me
a twelve inch balance kids bike
three chain ring crankset (for the alps)
two carbon lightweight wheels, and
a custom made titanium road bike
you can leave any or all of these things under my tree. maybe except number 8, i was grasping at straws for that one.
don’t forget that breakfast is at jerry’s place in city beach so have a good look at the map in case you get lost. my involvement in the ride is yet to be determined so someone have a good look at the course to give directions.
cost is $10 and i have no idea what will be provided as lorriane has done everything without my involvement. based on the previous two breakfasts though, it should be good.
you are encouraged to add some decorative flair to your bike or person for this ride as we will be passing through the city to spread some festive cheer. whether it is a santa hat, some tinsel on the bike or a full on santa suit, it is up to you. but remember, scarborough beach road may get a little fast for the fat man.
no baby as yet so i am planning to ride saturday and race sunday. fingers and legs crossed that he doesn’t come till monday.
so a nice easy one saturday and we will take a pleasant cruise up hale rd and back along kalamunda and guilford rds. the pace will step up once we cross the bridge in bassendean, but apart from that i am expecting an easy ride. as there is racing on sunday, we will not split into 2 groups as we need to save the legs.
sunday will be a case of “who is not racing”. so far we have our best turn out ever for a race event at the joondalup classic.
“a” grade men – brendan
“b” grade men – ryan, judd, stuart, peter, james, jerrard, mark, ben, paul, mike, melvyn, chris, john
“b” grade women – lorraine, bec w, lisa, nicole???
as this takes out most of the regular sunday riders, there are many a mountain point available to be claimed. the map shows some cat 2 climbs, but make them all cat 1 and let me know the first 5 riders to the top. for those that are planning to tackle the sunday ride, make sure you check the map as there will be a few tricky points to navigate. good luck to you and we will see if we can get a rouleur onto the podium.
holy crap it’s december. where has my year gone. i think i must have left it in my other pants. we are looking at a warm one on saturday and it will be good to get the riding gear on without having to worry about armwarmers, vests, bootie covers, knee warmers, etc, etc, etc.
to celebrate such a nice warm saturday ride we are going to do something different. i want to try to break the group up a bit. i.e. a group 1 and a group 2. the way we are going to do this is by imposing a massive hill in the middle of the ride. namely gooseberry hill. if you have joined the fun of the sunday ride, then you may have experienced gooseberry. if not think hard about which group you want to play in. the group 2 riders will skip gooseberry and head over the easy side of ridgehill rd. it will then be up to group 1 to try to catch group 2 on the way home via guilford rd. with easterly winds this may be a hard task. so make sure you look hard at the map so that you know exactly where we are riding as this is a very new route.
sunday i will have to miss out on the fun as i will be taking number 1 son to the christmas parade in the city. after the work kids christmas party the night before, at adventure world, we should be all santa’d out till christmas day. so to make it easy for you i am sending you on a kind of reverse of what we did last week. most people should know the roads, but make sure you tally up the points as we start a new month in the mountain points this week.
well some lovely weather predicted for the weekend so why don’t we go for a “gentle” lap of the river. for something different (for those that were dodging cones last sunday) we will go in the opposite direction with a quick detour through cottesloe.
sunday will be the final push for november mountain points which close off at the end of this month. stu has a commanding lead but with a new course planned, there is a chance that it could come down to the wire.
i will be hoping that my cold has moved on and i can actually get some riding in this week. it has been quite depressing to not ride before work this week and i have actully missed the 5am starts.
i have been talking to cannibal this week and we should be ready to do another jersey order very soon for those that missed out last time, or those that want a bit of extra gear. we will also be offering some different garments on top of the usual jersey and knicks, but i am waiting to confirm.
i had a couple of days off this week as ben has been sick and kate came down with it on monday night. i stayed home to look after ben and now the inevitable has happened. i got sick. sore throat and so very tired, i struggled on the ride this morning and sat on the back instead of rolling through. so much for a good lead up to the great perth bike ride.
as such there is a good chance that i will not be riding this saturday when you tackle scarborough beach road. so play nice and take it easy till you hit the lights near the bunnings before giving it some gas. make sure you regroup at scarborough beach and go easy till oceanic drive.
sunday is the double figure eight around kalamunda and includes points up welshpool, the observatory (hard side), mundaring weir rd and kalamunda rd. the map currently does not have mountain points marked, but i will endevour to redraw it soon (as soon as my account revives from being shaped). i will be trying to keep up with the fast boys for a couple of loops of the river.
the state crit champs are on this saturday down at armadale and so mike and i will be heading down to try to win some rouleurs gold. similar to fools gold in as far as we may be kidding ourselves with a flatish fast tight course. i would like to get another state masters medal, but we will see what happens on the day.
anyway, the important thing to note is that i will not be riding saturday morning, but instead, will be out on the course with the #1 spr cheerleader (ben) getting some photos again. so wear your spr kit if you have it so i can get some good team photos. also, be nice and keep the group together until the hot spots and regroup afterwards. there are 30km/h easterly winds predicted so this means benara rd. it will be a hard slog heading out guilford road, so make sure you stick together.
i also want to get photos at the coffee shop of individuals holding their bikes to add to the bike weight leaderboard page. you may notice the some of the names are highlighted and you can click on them to see a pic. and since i am such a nice guy, i will also be bringing the remaining water bottles along.
sunday will be the last hills ride for jens and he has requested a return to the f_ckenberg. i know that we only did this one a few weeks ago, but the german got very excited when i asked him where we should ride and for some reason he wants to tackle the +15% climb. yay. his final ride with us will be the following saturday 22ndwhere he will slip in a quick ride before jumping on a plane to the fatherland.
damn, the melbourne cup was this week which means we are well and truly into november which means that we are almost to christmas which means that the year is almost over. where the hell did it go.
as you may have noticed on the previous post, ryan has become a mo bro so support him in the only way we know how…lots of crap about his bad mo.
there is a really good track meet this saturday night. last year was really good racing and if you have never been to the velodrome before, this is a good experience. there will be some really fast racing so come and support some of the riders that occasionally come out on the spr rides.
we are down to the last box of drink bottles and will be doing another visit this saturday to the coffee shop for collection. if you haven’t collected or paid, this will be a good opportunity to get it sorted out. please try to bring exact change as it is a pain when everyone brings $20 for $12 of drink bottles.
this saturday we will be tackling the majority of the river ride in preparation for the great perth bike ride. there is only a couple of weeks till the event so we might as well check out the hill at mosman park now so you can practice it if you need to.
sunday will be a big day with both sides of the kahuna to be ridden along with peet rd. four categorised climbs so lots of points on offer. looks like the weather should be clearing up too so i am expecting a big turn out.
with the redbull air race on this weekend our usual meeting point on both saturday and sunday wil be in the restricted access zone. this is not a concern to those that ride to the start, but the few that drive a distance to come and play with us, it will be a problem. for this week only we will be moving the start location to just up the road at the corner of coode and angelo street. there are a couple of car parks in the area that you can use and we will ride along angelo onto douglas and onto canning hwy to start the ride.
on saturday the coffee shop will also be in a restricted zone. as we come down off plain st we will probably be confronted with a road block. last year they were stopping cars, but pedestrians and bikes were still using the path along the foreshore. we will play it by ear and see if we can sneak though, but don’t hold your breath that there will be a sprint on riverside drive.
we may have to negotiate using the tables at bells like we did last year as they had them set up for lunch time and didn’t want us to move them. we will see.
a 5:30am flight up to the pilbara on thursday morning meant that i didn’t get a chance to post the ride routes till tonight (friday). a long hot day looking at mining equipment also meant that i missed my normal thursday morning training ride. i thought about posting a really hard saturday route to make up for it, but then i would be screwed for the cyclo-sportif race on sunday.
so, we have a fairly subdued saturday morning ride which will have only one main sprint section all the way home along welshpool rd and shep rd.
as we have two groups attending the cyclo-sportif, sunday’s ride will be a challenge for anyone willing (or left) to chase mountain points. the challenge will be to keep going as this route will past by the coffee-shop twice before finally stopping in. don’t give in and let me know who took the first five places on each climb.
also, i have changed the format of the saturday rides page. instead of it loading a mapmyride map for each one, it now loads a jpeg of each ride and you click on each one to access another page that has the proper map embedded. this second map allows you to zoom in and pan around. i will get to the sunday rides page when i can.