Doo Wah, Doo Wah- Do a Duathlon.....

Well- a first for me today. Not first as in a first place finish but first as in first time experience. I took part in a duathlon today. Much like a triathlon but with one leg absent from the schedule of events- notably the aquatic stage. Which is probably just as well as I swim like a stone.....

The race consisted of a 5km run followed by a 20km ride and then a 2.5km run. I should also mention that my running is certainly not going to get me an invitation to the 2012 Olympics in London- so I outsourced the running- it's an allowable option under the Team entries so "Why not?"

It was good fun- Dee and I headed out to the race venue bright and early- a nice 17km ride after which we proceeded to stand around for the next hour and a half cooling off as we waited for things to get underway.

It was interesting taking part in yet another type of race involving cycling. I thought that drafting was not permitted in these races but I had a bloke stuck on my wheel like a leech for probably the better part of 10km. Live and learn I guess. I made him take the front 4km from the finish and then took a bit of a flyer about 750 metres from the finish. (And I made every effort not to draft- I tried to stay at least a metre to the side the whole time).

It was different from road racing in that there was no surging, no attacking. And different again from a time trial in that there was always someone immediately in view to aim for.

So, at the end of it all- I think I need to consider running. We'll just leave the swimming alone for now.......

And for the record, our team finished second (if that's any consolation). And yes there were more than 2 teams..........

Cheers- ride safe
BoaB

A Different Sport

I started this post last week but given the work load as a referee during the tournament, I didn't get a chance to come back and finish the post:

I'm not on the bike this week- I am in Penrith at the Australian National  Broomball Championships. I'm not playing but performing as a referee over the four days of the tournament.

So what is broomball? It's a lot like ice hockey but the players wear special soft-soled shoes which provide a considerable amount of grip.

The broom has a plastic-head on a wood or metal shaft.

The ball is made of quite-flexible plastic and is inflated to keep its shape and handling characteristics- it's about the size of a large grapefruit. The ball tends to get harder/freeze as the game progresses due to being in contact with the ice. If the ball gets too hard, we replace it during the game to prevent the ball from splitting when players take a shot (and it hurts considerably more when you get hit by a frozen ball).

Teams play five per side on the ice plus a goalkeeper- generally two defenders and three forwards.

I used to play broomball and referee as well but have done neither since 2007. Earlier this year I was asked by the Referee-in-Chief of Broomball Australia if I could help them out- travel and accomodation paid. And so here I am in Penrith--- freezing. Not really freezing but it is a considerable temperature adjustment from Townsville (28-30C and sunny) to Penrith (12-24C and wet/overcast- and the ice rink has a multiplier effect I'm sure).

So from Thursday through Sunday I spent the majority of my waking hours at the ice rink either refereeing or on stand-by in case one of the other refs was injured/sick/hungover/etc/etc and couldn't perform their role.

My last tally showed I actually ref'd 20 games and was on standby for another 14. Now, I do cycle quite a bit and for a bloke who's 50+ I'm not in bad shape. But running on ice uses a few different muscles and by Friday night, I could hardly hobble back to the room. Thankfully Saturday provided a break until 5:00pm although we did go through until almost 1:30 Sunday morning and then were back at the rink for 6:30 on Sunday morning.

All up it was good fun and if it helps advance a lesser known sport- so much the better. I even got asked if I was interested in going to Ottawa, Canada for the 2012 World Championships; both as a player and as an official.

Tomorrow (Sunday- Mother's Day) is our Team Time Trial out at Cungulla. Just loaded up on red beans and rice and looking forward to a bit of fun in the morning.

Images of the broomball equipment are from the D-Gel website: http://www.d-gel.com/english/english.htm

Cheers-ride safe

BoaB

A Crit, Some Grit and a Snit.....

I thought I was well prepared for yesterday's crit:
Got the bikes ready on Saturday afternoon and packed the car with all of the gear so I could head out bright and early yesterday morning.
I packed the small esky/cooler with water/soft drinks/powerade for sale at the race venue (nothing like a nice cold drink at the end of the race, right?)
Made up the drink bottles for Dee and I and put them in the fridge.

Sunday morning I was out of bed by about 4:00- had a bite to eat, read the online news and a few blogs and then got my kit on. I grabbed the drinks from the fridge and put them in the carry bag. I gave Dee hers since she was riding to the venue while I was going to stop and pick up ice for the drinks in the cooler.

Right- stop at the servo down the road and grab a bag of ice and off to the V8 track for the crit. Arrive- get set up, put on shoes, gloves and helmet- grab drink bottles and......NO drink bottles. They were sitting comfortably back in the kitchen by the sink.

By the last few laps, I was enjoying the crit even less than usual. No water makes BoaB an unhappy rider.

So I hung around after our race for the A and B graders' race, then lugged everything back to the car and went home where we spent most of the afternoon in the garden. After a trip to a local nursery, Dee planted some tomatoes and eggplant, mulched the veggie beds and I went off and got some woodchip mulch for some of the larger beds in the backyard.

We were waiting for the start of Paris-Roubaix. Online broadcast started around 8:30 last night with live TV coverage starting at 10:30. The online coverage was ordinary to say the least- the video was very sporadic and would freeze for long periods while the audio would continue without a hitch. We ended up running two laptops with a video stream from a Belgian channel on one and audio from the Cycling TV mob on the other.

Not the best but at least we got to see quite a bit of the race before they entered the Forest d'Arenberg. When we switched to the TV coverage, it was considerably better and the amount of dust and grit in the air became more apparent. The dry, warm conditions meant the dust in the cobble sections was kicked up in great clouds by the motorcycles preceding/accompanying/annoying the riders.

Many of the riders looked like they had spent time in a mine by the end of the race- caked in dust and grime with pale masks where their sunglasses afforded some protection. Some with teeth caked in grit, others using the "farmer's hankie" to blow dust cake out of their noses and others summoning forth a bit of saliva to be spat out with some of the offending dirt.

We managed to stay awake for the whole of the race and it made for interesting watching as Cancellara showed some emotion at facing the all-too-real prospect of having to chase down the lead group all on his own. The other riders in his group were not about to come to the front to help him out- particularly Hushovd with his team mate Van Summeren off the front. Cancellara spoke his mind during the race both to his fellow riders and their team cars to voice his displeasure in their race tactics. I guess his victory earlier and performance in Ronde van Vlaandern had him as a marked man. Bit unfortunate Leopard Trek couldn't summon forth some support for him.

I did find it interesting that Hushovd decided not to go (or perhaps couldn't go) with Cancellara over the last few km's. After hanging off his wheel like a lamprey for a good part of the race, when Cancellara rode away in chase of his spot on the podium, Thor must have resigned himself to not wanting a Garvelo one-two finish.

Only 364 days to go....

Club Racing- It's Fun????

Yesterday (Sunday) was a club race meet. A hill climb TT (let's just say I wasn't last OK?) and then a 25k road race (for us plebes in "D" Grade) and 40km for the remaining grades. The "D" graders had a bit of fun- we're those who are new to the sport, not-quite-so-serious, and/or coming back from illness/retirement/deathbed, or just want to have a social hit-out. In case you're having a hard time doing the calcs- I ride in D Grade. I like the social aspect of D grade and if/when my fitness level gets to a degree where I can outride the other D grade riders, it will be time to move to C.

Club racing should be fun- it helps keep the spirit and camaraderie alive. And that's important in small clubs...

Yesterday I witnessed what was possibly the most unsportsmanlike race I have seen in our club. Earlier in the year (I'm talking this calendar year) a group of riders decided to form a team within the club- which is fine I guess for external events, stage races, etc... however, yesterday they decided to use their team numbers/strategies/whatevers in the club road race in C grade.

It became a race of 8 riders (Team X) vs 2 riders (non-Team X). A couple of Team X riders were sent off the front as a break and every time the remaining riders tried to get something going in the way of a chase, the remaining Team X would get on the front of the chase and slow it down. The remaining two riders never had a chance and there was no way that Team X would consider moving up to B grade because they would get whipped.

I just never realized there was so much prestige in winning by "swarming" in a club race.

I heard the leader of the team "apologising" to the other riders but it turned out to just be lip-service as that was "the race plan" they had set down beforehand. Makes me want to spew......

On the other hand- the countryside was lush and green, all of the streams were running and lots of waterfalls along the range. I know- at the speed I did the TT up the range, I had lots of time to take in the scenery.

Cheers- ride safe

BoaB

We Bought a new TV and it Made My Legs Sore.....

I'm in recovery mode today. There was no race yesterday (Sunday)- in fact, we didn't ride at all but it feels like I did about 80km and then ran around "en pointe" for a couple of hours.

You see we bought a new tv and that meant I had to paint the ceiling. "Such logical progression" I hear some of you say. Well, Dee has done a pretty good job of telling the story of how we got to this point- I think I'll hobble off and finish painting the windows.

Cheers
BoaB

Did I Mention the Rain?

It's Saturday, the tenth of March. We're less than a fortnight into the month and already we have had more than 355mm of rain- that's about 14 inches in the Imperial measure and as I type, it is teeming down again. If it weren't for the palm trees, one could almost be forgiven for thinking it was blizzard/whiteout conditions- and the fact that it's about 25C outside as well. Not many blizzards at those temps.

The opportunities for a dry ride have been few and far between so when it wasn't bucketing at 5:15 this morning I decided to head out. It didn't rain for the majority of the 50 km circuit but it may as well have. The roads were still heavily puddled and it wasn't long before I could feel the water seeping between my toes and draining out through the bottom of my shoes.

It was better than yesterday though- I had probably only gone about 800 metres when the skies opened and so started a less than satisfactory ride. As I have said before, if it starts raining while I'm on the road, I'll stick it out- and that was my intention yesterday.

After about 4km with visibility seriously hampered (I need to wear my glasses when cycling and the rain on them was compounding the optical issues), I hit something on the road- nothing big, just very sharp- with the resulting tube failure sounding like a .22 shot. There was a bloke walking his dog along the sidewalk (which in that section of town have awnings from most of the businesses) who just about jumped out of his skin.

So I pulled off to the side of the road to hone my tyre repair/tube changing skills just a bit further. I was fortunate enough to be able to step under an awning to make my repairs as the intensity of the rain increased, seemingly every 30 seconds or so.

A quick once-over of the tyre revealed that the offending material had either been blown back out when the tube let go or was still somewhere on the road. There was however, a large gash right through the full depth of the carcass and any tube put in was doomed to fail.

They say if you throw enough money at a problem, it will disappear. For this problem I folded a five dollar note (we have that plasticy/mylar money here in Oz) and put it inside the tyre- over the cut. Popped in the new tube and pumped it up- ready to hit the road. The cut was big enough that the note was visible so I decided to not tempt fate and continue the ride, but to turn around and go home.

The rain had eased somewhat while I got the tyre fixed up but I probably hadn't gone more than 1/2km when down it came again. I did manage to make it home without further incident but it really took the edge off the day.

Racing for Sunday has already been cancelled due to a military exercise in the area where the race was scheduled. Apparently there will be a large number of vehicles on the road and we don't have the luxury of road closures for our races. The MTB event that was scheduled for tomorrow has also been canned- this time on account of the rain. It was scheduled to be a TT hill climb on a fairly new track but the club just doesn't want to risk too much damage to an overly sodden trail.

So with a bit of luck and the weather permitting, I'll just have to find another ride for tomorrow.

And I guess I shouldn't feel bad about the rain- a small town to the north of us, Tully, has had 2085mm since the first of this year- that's 2.085 metres of rain- most of that having fallen since they were hit by a category 5 cyclone early last month.

Cheers- ride safe
BoaB

...to What the....?

I slept in this morning.....it was bucketing down for a good portion of the night- at least every time I struggled to some level of consciousness and looked at my watch it was raining. I think the last time I looked was around 3:15- too early to get up and head out at the best of times- let alone when the rain is doing its best imitation of a monsoonal downpour- hang on!- this is a monsoonal downpour.

I rolled over in the hopes of another hour+ of shut-eye. I certainly got the + out of it. 5:15 and I was out of bed like a shot- dressed, mixed a drink bottle and headed out the gate. Felt pretty sluggish for the first 10km or so and was just getting a good cadence going when the "A" graders went past.

I managed to stay ahead of the second major group until about 3km from home. They did catch me as one of those inevitabilities, and as we left the traffic lights at one of the major intersections, I recall looking at the bike computer and thinking. "Hmm- 38km/hr. That's not bad considering you've been off the bike for basically a month."

Then as I turned at the intersection into our neighbourhood, as a last check for the distance on the day, I realised my computer was gone. I did a drive-by along the route later in the day and there was no sign of it. It has been picked up, swept up or smashed into so many pieces by vehicles as to be no longer recognisable as anything I have ever had attached to my bike.

Cheers- ride safe (and make a reasonable guess at your speed and distance)

BoaB