Back home from "The Big Smoke" on Friday night. I like Brisbane- in a funny sort of way and in small doses. It's one of those places that could have its own T-shirt- "I spent a month in Brisbane last week!!" I'm sorry to all of those who live in Brissie and might be offended, but it's just too big for me- too impersonal.
I suspect that not having the bike and being able to have a bit of a hit out in the mornings may have something to do with it. But as I stood on my balcony eating my brekkie and watching the death-defying acts that constitute bike commuting, I thought perhaps Hemingway experienced something along the same lines the first time he visited Pamplona and witnessed the running of the bulls- young brazen men full of testosterone and a sense of invincibility, court, tease and flirt with death through the streets. I guess the one advantage the cyclists have is that their adversaries stop for red lights- Pamplona bulls??- probably not.
Townsville to Charters Towers road race today. 120km and a 300 metre climb with great rollers from the top of the Mingela Range and on to The Towers. Almost 50 riders fronted for the handicapped start and the winner, Will Cullen- off 33 minutes I think- blasted his way to the front about 20 km out and was all alone coming across the line- nobody else in sight. He and Sue Abel, another good friend and very strong rider, were first across the Burdekin Bridge with Sue picking up a couple of preems for being the first to the top of the range and first across the bridge.
Shortly after the bridge, Will pulled away and powered home all on his own. Sue was overtaken by the back markers and eventually finished about 12th overall and first woman across the line.
Dee and I did rider support for three riders at the two feed stations- first time I've done that side of it and will gladly do it again (if I'm not riding). The race in reverse (Charters Towers to Townsville) takes place in August- better start putting the training plan in place =8^)
Congrats to the race organisers and the riders and to the other road users who all seemed very patient and co-operative this year.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
18 April, 2010
03 April, 2010
Get your compression tights on- it's only Day 2 of a 4-day weekend
Coffee ride this morning only saw about a dozen and a half of us hit the road. Guess a lot of people headed out of town for the long weekend and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The group is definitely more manageable with those smaller numbers than when it gets up over 35 or more. Other road users seem to be less "inconvenienced" by a smaller group as well.
It was a good workout this morning- even if only for coffee. Pretty healthy cross/headwinds for much of the ride made us all work a bit harder. And when I tried to get a bit of a paceline going, it was definitely a learning experience for the other participants. It probably would have been better if we had discussed it ahead of time but I think they got the idea after a few turns . We did discuss it further at the cafe and I suspect we'll give it another go next week.
I am sitting here with my compression tights on as I type. Being only the second day of a four day weekend, I want to be able to ride Sunday and Monday and thought it best to take some recuperative/preventative measures. Yesterday Dee and I did a dam/Pallarenda ride in the morning and then in the afternoon while Dee was off watching French vignettes and eating baked brie stuffed with dried fruit, I sneaked off and did another turn down along the beach to get me over the 100km for the day.
Sunday and Monday look like similar type rides which I don't want to miss- thus the tights.
No racing for a few weeks- Easter weekend is always a break, next weekend is the North Queensland Games in Cairns- an event held every two years and while I did take part in 2008, I'll be travelling to Brisbane on Sunday for work and so unable to be in the Games this year and the following week is one of the local scene's bigger races- the Townsville to Charters Towers handicap (and I'm not ready for that little epic this year).
Anyhow, enjoy your Easter chocolate (or Chardonnay or Cab Sav) and go for a little extra burn tomorrow (and Monday if you're fortunate enough to have the day off).
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
It was a good workout this morning- even if only for coffee. Pretty healthy cross/headwinds for much of the ride made us all work a bit harder. And when I tried to get a bit of a paceline going, it was definitely a learning experience for the other participants. It probably would have been better if we had discussed it ahead of time but I think they got the idea after a few turns . We did discuss it further at the cafe and I suspect we'll give it another go next week.
I am sitting here with my compression tights on as I type. Being only the second day of a four day weekend, I want to be able to ride Sunday and Monday and thought it best to take some recuperative/preventative measures. Yesterday Dee and I did a dam/Pallarenda ride in the morning and then in the afternoon while Dee was off watching French vignettes and eating baked brie stuffed with dried fruit, I sneaked off and did another turn down along the beach to get me over the 100km for the day.
Sunday and Monday look like similar type rides which I don't want to miss- thus the tights.
No racing for a few weeks- Easter weekend is always a break, next weekend is the North Queensland Games in Cairns- an event held every two years and while I did take part in 2008, I'll be travelling to Brisbane on Sunday for work and so unable to be in the Games this year and the following week is one of the local scene's bigger races- the Townsville to Charters Towers handicap (and I'm not ready for that little epic this year).
Anyhow, enjoy your Easter chocolate (or Chardonnay or Cab Sav) and go for a little extra burn tomorrow (and Monday if you're fortunate enough to have the day off).
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
21 March, 2010
We're still waiting...
It's hard to believe a category 3 cyclone crossed the cost just a few hundred km from here. Lots of trees down and some houses had their roofing torn off by the wind and very heavy rain but nothing up this way. It was very quiet overnight- we kept waking up and thinking- "Well, the wind should pick up any minute now." And it never really did.
I got up around 5:45 and there wasn't a breath of wind. There have been a few gusts but nothing over about 40km/hr.
Anyhow, Ului is now just a rain depression heading into the interior of the state bringing some heavy rains with it. Maybe that's it for this cyclone season- here's hoping.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
I got up around 5:45 and there wasn't a breath of wind. There have been a few gusts but nothing over about 40km/hr.
Anyhow, Ului is now just a rain depression heading into the interior of the state bringing some heavy rains with it. Maybe that's it for this cyclone season- here's hoping.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
20 March, 2010
Gettin' ready for a big blow.......
Well we're hunkered down at 7:00pm while the dinner stews on the stove- and that's only appropriate since it is stew- waiting the arrival of Ului. Ului has been bouncing around the South Pacific and Coral Sea since last Sunday and has decided it's time to "put into port" on the oceanic ventures.
This tempest has probably generated more column inches (or bandwidth) than any storm in recent times. As early as Monday there were predictions that Ului would come ashore and wreak havoc on the east coast of Queensland. Those predictions came primarily from the US Navy's meteorologic service in Pearl Harbour with early predictions of landfall in the southern part of the state.
A local weather presenter took exception to some of the media coverage and vented his spleen over "sensationalist" media coverage and that there was no threat as the system was going to head to the south-east and not be of any consequence- according to the national weather agency (as reported by said weather presenter).
Let's move ahead to today and as we sit here (in a very eerie stillness) we are sitting in a region that has been pre-declared a disaster area- giving authorities the power of forced evacuations.
Will there be any humble pie consumed? I suspect not- but this "non-threatening" weather event may seriously impact my opportunity to get in a Sunday ride.
Cheers- ride safe (and avoid the cyclones)
BoaB
This tempest has probably generated more column inches (or bandwidth) than any storm in recent times. As early as Monday there were predictions that Ului would come ashore and wreak havoc on the east coast of Queensland. Those predictions came primarily from the US Navy's meteorologic service in Pearl Harbour with early predictions of landfall in the southern part of the state.
A local weather presenter took exception to some of the media coverage and vented his spleen over "sensationalist" media coverage and that there was no threat as the system was going to head to the south-east and not be of any consequence- according to the national weather agency (as reported by said weather presenter).
Let's move ahead to today and as we sit here (in a very eerie stillness) we are sitting in a region that has been pre-declared a disaster area- giving authorities the power of forced evacuations.
Will there be any humble pie consumed? I suspect not- but this "non-threatening" weather event may seriously impact my opportunity to get in a Sunday ride.
Cheers- ride safe (and avoid the cyclones)
BoaB
07 March, 2010
Flora and fauna
Well the team time trial has been and gone..........we rode quite well but actually did quite poorly overall. We had nominated a time of just over 44 minutes for 20 km. Now that may seem a bit slow but a couple of our team haven't been riding much and were pretty sure they wouldn't be able to maintain much more than 27 or 28 km/hr. Fair enough we say and remove all of our bike computers, watches, GPS, sundials and calendars before the race.
Given that the whole idea was to ride to our nominated time- we failed spectacularly. We were faster by almost 4 and a half minutes which is comforting in the "so you rode pretty well" stakes but absolute SML (Stone Motherless Last) in the "ride to your chosen time" category.
The friends we rode with have been focusing on other health and fitness activities of late and have only ridden about 3 times in the last three weeks. Those rides also tend to be more of a social occasion than a training ride and a real gabfest often takes place and gets interrupted by cycling.
Anyway it was all good fun and the greenery along the road is as lush as I have ever seen it- I guess a couple of months of good steady rain will do that. Lots of birdlife around the wetlands and a few "Joe Blakes" on the road. (For anyone unfamiliar with Aussie rhyming slang- a Joe Blake is a snake). They were of all of the deceased status and looked like they were probably young water pythons.
Looks like it'll be blue skies and sunshine for a few days now- no excuse not to get some good km's in this week.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
Given that the whole idea was to ride to our nominated time- we failed spectacularly. We were faster by almost 4 and a half minutes which is comforting in the "so you rode pretty well" stakes but absolute SML (Stone Motherless Last) in the "ride to your chosen time" category.
The friends we rode with have been focusing on other health and fitness activities of late and have only ridden about 3 times in the last three weeks. Those rides also tend to be more of a social occasion than a training ride and a real gabfest often takes place and gets interrupted by cycling.
Anyway it was all good fun and the greenery along the road is as lush as I have ever seen it- I guess a couple of months of good steady rain will do that. Lots of birdlife around the wetlands and a few "Joe Blakes" on the road. (For anyone unfamiliar with Aussie rhyming slang- a Joe Blake is a snake). They were of all of the deceased status and looked like they were probably young water pythons.
Looks like it'll be blue skies and sunshine for a few days now- no excuse not to get some good km's in this week.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
05 March, 2010
It's time!!!!
As Arsenio Hall used to say as the intro to his show, "Its time....." time I got stuck back into scrawling off a line or ten. What a slacker, eh?? I would like to use Vancouver 2010 as an excuse but that wouldn't be right. I would say my total TV hours for the Olympics would have been less than 10 hours- somehow I just couldn't stay up to watch the nightly broadcasts starting at 9:30. And on a couple of occasions on the weekends when we managed to grab some time in front of the box, we were treated to repeats of Torville and Dean. For crying out loud folks- can we move on? There have been other skaters on the ice since 1984...
We relied on free to air telecasts having gotten rid of our satellite dish some years ago- and like a lot of things these days, it's free for a reason..... I do have it from a good source that the Fox Sports package was excellent so if there is no option for streaming over the net for the next Olympics, that may be an option. As it was, the event I wanted to see the most, the gold medal men's hockey game was on tape-delay here so I headed off to work and found a live blogging of the game. Not quite the same and the refresh button on the browser got a pretty good workout.
And so what has all of this got to do with cycling? Well not much, it's just that even with all of the heavy rain we had during the Olympics which severely reduced my hours on the bike, I still couldn't bring myself to watch the free to air coverage.
Team time trial on Sunday- a club fun one. Mixed grades and genders in teams of three or four- nominate your time and try to ride to it with no watches or bike computers.....prize for the team that comes closest to their nominated time.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
We relied on free to air telecasts having gotten rid of our satellite dish some years ago- and like a lot of things these days, it's free for a reason..... I do have it from a good source that the Fox Sports package was excellent so if there is no option for streaming over the net for the next Olympics, that may be an option. As it was, the event I wanted to see the most, the gold medal men's hockey game was on tape-delay here so I headed off to work and found a live blogging of the game. Not quite the same and the refresh button on the browser got a pretty good workout.
And so what has all of this got to do with cycling? Well not much, it's just that even with all of the heavy rain we had during the Olympics which severely reduced my hours on the bike, I still couldn't bring myself to watch the free to air coverage.
Team time trial on Sunday- a club fun one. Mixed grades and genders in teams of three or four- nominate your time and try to ride to it with no watches or bike computers.....prize for the team that comes closest to their nominated time.
Cheers- ride safe
BoaB
14 February, 2010
"We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because" ....
....we are cyclists. With those few words from JFK resonating through the caverns of my skull, I was at the start line for today's 10km TT (Time Trial for non-cyclists who may be reading). I missed last year's season-starting TT due to illness- the first of several respiratory infections that would act like a fire blanket on my race season.
I didn't know if I was going to make this one either- one of my fellow employees figures the company just cannot function without her and so after catching a bacterial infection that one her kids brought home from pre-school, she decided to share with the rest of us. WTF is with these people? You have sick leave for a reason.....stay home and spare the rest of us your sniffling and sneezing and germs. Wednesday (my second day this week where I could not attend work due to illness) I went to the doc's and got put on antibiotics to try and combat the throat infection. It had got to the point where swallowing was almost unbearable- my tonsils were inflamed and the glands in my neck were very swollen- no fun and no riding.
Saturday morning and I had to stop the medication-my gut was in such a state of discomfort that I put a halt to the pills. I have been eating yogurt and drinking fermented yogurt (it actually tastes much better than I ever dreamed) to try and restore some good bacteria. Seems the antibiotic must have been very enthusiastic.
We did the coffee ride yesterday- a bit over 55km and felt pretty good so decided to give the TT a go this morning.
The morning was "coolish"- if you can call 25C and 96% humidity cool. I guess it's all relative to what we have been experiencing of late. We had a good shower in the early hours of the morning and with the overcast conditions, things didn't heat up as quickly as they usually do. Registration took place at 6:30am and the first starters were off the line at 7:00 on 30 second intervals- with a light shower and the rumble of thunder just offshore.
The start was not done by grade but by registration- first in got number 1 and so on. I was 23 and had 3 A graders immediately behind me. I think the first one overtook me before I was a km down the road....
Anyway- out and back- 10km in 18 minutes and change. Still waiting for the club to post the results on the website but no matter what the "official" time is, it will be ever so much better than last year's result.
Cheer- ride safe
BoaB
I didn't know if I was going to make this one either- one of my fellow employees figures the company just cannot function without her and so after catching a bacterial infection that one her kids brought home from pre-school, she decided to share with the rest of us. WTF is with these people? You have sick leave for a reason.....stay home and spare the rest of us your sniffling and sneezing and germs. Wednesday (my second day this week where I could not attend work due to illness) I went to the doc's and got put on antibiotics to try and combat the throat infection. It had got to the point where swallowing was almost unbearable- my tonsils were inflamed and the glands in my neck were very swollen- no fun and no riding.
Saturday morning and I had to stop the medication-my gut was in such a state of discomfort that I put a halt to the pills. I have been eating yogurt and drinking fermented yogurt (it actually tastes much better than I ever dreamed) to try and restore some good bacteria. Seems the antibiotic must have been very enthusiastic.
We did the coffee ride yesterday- a bit over 55km and felt pretty good so decided to give the TT a go this morning.
The morning was "coolish"- if you can call 25C and 96% humidity cool. I guess it's all relative to what we have been experiencing of late. We had a good shower in the early hours of the morning and with the overcast conditions, things didn't heat up as quickly as they usually do. Registration took place at 6:30am and the first starters were off the line at 7:00 on 30 second intervals- with a light shower and the rumble of thunder just offshore.
The start was not done by grade but by registration- first in got number 1 and so on. I was 23 and had 3 A graders immediately behind me. I think the first one overtook me before I was a km down the road....
Anyway- out and back- 10km in 18 minutes and change. Still waiting for the club to post the results on the website but no matter what the "official" time is, it will be ever so much better than last year's result.
Cheer- ride safe
BoaB
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