ride report by peter

well a slightly busy evening as we needed to get the house ready for the onslaught of lycra that was to descend in the morning.  moving tables and chairs, finding an esky, um…actually that was about it as lorriane was doing everything else.  i went to move the cars out of the garage and found sharon waiting on the drive way.  pretty soon jerry and melvyn also rocked up so that they would not have to ride all the way home after a belly full of brownies.

officially the sun was not going to rise till 7:20am but what is known as “civil twilight” meant that it would be light at 6:56am.  lots of time to spare before the start of the ride.  being a breakfast ride, the course was going to be a bit shorter than normal.  however, since we had close to 70 riders on the line, we decided to split the group and try to make it more manageable.  we would all head down canning hwy towards freo before the fast group would swing off to attadale while the main group would continue on to stock rd.  after stock they would head back along south st and up banister.  eventually jump onto albany hwy before heading to my place via manning rd.  the fast group would take burke drive before heading up the stock rd hill behind the pt walter golf course.  we would then chase the main group down and then add extra kms once they turned off onto banister.  i envisaged that we would catch the main group on the early parts of south st and would need to split again at banister. 

we got away to a fairly standard start with the group split a few times at the lights.  the pace was pretty sedate and everyone was just chatting away and cruising along.  once we hit north lake rd, the fast group needed to get into the right lane to do a turn while the main group was headed straight.  as the two groups were intermingled amongst each other, this got pretty messy and traffic would have been confused (pissed off) that the bike were now taking up both lanes.  we eventually got it sorted and headed off on our respective ways. 

a slight easing of the pace allowed the pack back together as the  fast group headed along burke drive.  it is amazing the number of other riders that use that stretch of road as we must have passed 6-7 groups heading the other way.  we rolled through till stock road and tackled the hill.  as usual, it split the group up lots, but by the time we reached the top, the pace slowed significantly and allowed everyone back on before we crossed canning hwy. 

we tried to roll through again, but lights, hills and traffic made it hard to find a consistent pace although it was anything but sedate.  we soon reached south st and i was surprised that we had not even caught a glimpse of the main group.  i thought that we may have seen them cresting the first hill on south street, but they were not to be seen.  either, they had to stop on canning for an incident, or whoever was running that group was doing an excellent job.  i was hoping for the latter.

we continued to roll through and the traffic was now not an issue as the road was three lanes wide.  the hills made life difficult for some and the roll through continued with just the front half of the pack.  as we continued along south st i was beginning to worry that something had happened to the main group.  we eventually caught sight of a couple of lonesome riders that had fallen off the back so we knew we were on the right track. 

as the day was progressing, i made the decision not to take the fast group along the second split point and rather, if caught them, just do banister rd with the main group instead.  at the multiple lights around roe hwy, we finally caught up to the main group.  i shouted some instructions so that the fast group can safely get passed the main group and heard a “no worries” from beside me.  i look across to the small truck that was in the next lane and there is this big grin from the guy in the passenger seat.  i tell him he can drive in front of us as he would make a good draft.  “then slam on the brakes” he exclaims.  a bit nasty, but it was all a bit of fun.

we took off at the lights and like a well oiled machine, the main group merged into a single file on the left, while the fast group became the single file on the right.  as right overtook left, the roll through upped the pace to allow the fast group to start to break away.  unfortunately the lights allowed everyone to merge back together and this fact may have made it hard for some of the riders at the back.

the usual suspects forced the pace along the rest of banister and the combination of roll throughs and attacks kept the pace high.  a final push by ryan and a few others blew things apart once nicholson rd was in sight, but the group was still quite substantial by then.  i jumped to the front and rode with michael for a bit to set a slow even pace.  i then pulled over to the side to make sure that we had everyone. there were a few struggling groups, but people like mike and nev were leading them back to the main group as quick as they could.  once we hit albany hwy, there were only a handful off the back and we caught up at the next light change.

i made my way to the front to find that dan and jules had taken off and lisa had chased them down.  they were somewhere up the road and the comment was made that we hoped they knew where to turn.  too bad so sad if they didn’t want to play with the group.  there was a split at the lights again and i waited for that group so they knew where to turn.  the lights at leech allowed a complete regroup and we gently cruised along manning road.  at some stage we saw a couple of bikes milling around an intersection looking quite lost.  it was out trio of escapees and i am guessing that they were not sure whether they should have turned or not.

i allowed one more sprint once we turned past curtain uni and half the group took advantage of it.  some others, like myself, were content to sit in and take the last few k’s into home easy.

there was a lot of milling around at the front of the house as some people were not staying for the breakfast and were having a quick chat.  a couple had arrived early but lorraine, mel, jody and kate pretty much had everything under control.  ben was there to greet everyone with his spr t-shirt on and pretty soon the garage was full of bikes and the house was full of lycra.  the girls had outdone themselves again and there was plenty of food and coffee/hot choc for all.

the raffle was drawn by ben who kept the crowd entertained with his smashing of one of the chocolate prizes.  he also kept everyone on their toes by announcing the winning raffle ticket number – “nummer for” um no ben, that’s number 21.  i feel sorry for the person that had ticket number 4 as he announced it for more than half the draws. 

we signed up a couple more members for the club and jody will let us know when the online facility is available.  the bike weigh in presented some interesting results and i saw my bike slip further down the leaderboard as more weighed in at the low 7kg mark.  brendan topped the day with his bh weighing in at 6.72kg with tubulars on.  this toppled mike t’s uci legal 6.80kg with his tubular zipps but neither came close to darren’s uber light bike.

all up a very successful breakfast.  our next social event will be the family day to celebrate our 1 year anniversary of forming spr.  there are a couple of races in between that i hope we can get a good turn out to and show off our spr colours.  especially as we are now an official club.