Report by Julian

My alarm went off at 6 am but was of no use – I’d been awake and listening to the rain on the roof since 4.30. Peter’s motivational message about working out what to wear inspired me to rise and face the day, although this was sorely tested by another downpour at home at 6.30. Undeterred I headed down to the car-park to find about 12 other hardy souls all asking the same question – what are we doing here? Just before 7, Peter turned up resplendent in tracksuit pants, windcheater and running shoes. His new bike had magically grown two extra wheels, abolished the Baum name and re-branded itself as “Toyota”. He mentioned an on-going cold, gave a stirring speech about the ride route then headed home to mind the kids. The rest of us headed out on the ride.

We had about 2 km of comfortable dry riding along Mill Point Road and Canning Highway but once we turned onto Riverside Drive the westerly wind found an extra 10 knots and down came the rain. We struggled to hold 25 km/h past the coffee shop and Lorraine and I seriously debated pulling up stumps and indeed there were a couple of withdrawals here. The rest of us struggled on and by the time we hit Winthrop Ave everyone was thoroughly drenched. By the time we hit Leederville, Lorraine had had enough and pulled out (a wise move!) to keep fresh for the race on Sunday.

The most dangerous part of the ride was negotiating roadworks in Mt Hawthorn during another downpour, with many pot holes on the road and an impatient driver in a crimson Mercedes. The rain cleared by the time we did the re-group at West Coat Highway and traveling down towards Swanbourne was uneventful apart from watching black clouds building towards Freo. Along the river section through Claremont and Dalkeith the road was strewn with debris so the pace was not on. To cap things off we were then hit with the strongest downpour of the day, which kept up almost until Mounts Bay Road.

I can’t recall a lot about the final sprint apart from we had to ride about 2 m out from the kerb to avoid all the water and that if you weren’t on the front, visibility was near zero. I think Greg managed to take the sprint. We then split to various coffee houses (and me to Netball) to discuss the ride and no doubt the words ‘character building’ ‘mental toughness’ and ‘why did we do that’ were used many times. Still, after the weeks of fine weather it was a good reminder that winter in on the way.