ride report by peter.

with the golden spokes race on the sunday, i opted for an easier ride for the saturday morning (that’s easier, not necessarily easy).  my body is getting old and i can’t back things up anymore.  the route today would take in the city as well as osborne park before passing through scarborough beach.  a quick trip down west coast hwy and home through dalkeith as usual.  the fast group would split off just after osborne park and tackle ewen st which climbs up higher but parallel with scarborough beach road.  they would start to come along west coast hwy, but would spear off to the left and take in the boulevard and oceanic drive. 

back in the day, the scarborough beach ride would skirt around kings park before heading up over thomas rd and through leederville.  this was a 50km ride so to make this the main group ride the extra kms on the fast group would push it up to 56km.  this is pushing the distance a bit and means that the time starts to blow out.  to cut the kms down i re-routed the ride through the city and straight up to kings park road.  this is where the fun began.

there were about 50 people that turned up this morning but it did look a bit light on for numbers.  i worry about splitting the group if numbers are low but it always does look low until we get moving and then i’m glad we split.  it wasn’t the numbers that caused the problem today but the lights through the city.  last time we did this route i am sure we received a better run.  this time we pretty much got every single light.  even along scarborough beach road we seemed to get them all.  probably a good case for changing the ride route.

anyway, we finally hit the split point and the fast group headed up the hill.  i sat on the back of the main group and let russell get his troops organised.  this section contains a number of roiling hills so russell wanted to regroup once we hit west coast hwy.  i saw scott and darryl fall off the back but i was waved on so moved back onto the group.  i was content just to sit back and picked up a couple of stragglers to meet up at west coast hwy.

we waited for a bit, but it didn’t look like they were coming in a hurry so we pressed on.  down the hwy the group managed to get a roll through happening and it seemed to work quite well.  we now had the wind on our backs so the pace had picked up but there didn’t seem to be any one suffering.  on the small hills heading up to oceanic, the group seemed to split apart a bit as the stronger riders continued the pace to the top.  the lights allowed a regroup and we were soon off again.

along the way we picked up matty who was waiting on the side of the road.  the position he was in would mean that the fast group would go around him as they shot in the boulevard and out oceanic.  i waved for him to join us and he chased to catch up.   i was content to just sit on the back with the occasional roll through so just chatted to matty for a while.  the group strung out on the last hill before swanbourne but everyone was together by the time we turned past the shops.

the dalkeith stretch was uneventful, with a couple of surges that were brought back in.  the final sprint at the swan brewery was punctuated  by a number of last minute attacks but i was again content to sit back and watch.

straight home for me as i had an appointment to attend, so not sure what happened to the fast group.  i’m sure that someone can fill us in.