ride report by peter.
while julian and a few others turned left to head back towards kalamunda, the rest of us headed to the right to tackle the “easy” side of the observatory. with still a decent size group and a narrow road to start with it was going to be interesting to see what would happen.
young adrian shot up the road as soon as the hill started and managed to get a good gap. with quite a lot of hill to go and him not figuring in the points earlier in the day, the main players let him go with the aim to drag him back later. i hadn’t figured in the points in the previous two climbs and was lucky to actually be still going.
a gap formed once the hill climbers made there way to the front and after a moments hesitation, i decided to jump across to them. by the time i reached them, i was well into the 180+ bpm and knew that i would not be holding it for too long. i sat on the back as long as i could before having to drop off and let my heart recover. a couple of other smaller groups passed me with some words of encouragement but my bpm was still too high. “recovering” to around 165bpm, i made my next effort and pushed past the last group that had overtaken me. this time i maxed out at about 190bpm and was seriously buggered. most of them came past me again.
you can’t get any better if you don’t push your limits. if i just sat at a nice even pace at a nice even heart rate, then my body would adapt to that and never be able to get any faster. like those guys that you see commuting every day. they just do the same pace and the same distance so even though they have a large km count for the week, they aren’t strong and can’t surge.
meanwhile, a long way up the road at the front of the group, there was a tussle for the line with the following result.
kom 3. 1 – mike, 2 – chris, 3 – stu, 4 – nick, 5 – jarrad.
with one more climb to go, the day was beginning to heat up. this last climb is always a bit of a bastard as it kicks up almost straight away at close to 15%. after such a nice downhill you loose all your momentum straight away and are down in your lowest gear. my legs were pretty much stuffed by now so i couldn’t even work on pushing my heart rate up. just survive to the end as best i could. as i wasn’t there and got the final results at the coffee shop, there may be a bit of contention for line honours. i am just going off what i was told and chris claimed that he beat mike to the traffic sign. please leave any challenges in the comments.
kom 4. 1 – chris, 2 – mike, 3 – nick, 4 – stu, 5 – brother jules.
well we took over the coffee shop and they were excellent in their efficient service. probably just trying to get rid of us, but it is good not to have to wait to long. one gripe from me was the fact that they have changed suppliers and have moved from coke to pepsi. it just doesn’t seem right to me, but i endured it for the caffine and sugar hit.
i nice trip home and i managed to keep to the front on descent where we didn’t really clock much faster than 80km/hr. i kind of lost it in the legs on the flat and got caught at the lights. the temperature was a good 5 deg hotter off the hill and you could really feel it now. a good quick run home though and better for it at the end of the day.
australia day public holiday ride on tuesday, but don’t forget that the start location has changed due to road closures. the corner of coode and angelo st is where we will meet, with parking near the senior citizens centre behind the bank.
I’m quite happy to share the points around. I had “stopped”/slowed at the sign at the end of the straight (a school sign I think), while Chris kept going to the stop sign warning that is on the downhill corner close to the T junction.
Not to diminish Stu’s gargantuan efforts but young Nick really deserves the major points on the first climb (Mills). He had gapped us pretty easily and we weren’t gaining on him, even after he slowed thinking it was the finish at the first right turn. After being yelled at and starting again, he then stopped and did a full slow circle on the road at the second right hand intersection until I waved him on again. Stu could smell blood at this point and went in for the kill on a now demoralised prey.
Probably not the best time to suggest it, Admin but another hill for us to try, perhaps in cooler weather, is the climb up Haddrill Rd into Weir Rd in Herne Hill. Despite what the map shows it joins up to Boulonnais Rd to ride through to Campersic Rd (that great descent). It is only about 2.8km, but it has a switchback, some great views across the Swan Valley to the city, and a couple of short sections of 13 and 14% that are near the top instead of the bottom. I almost saw God there a couple of weeks ago (I was gasping out his name at the time).
Don’t encourage him Michael.
Its true. Nick deserved the major points on Kahuna, as he really showed that he had tons of climbing ability. But the number of times I have been passed on the line made me determined to get one back! Actually, I think I got 2 back on Sunday, as I was kinda lucky to win the major points at RHS too, with Jarrad slowing just before the finish at the school entrance road.
Good hill find Mike. Maybe we can go up Toodyay Rd, south down Stoneville to Mundaring for coffee then home
Toodyay Road…is that Red Hill??? If it is then I’d just like to mention that, depending on the time of year and the time of day, you can have the sun seriously blinding drivers and the speed limit is 80kph (making it even more dangerous). It’s more of an issue towards winter time than summer.
Not trying to be a wuss, just that I was nearly killed on that road a couple of years ago!
don’t worry, mark h.
we don’t do redhill for that exact reason.
there isn’t much of a shoulder either and our group is too big nowadays.