well i am sitting in the emirates business class lounge in dubai and it seems like a long time since i rode my bike.  it was actually only a little over 24hrs ago that i was handing out new kit in the coffeeshop.  a long stop over in the desert has given me a chance to see what i can type up for the ride report.

so, we had a decent turn out this mornng as i think the weather improvement and a bit lighter in the morning has gotten people out of their winter hibination.  we had a fast group this morning and numbers were good according to daryls report, but only one solitary rider for the novice group.  i was riding with main 1 and we had around 30 riders rolling out with us.  pretty uneventful heading out shep road and onto welshpool with only a couple of splits at the lights.  mark had to chase back on at one stage after attempting a mid ride strip at a set of lights.  leg warmers don’t really come off that easy when you have your shoes on still.  luckily there were a couple that helped him chase back on.

hale road was fairly sedate and even the split in the group at the round about, wasn’t too hard to recover from.  this was made a lot easier though after we came upon a EX3000 excavator owned by nrw being transported up to kalamunda road.  we sat behind it for a while, but they had to keep stopping to raise the powerlines to get it under.  and there were a lot of powerlines.

jorgy eventually went up to the pilot vehicle and we then went onto the footpath to get ahead of the load.  main 2 had caught up by this stage but we jumped ahead after the wide load.  at the lights at kalamunda road, we saw that the fast group were waiting to turn.  it looked like there was still a decent size group so i though that they must have had a regroup. 

we made our way to ridge hill road and the pace started early.  a few people attacked and the group started to string out.  i stayed seated but increased the pace to get near the front and amongst the action.  unfortunately the last few weeks of sickness have menat that i really don’t have any endurance and so started struggling near the top.  i looked down at my heart rate to see that it was 190bpm and i almost fell off when i unintentionally swerved.  probably more from fatigue rather than shock, but i almost took ben out as he was on my wheel.  sorry again for that.

i had to use the decent to recover as much as possible and managed to get onto a small group once we hit the flat.  there was a bigger group up the road and i was interested to see if they were going to slow down and wait.  since this is not the fast group, they did wait and pretty soon the group was all back together. 

we made our way though guilford and once we hit bassendean we started a roll through.  the intent was to not go too fast but rather just share the load across the group.  it worked ok, but it was pretty messy as halfthe group sporatically rolled through.  a couple of light changes allowed the group to be together once we hit the rolling hills in mt lawley an this would always break the group up.  i drifted to the back to make sure that any stragglers weren’t too far away and drafted a few back to the group.

we approached the lights at east parade and toby managed to slip through just before the red glare hit him.  the rest of us stopped and watched him continue up the road.  he had the video camera on his head so it will be interesting to see the footage.

another split in east perth, but the lights kept us all together for the sprint. with his white tyres flashing, toby managed to hold off the group for the “win”.

the family met us at the coffeeshop with the boys sporting the new cycel caps, and we did a kit distribution.  the gloves etc came out quite well and i was pretty happy with the results.  there was a lot of back and forth during the design process, but it seemed come out ok in the end.

so no ride for me this week and toby will be posting the ride routes on thursday.  i am currently 11 hrs into my 55 hrs of flying this week and am already looking forward to coming home.  stay safe, stay upright.