Another large group of Transitioners this morning, so I hived off the ten T2 starters including Gwyn who’s had a few weeks off, and Jono’s sister Sarah back from Melbourne. A quick chat about the focus of the ride being to stay and work together as a group, rather than working on pace and performance and with that in mind we headed out last from the carpark and close onto the wheels of Tracy’s Developer’s group.

Good thing about Shelley at the front end of a ride, is that it’s a great opportunity to practise rolling through; down side of Shelley on a Sat morning is that ‘racing’ packs come hammering through 4 abreast and expect everyone to get out of the way. Fortunately I was sitting on the front outside of our nicely paired up pack and moved them out as a large fast and impatient pack came through from behind; copped a bit of abuse about getting out of their way but maybe next week they’ll learn to give space to the guy in the fluro yellow shirt!

Today’s T2 ride roll throughs were very scrappy and didn’t really improve much by the end of Shelley . . . .so we had another couple of go’s and maybe a marginal improvement, but still a bit of work to do before it could be considered OK. Part of the reason is that we had a fair range in ability and one or two of the stronger guys hadn’t quite worked how much ease up is required after rolling over at the front onto the inside.

For most of the ride we had paired up pretty well and held a steady 28-32 kph with Jason doing a great job looking after the tail end, and every time we had a traffic light split there was always a convenient bus stop lay-by available to pull in and re-group.

We copped a bit of verbal and agro behaviour from the utes on Albany Hwy, a couple seeing how close they could skim past the tail end of our group but fortunately no contact or mishaps. What is it about some Perth drivers and where is this attitude coming from? There certainly seems to be an increasing cultural acceptance amongst a specific group that its cool to scare the shit out of cyclists at every opportunity.

I am happy to take the T2’s again next week and do exactly the same ride as a one off, and if the same people turn up we can use it as an opportunity improve our collective group riding skills.

Cheers
Mark_S