Linsanity, greedy banks and crit racing.  these are the things that have dominated news in my life for the last week. 

if you don’t follow NBA basketball, then Linsanity will mean nothing to you, but it is worth a google.  a true underdog story of hollywood proportions.  a undrafted, unheralded, asian-american player that was sleeping on his brother’s couch has suddenly become the hottest player in the NBA. 

so the RBA decides not to raise interest rates but all the banks do.  nice.  they are claiming that loans are no longer profitable but are posting 1/2 yearly profits of billions of dollars.  can somebody say “super-tax”. 

perth crits were another good event with good spectator turn outs at each race.  good to see racing being brought into the city.

renae’s race – the premier race for women in wa is on this sunday, so get down to support it.  apparently they are now taking enteries on the day with no late fees.  we have a number of spr women racing so come along to watch or enter the men’s support races.  we will have a tent, etc set up down there so it would be good to see you there.

tuesday night ride – a new ride to add into your weekly repertoire or one for those looking for extra kms.  toby will be running a “sprint skills” training session around kings park.  this will involve doing intervals and skill sets that are needed to make you a better sprinter.  the session will start at 6:00pm at the DOME and run for an hour.  for those that ride to work, this will allow a session after work before you head home.  if you have a backpack with your work gear, you can leave it at the cafe while you are training.  come down a bit early for your pre-training coffee.

state criterium championships – next sunday at the tech park circuit we will be running the state crit champs in conjunction with the rccc.  i will be putting up a separate post later to call for volunteers, but we will need quite a few as we will be running a number of races from juniors through to the open championships.  if you are not racing, we would like to see you done there to help us out.

political pressure – one of the projects that we are looking at this year is to get a dedicated crit circuit built to get us away from the traffic.  within the city of south perth there is already has a half-assed attempt at a circuit at george burnett park in manning (look on google maps).  it is way too skinny and if no way acceptable as a race circuit.  in order to get any changes made, we need to get the residents within the club to put some pressure on the city.  last week, any city of south perth residents would have received a survey about the recreation and open space in the city of south perth.  it is due in tomorrow, so this is real late notice, but if you are a resident then i need you to fill in the survey and send it in.  there is a section for “suggestions for improvements” and under that i would like you to suggest that george burnett park have it’s bike circuit widened to allow a facility for the safe racing and training of cyclists.  the results of this survey are supposed to be incorporated into the open space strategy for the city.

ride routes – make sure you know the ride routes.  don’t forget about the little kink on the saturday main ride when it gets close to kalamunda.  i have tried to put in a “shorter” long hills ride this week so you can get down to renae’s race afterwards to support our riders.

saturday 18th february

ride starts under the narrows (cityside) at 5:30am

early lap – spr earlybird ride

all rides start at coode st carpark at 7:00am

development group – spr saturday 35.48km (novice shelley)

transitional – spr saturday 41.18km (reverse river ride)

fast & main groups – spr saturday 50.47km (hale rd reverse)

sunday 19th february

ride starts under the narrows (cityside) at 5:30am

early lap – spr earlybird ride

all rides start at coode st carpark at 7:00am

short – spr sunday 61.14km (welshpool & weir rd)

long – spr sunday 90.23km (welshpool & observatory & kalamunda rd)