i have expanded a few points, but am sticking to the bullet system until i free up a bit of spare time.
about 30 riders.the nice weather seemed to have scared the rest away.
ryan did not turn up because he had to look after his puppy.he has been giving the rest of us crap about not turning up to training during the week due to family commitments, i guess we didn’t think about using the puppy excuse.sounds like he is puppy whipped.
idiot on motorbike near the casino tries to kill all of us. i love how motorbike riders complain about not getting any respect on the road and people should look out for them. then they come between us and the traffic at speed which had so much potential for disaster. as people are clipping in they tend to wobble around a bit and could have quite easily closed the gap between the rest of the pack and the cars in the other lane. see video here. no sound but you get the idea.
turned up the pace along hale rd until we ran into a road block.had to wait while a very, very large piece of equipment was towed by two semi’s and they had to clear the road… and wouldn’t let us on the footpath.see video here.
no-one wanted to make the first move on welshpool until a rider from another group came past us.then everyone chased him down.the poor guy said that he was just after a nice run home but we were going too slow, so he past us.huge chain reaction with james first taking off in pursuit then lots of individual riders chasing him.i was at the front plodding away.
i made a move on shep rd at the lights leading up to the last hill, but started from too far back.i got a gap, but was too buggered to continue the move.thought i had the group when the lights changed at the top of the hill, but a whole bunch got through with me.
holly made a gutsy move as we crossed the causeway.long way from home and a bunch of hungry sprinters ready to chase her down menat that she only lasted onto riverside drive.
we realised when we turned back onto riverside drive that the wind had now picked up and was in our face.
many a failed early move including one of mine which brendan used as a springboard to launch his attack.
sprint won by brendan with jerry taking second… again.
coffee shop was full out back so we sat out the front in the sun for a change.
cyclo-sportif tomorrow at pickering brook and we have 2 spr teams competing.
a 5:30am flight up to the pilbara on thursday morning meant that i didn’t get a chance to post the ride routes till tonight (friday). a long hot day looking at mining equipment also meant that i missed my normal thursday morning training ride. i thought about posting a really hard saturday route to make up for it, but then i would be screwed for the cyclo-sportif race on sunday.
so, we have a fairly subdued saturday morning ride which will have only one main sprint section all the way home along welshpool rd and shep rd.
as we have two groups attending the cyclo-sportif, sunday’s ride will be a challenge for anyone willing (or left) to chase mountain points. the challenge will be to keep going as this route will past by the coffee-shop twice before finally stopping in. don’t give in and let me know who took the first five places on each climb.
also, i have changed the format of the saturday rides page. instead of it loading a mapmyride map for each one, it now loads a jpeg of each ride and you click on each one to access another page that has the proper map embedded. this second map allows you to zoom in and pan around. i will get to the sunday rides page when i can.
if you watched the news on friday night, you may have seen the court case for the guy who backed his car over some cyclists at an intersection at the beginning of the year. apparently he felt threatened, so decided that the best thing to do was assault them with his car. he is potentially looking at 5yrs jail in which i hope he shares a cell with a big guy named “bubba”.
handicap races. i haven’t had a good trot with them this year as it is a totally different style of racing. the first was menzies to kalgoorlie where i hit the cramp wall at about 85kms and had to pull out. the group i was in was smashing along at 45km/hr from the gun and i just couldn’t hold that pace for 132kms. the next was the collie-donnybrook race where i had no legs left once the group hit the final climb. one of the guys in our group wanted to go hard from the gun to try to stay away from scratch. we didn’t have enough of a handicap for that to happen over 100kms. at least i finished that one.
this race at northam had the potential to be a hell of a lot worse as it was five laps of a circuit that contained the main climb out of town. it wasn’t a particularly hard climb, but over the 125kms it was going to wear the legs away each lap. so it was all going to come down to who was in our group and what handicap we would get. we being mike who was the only other spr rider to front up for this event. brendan and steve were racing as was davina who was going with the plan-b team. the rest of the spr crew were chasing mountain points around perth.
the day was pleasant enough with only a sprinkle of rain as i approached northam. the predicted top of 20ish was easily achievable and with a start time of 11:00 we would be racing in the “heat of the day”. not that it would be too much of a problem today.
i pulled into the start finish area as they were setting up tents and tables for the race and went looking for the sign-in point. hmmm. not here. apparently it was up the road at the visitors centre where they start the avon descent. back in the car as it was too far to walk. well too far if i was to do a 125km race as well. handed over my licence, collected my number and found out the handicaps. the plan b girls were off at 11:00 with another group 4min later. mike and i were off the 8min mark with hamish and dean from squadra barista off 12min. brendan was off 17min and steve somehow managed to be thrown in with the 21min group. after that there were the usual “a” grade boys in two groups back to 27min. on a 125km course with 5 hill climbs, i was sure that we would not be staying away from scratch to the end.
as we rolled up to the start line one of the guys in our group tried to set the ground rules. he didn’t want us to go too hard and smash the group apart early, but try to stay together for as long as we could. mike and i said that we were just trying to get to the end so weren’t looking at attacking and going on a 125km solo effort. as we set off, we had aussie crates guy who set the ground rules, lpr dude, knightfrank, melville fremantle guy along with mike and myself. a pretty small group and it would be interesting to see how well we did together.
the first couple of laps were pretty uneventful. the climb we tackled at an even tempo although on the second time up there were calls to take it easy. this was usually when mike went to the front to set the tempo which was generally higher than the other guys. i sprinted around to get on his wheel, but he wasn’t attacking, just going faster. these laps were really just getting an idea of the course and the wind direction. we did work well together and everyone did turns on the front without really missing a beat. the only problem was that they had started the juniors and they were now on the road in front of us, making it hard to know if you were gaining on our 4min men or not. at the top of the climb one of the young guys must have put a wheel in the dirt as he was sitting on the road edge with the bike on top of him. didn’t look too bad and there were some support people not far behind us, so we weren’t stopping.
at the start of the third lap we saw the group ahead of us on the climb. we had already pick up one of their number earlier on and i heard him say to one of our group that they had smashed it to try to catch the girls and he fell off the back on the hill. there were three or four riders in that group and when they saw us they kind of sat up and waited. we continued the climb together and i think we lost melville freo guy on this ascent.
we kept up the same tempo riding down the side of the hill and along the flats. pretty soon we saw the girls up ahead and the tint-a-car lead car just ahead. we swallowed up their group and our numbers hit that point where we could actually start rolling through instead of just doing turns. unfortunately this didn’t really work too well as some of the guys would smash off the front for their turn then stop pedalling causing a kind of sprint situation to close the gaps. this made the pace irregular and we eventually fell back into single turns at the front. unfortunately the pace change had caused us to drop a few more riders and when i looked around mel and josie were not there. we still had davina and claire with us along with half of the two other groups.
at the start of the fourth lap, we lost claire as the climb started but the rest of the group hung in there. after the small plateau halfway up the first section of road, an old guy from the 4min group in a ag2r kit took off. no-one was really keen to chase him as we were forcing a tempo up the hill and still had one more lap to go. mike and i did some turns at pace setting on the hill but i coped a mouthful from the crates guy who for some reason was accusing me of going slow to let the other guy get away. i have no idea what he was talking about as i was still just setting the same tempo.
as we crested the hill and headed back down, the group set up an informal roll through to chase the ag2r guys down. informal cause it is hard to get a proper roll through happening when you are all going at speed and also the pace was continuously surging. as the road flattened into a series of rolling bumps the group still tried to chase down, but it was really all over the place. a guy in front of me would literally sprint when he hit the front and then i would be left with a huge gap. i wasn’t sprinting and tried to close the gap without forcing another one to open behind me. after this happened a couple of times, the crates guy started yelling at me calling me a poofter and claiming that i was deliberately riding slow to let the other guy go. i’m pretty sure i told him what i thought and blamed him for not consistently rolling through and braking the group apart every time he hit the front. i was tempted to just sit in now as he had really pissed me off.
we kept going though and hit the flatter part of the course where we could get the roll through happening a lot smoother. about halfway back into town there was a yell from behind as the scratch group had caught us. there was a sprint to jump on board the train then i we were all content to sit in and let them dictate the pace. we came back through town and headed for the hill again. davina dropped off after the feed zone as the group rolled through the lower slopes. the pace was not extreme as we started the hill, but picked up with a couple of attacks which dislodged me, crates guy and mat from melville-freo who we picked up from the 4min group. just prior to that the crates guy had apologised for earlier on, but that’s just racing in the heat of the moment.
the main group slowed a bit on the plateau and i managed to claw my way back on. mike was still in that group as were a few others that we were originally riding with. the scratchmen kicked again and it was all over for me. i set a tempo to the top and worked with mat and crates guy (who never did a turn on the hill) to get over the climb. once at the top we started to the descent and started my cramps. the higher pace started cramping my calves and i had to ease off and let the other guys go. i made my way down the hill and actually stopped for a call of nature that i had been wanting to make since the 2nd lap. as i got underway again, davina along with three other guys picked me up and i joined in the roll through. i only lasted about three or four turns before my hamstrings began to cramp and i fell off the pace. the 45km/hr was too much for me that late in the race. i fell into damage control mode and made my way home.
it’s times like this i think i need some oakley thump sunnies that have the built in mp3 player. i get a bit bored riding the rest of the way by myself. there were two things that kept me interested. a huge lizard ran across the road in front of me. i hadn’t seen one that big since i lived in the plibara. and within 300m of the finishline, as i past a yellow car on the side of the road and three kids jumped out to frighten me and scared the utter crap out of me. lucky i didn’t fall off. i was glad to be finished.
no idea where i came except the crates guy and mat came in 8th and 9th so i think i came in 14th, but not sure until the results come out. post race i chatted with mike, to find out that he got dropped on the last pinch when the scratchmen attacked again. but he kept going and should have got a top ten finish. brendan pulled out with a coughing fit and has since been told by the doctor that he might have a sinus infection. steve avoided a massive crash at 60km/hr by locking his brakes up so much that he wore a hole right through his tyre. me, i got changed and headed home, tired but satisfied that i held on to the last lap and finished the whole thing.
so after our bike weigh-in at the spr breakfast i saw my poor bike slip further and further down the leaderboard. so much so that it now resides in the bottom third in the rankings. it was a contentious point at home with me complaining that my bike is too heavy.
i thought that i was on a winning argument until it was pointed out how many of these lighter bikes are beating my poor old fondriest up the hill on sunday. based on recent results, only three maybe four fall into that category and therefore i must not need to lighten my bike.
luckily i purchased my new hubs both before the weigh-in and before the aussie dollar went belly up. coming in at 190g lighter than a set of dura-ace these little beauties come from jens’ homeland and also come with a weight restriction, so i better not pack on too much weight when baby number two comes along.
no name as yet, but he weighed in at 4.025kg which is around half the weight of his ridley damocles. congratulations to you both and chris, we expect to see you back on the bike in a few years time.
I could already hear it when I was still in bed. The probably most horrible weather for cycling, well apart from -5 °C and snow outside, but that is unlikely to happen here in Perth.
So rain and gusty wind it was. I was already drenched when passing the Narrow’s Bridge. I was already out here in the horizontal rain so I thought there might be still two or more brave ones who decided themselves against crawling back under the blanket.
Arriving at the car park around seven I saw that I was the only one out here. It stopped raining as well now, but still no one else was here. Would I be able to find the way out to the hills? Are there still some people to come and I should wait? Am I too late? All these questions could be answered with a no, unfortunately.
So I jumped on the cycle path down the river and did a short round between the bridges. The sprint at the bell tower against myself wasn’t as fun as usual and also not as competitive. As I rolled back home the next clouds came crawling in…
I guess it wasn’t that much of a cycling morning! Should I bother getting up early the next rainy Sunday?
when you think of a team time trial you think of the old team postal boys in the tour de france. all power and grace and all working together like a well oiled machine. and then… there is the wa state champs. i’m not saying that there were no well oiled machines out there today. the plan b men’s team smashed the course and looked to be doing it well as they flew along the other side of the road from us. however, there were a lot of teams that didn’t look too oiled and i am guessing that ours was one of them.
the conditions today were nothing short of atrocious. the only thing that would make it unbearable would be a lot more rain. basically the wind was so strong, it tried to blow you off the road at every opportunity. the closest weather station that i could find on the net was mandurah which reported 61km/h average winds with gust up to 87km/h. as you expect the coast to be a bit windier, drop about 10km/h of those numbers and you still get crap riding conditions. what made it worse was the course was three sides of a square, so you didn’t just get a headwind/tailwind combination, but rather a very bad crosswind/headwind/tailwind/crosswind combination. i know i put crosswind in there twice, but it played such a big part to the day.
so, in the lead up to the event we had a choice to make. which division would we race under. as ryan is the only one in our team that does not qualify for masters, it would depend entirely on whether he wanted to race. in the end it was stu, mark, jerry and i that formed the team and we signed up under the masters 35-49 division.
the course, as previously mentioned, was loosely the three sides of a square. see attached. the first part started straight south before heading in a se direction. back south again before turning directly west to the turn around and back the way we came. the course was pretty much flat so was ideal for a team time trial and ideal to get those well oiled machines all working together. as i said, the wind through all of that out the window.
we were scheduled to start at 09:51 and would be the fourth masters team off. the open women’s riders would already be on the road before us and the open men would be following behind. there were only seven masters teams so we only had to beat four teams to get a medal. the aim was to at least get a medal of any colour.
as we prepared our gear, the rain began to fall. hard. everyone just left the bike against the cars and jumped inside to wait it out. the rain wasn’t too bad and i could live with it. after the rain stopped, however, the wind really started to blow. we kitted up and headed out for a warm-up ride. in the process of borrowing chris’ ridely road bike, i managed to also get his cosmic carbone deep dish wheels. being a time trial i decided to give them whirl to try to grab whatever advantage i could. as mark and i headed out for a warm-up, i decided that i had made the wrong wheel choice. we got as far down as where the road swings to the south-east and the crosswinds really came into effect. i found that i was having trouble keeping the bike straight and really had to fight it. we turned around and made the tailwind assisted run back to the car. i had bought my real design wheels with me which had a lower profile so swapped out the front wheel to try to gain some control. during the warm-up we could see lots of guys running full disks on the back and deep dish rims on the front. i hoped they had better control than me.
our start time approached and we discussed team tactics. basically we would straight line it doing 30 sec turns on the front. we would all stay together till the turn around but then could drop a rider on the return as we only needed three to get a finish time. if anyone got a flat they would be left behind, except if they were the third rider remaining. all good we thought. just a matter of staying in formation.
our time came and we got our count down to go. i was on the front and had trouble clipping it and had to give it a second go before it clicked. not a good start. then as we wound up the pace i went to put it in the big ring and it didn’t want to shift up. not good at all. it was working fine before, and now i was worrying about a broken cable and whether i could do the whole thing in the small ring. i eased the pressure off the pedals and tried again. this time is shifted smoothly, but i really didn’t need the extra stress.
the first couple of k’s down to where the road swung around were ok. we had a head wind, but you could get a good draft on the wheel in front and we were swapping out turns often enough for everyone to get a rest. as the road turned, we came up over a railway crossing. this is where i got my first real fright. as the bike lifted over the crest of the crossing, a gust came in from the right and gave my bike a thumping. i now was wishing i had even lower profile wheels on.
this stretch down to the right hand turn was pretty bad. we managed to organise ourselves so that we echeloned across the road with the lead rider as close to the centreline as they could be. however, we were still being hit by gusts that would move your bike to the left and everyone had to be extra careful as we were now overlapping about half a bike in order to get a draft. i found that most of the time i could not actually get down on the tri-bars as it was too unstable in the gusts. i just grabbed the bullhorns and hung on for grim death. the wind had also spread lots of dead branches on to the course and we also had to avoid them to save us from getting a puncture.
we hit the right hand turn at the 10 km mark and i was glad that we now had a headwind. before we reached the turn we could see two teams in front of us and we knew that we could make up some more ground now. one was the masters team that started 2 min ahead of us, while the other was one of the women’s teams from about 10 mins earlier. i looked back and could not see anyone after us so i guessed that we were doing alright.
i was now pulling longer turns at the front as i didn’t have to fight the crosswinds and could get into a better rhythm. unfortunately this section only lasted for 5 kms and we turned right again to cop the full brunt of the crosswinds.
the 6 kms along this stretch to the turn around was the worst conditions that i have every ridden in. i hardly got down on the tri-bars as i found the bike uncontrollable. and even when i did, i was watching up the road to see where the bushes acting as a wind break finished, so i could get ready for the gusts to hit us again. most of the time we were riding so close to side by side that we hardly formed a line at all.
about halfway down this stretch, i noticed my polar speed mount had come loose and was now precariously hanging at the end of my forks against the quick-release lever. if it swung around it would go straight into my spokes and would probably make quite a mess of either me or the bike. i kept a watchful eye on it and tried to work out how and when i could rectify the problem. as we approached the turn around i told mark and he said to sprint ahead so i could fix it without losing the team too much time. i ended up just stretching it around the skewers as well so the it could move anywhere. unfortunately it meant that the end of the cable ties was now playing a delightful tune on my spokes as they turned past. it didn’t matter. you could hardly hear anything over the wind.
we now had the same problem with the wind but now from the other side for the return trip. big gusts and hard to hide from it. being an out and back we also got a view of some of the teams that were in front and behind us. some were all over the road and others were just powering along. i was hoping the powerful ones were all in the open men’s division.
about halfway along this stretch, we lost jerry. he didn’t lose too much ground and he said that he almost made it back on, but the wind was too much and resigned himself to riding home on his own. he was not he only one to do that today. up ahead i saw an aussie crates rider who turned out to be steve, who often come out on the sunday ride. he had been dropped by his team and was now finding his own way home by turning around early.
we took the left hand turn and now had the wind on our backs. again the turns got longer as without fighting the crosswind, you could spend more energy going forward. i was very disappointed to come to the end of this stretch. we turned left again and started to negotiate the last crosswind section.
i was starting to struggle now and was having trouble holding position in the line. i couldn’t get on the bars and power along, so didn’t feel like my riding was very fliud. we echeloned to the right and as you were overtaken you had to swing down and all the way around the others to get back onto the right hand side out of the wind. we now also had steve and another lost rider hanging onto our draft to help get themselves home.
we battled along, but both those lost riders eventually passed us to act as a carrot for us to chase. unfortunately, we weren’t that hungry and i think it was actually harder to ride in formation that it was to rode solo. on your own, if a wind gust hits you, then you can easily just drift across the road and back on track. in a team time trial, you really needed to control the bike at all times as there was someone relying on your position.
finally the road swung north and we hit the final tailwind stretch for home. stu and i were stil powering along, but mark was starting to struggle a bit. i guess this is where the triathlon background of the two of us comes to the fore as mark recognises that it is an area in which he has not done much training. we powered up to the finish and mark was calling for us to ease off as he was losing the wheel. we were yelling at him to go harder as it was only the last km and he needed to give it everything. stu and i rode side by side to try to give him a bigger draft area and we managed to cross the line in 1:08 for the 42 kms. i was so glad that it was over. the wind and the openness of the course made it one hell of a tough day.
we waited for jerry to finish before we headed off to the cars. a team from bikeforce southern river was behind us and a couple of those guys were the ones doing all the work at last weeks cyclo-sporitf race. they said that they got 1:10 or so, so we knew that we had at least one team down. three more to get a medal. we got changed but left the spr gear on just in case we actually reached the podium. unfortunately the presentations didn’t start till about one o’clock after there was some delays in getting the timing for the juniors organised. this gave us an opportunity to wander down into pinjarra and grab some food etc before hand.
after a two hour wait we still didn’t know if we got a place or not. i was already over my expected home time and had to ring and explain that there was a good chance that we got a medal. i was hoping that we didn’t all just sit around and wait for a fourth place.
state team time trial silver medal
in the end our time was good enough for second place and my second state masters silver medal for the year. we were pretty happy about it but would have a lot of work to do to make up the 6 min the first place guys managed to get. the first open men’s team managed to clock it in under 1 hr and blitzed the next team by six minutes as well.
steve’s team came in third to get him a bronze medal in the open division, while mel, josie and sarah managed to narrowly hang onto first place by about 10 or 15 sec. bec’s team took out third in the open women and took home a bronze.
so, a good result for an absolutely awful day on the bike. we were all pretty happy to get a medal and it made getting out of bed this morning worthwhile. i doubt we would have made the effort for just a sunday hills ride.
after a week of typical spring weather (rain, then sun, then rain, then sun), it was good to see some nice conditions as we rolled up to the startline this morning. i was hoping that they would hold for the length of the ride but we would have to see. about 40 riders this morning which included a few of the “squadra bastardos”. i thought since they refer to our group as the “south perth rooters” i would change theirs from “squadra baristas”. all good though, and always a pleasure to have them along.
saturday morning at south perth
the route today would head up past the tv stations, home of such well known wa personalities like jeff newman, a bunch of ex-footy players and the oldest news woman on tv. for us though, it included a slight uphill stretch that when done at pace would test the legs. we would head out great eastern and up grand prome before passing the tv stations and return via wanneroo rd and kings park. a slight detour to add extra kms before heading home via dalkeith and mounts bay rd.
the trip out was fairly uneventful and allowed everyone to have a chat and catch up. by the time we had reached the base of the hill on dianella drive, we were all warmed up ready to go. the traffic lights meant that we were all together at the start, and the ones at the top of the hill can potentially help those catch up after the hill.
the pace started well and it was not an all out sprint from the start. mike and young alistar (who had forgone the sandshoes and had nice new white sidi cycle shoes) set the pace well from the start. we had began to string out but most were content to hold the wheel in front. i decided to try to egg mark on to make a move. he has borrowed my spare set of tri-bars in readiness for the team time trial tomorrow and he thinks that they are great. i said that he should see how well he could set the pace on the hill with the bars on, so he moved to the front. the speed increased a bit but the main boys were still hanging tough as there was still a way to go. mike came around again to finish off the hill, but then we hit the traffic lights.
the group bunched up a bit, but not everyone made it back on. the road rose up slightly for another block or so before finding a nice gradient down in which everyone could put on some speed. i can’t remember who actually initiated it, but soon everyone was coming around to try to get the pace high. it wasn’t till ryan flew past with jerry close behind that a gap managed to form. we kept pushing on to try to bridge it, but as normal it was a bunch of individual efforts rather than a even roll though. pretty soon we were negotiating the double round-abouts that marked the end of our fast section.
a regroup on wanneroo rd and we pretty much had everyone back together. it was cruisy, cruisy down to leederville before we headed up around kings park. things started to get a bit messy here as some of the boys decided to use the slight rises then descents to push hard. the group started to break up a bit but luckily, a set of lights at rokeby rd helped put it all back together.
we turned past the hospital to extend the ride a bit as it was only just hitting 8 o’clock and less than 40 kms. as we got to the end of aberdare rd and was attempting to turn onto railway road, we encountered mr dickhead. this time she was wearing a dress and was driving a volvo station wagon. talk about stereo types. well as we were all together in a long line and taking up the majority of the single turning lane, this “lady” decides to come around the group then cut into the line so she can turn. honestly, if we were a line of cars waiting to turn, wouldn’t you just wait??? but no, cyclist are just a pest and probably wouldn’t dent my rock solid volvo, so i will just try to push in.
as she came towards the front of the group where i was sitting, i gave her some choice words of encouragement to let her know what i thought of the manoeuvre. she had this look of disbelief on her face, like she couldn’t understand why we would think we had any rights on the road. anyway, to make matters worse, when we did get moving, she then gets “intimidated” and doesn’t move so the rest of the group has to get around her car. as she past by us a bit later, she still gave me a dirty look.
we skipped through claremont and onto the final run to home. the majority of the group was still together but this would be the opportunity to thin the ranks a bit before the sprint. one of the barista boys and a couple of other guys swapped off turns to se the higher pace. we dropped a few on the first hill, but i was sure it would change after the tight left hander onto jutland parade. ryan moved to the front which was quite early for him. he set a good consistent pace up to the rolling hills where he usually attacked. as he was already on the front, it was up to others like jerry to try to upset the pace with a hill sprint.
as we approached the lights at mounts bay rd, they were quickly turning red. ryan, jerry and jens managed to slip through while the rest of us took a break and allowed some of the dropped riders to catch up. as we were now sprinting for fourth, i decided to get the group to roll through and wait till the end before smashing it. as we got around the corner, jens had waited for our train rather than go with ryan and jerry. he was rolling quite slow along the road and caused a bit of confusion as he reintegrated with the group. pretty soon we had the roll through ticking along fine.
melvyn with his pink milkshake
i was waiting for an attack to go, and as i was stuck on the inside of the roll through, there was nothing i was going to be able to do. i popped out the back just as we approached the swan brewery and started to wind up for the sprint. i didn’t hit it hard and just came by the group in the next lane. a few guys like phil and jens were looking back waiting for the jump so they started to move as well. i wound it up as jens started his sprint and had to throw on the line (we really need to paint one). it would have been a photo finish, but i will give it to the german for having swish new shoes.
so i was not stopping for coffee today as i had a early appointment to attend, but i left an order form with jerry for the new spr drink bottles. they are made by boa and hold 650ml. we will be subsidising them for the group and will cost $6. either sign up after the saturday ride or send me an e-mail. southperthrouleurs@hotmail.com
grafton to inverall profile
in other news, a couple of our regular riders, brendan and davina are over in nsw competing in the grafton inverall race. this is a national road series (nrs) event and brendan came in with his group after 7hs and 228kms. the women’s course was slightly different and was over 95km from the top of the climbs down to inverall. being the final nrs race there was a lot of competition but davina managed to take out first place by barely a tyre width. so well done to both of them and i hope our spr team can do a good time in the state team time trial tomorrow.
