All posts by peter

saturday 5th jan – canning vale

well it was a fast a furious ride today. don’t know how it happened either. the route (see below but reversed) took us down canning hwy to north lake road, left onto south st, left onto bannister rd, left onto nicholson, left onto albany hwy which turned into shepperton rd into the city.

it all seemed pretty straight forward.

we had about 40+ riders turn up which can always play havoc if we get caught at lights…..and we did. almost every single set. from the very start we lost half the pack.

as is the etiquette of our ride we slowed down and waited for them to catch back up. unfortunately this sometime meant that they would get caught at the next set as well. can make for a very frustrating ride. but that is city riding for you.

so canning hwy was quite sedate. once we hit north lake road and onto the small rises, the pace went up a bit. not excessive, but no longer comfortable anymore. probably for some of our riders it was excessive, but that is where you really dig deep to stay with the pack.

south st was a mixed bag as we got split at the lights again and slowed the group down to make sure we were all together. I got on the front with Michael B and we set a reasonable pace along the rest of south st to the turn.

once we hit bannister rd, it was all on. the squadra barista boys all got to the front and decided to smash it into the head/cross wind. i had my ring hanging out for most of bannister just trying to hold a wheel. there was no way that i was going to make it to the front to do a turn. this would have been the point where the pack pretty much disintegrated.

i would describe our group as semi-social. we like to have a chat early on in the ride, but eventually someone will crank it up and then it is time for breathing only and no talking.

anyway, nicholson rd was a bit better and albany hwy was definitely better as we had a nice tailwind back home. funny how the rides get planned that way.

doing around 50km/h in the group is certainly a nice feeling. I even had a crack at a late breakaway but got stopped at the lights as i got 50m down the road. anyway, back across the causeway onto riverside drive and nobody would come around one of the squadra barista boys to do a turn, so i decided to give him a hand. of course it meant that there was no way i would be sprinting, but i had pretty much run out of top end speed by then.

i don’t even know who “crossed the line” first as most of our group had come past me by then. everyone eventually limped into the coffee shop at the bell tower with some dribbling in a few minutes later.

to top it all off, the coffee machine then broke down so no-one got a coffee.
luckily for me they could still make hot chocolates.

Sth Perth Saturday Ride 04 (Canning Vale)
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Where this all began….

I have somehow acquired the running of two cycle groups in South Perth. How this happened, i don’t really know. I have only been in Perth for three years and there are guys that have been riding with this group for a lot longer than that.

I guess that i just like things to be organised.

The saturday ride was always run by Simon who used to work at the bike shop where we meet. Life was easy then. You turn up and he just yells out where we are riding, and you start pedalling. The sunday ride was a lot more chaotic. Often people would turn up and everyone would look at each other and go “where are we riding today”.

This must of irked me a bit as i started working out the route beforehand, so when everyone turned up the person who yelled the loudest usually got their own way. This turned out to be me.

So, the sunday hills ride started to be a regular thing. Often, especially during winter, there would only be a few riders. However, as more people came out, more came to realise that we were actually waiting for the slower riders at the top of the hills.

Now you have to understand the mind of a cyclist. To be better than someone, you have to hurt them. I don’t mean punch them in the back of the head (although there are a few…) but i mean that if you can go faster, harder, stronger than someone else and they have to hurt themselves to keep up with you, then you must be the better rider. This applies to hills, sprints and first to the coffee shop.

So the Sunday hills ride took off and steadily grew. Last week we had 36 turn up for a 85km jaunt through the Perth Hills. Luckily we actually got enough seats at the coffee shop in Kalamunda.

So, what happened to Saturday. Well, we were all going along fine when Simon tells us that he is leaving and will be working at another bike shop. We were a bit unsure about the new guy as he had a lot of ideas that he wanted to bring into our ride. We were happy to do what we had always done so, again, he who shouts the loudest wins, and i started organising the saturday route as well.

Isn’t technology a wonderful thing. There is a website called Mapmyride.com and I found that i could pre-plan a whole bunch of rides to make sure that they covered enough ground and i didn’t get lost. This allowed me to send out an e-mail during the week so that come saturday/sunday morning, people already knew where we were going. This allowed the slower riders to check for short-cuts or at least know the way home if they got dropped.

So now if you go to the website below and in the keyword search put in sth perth, it has all the planned routes that we take.
http://www.mapmyride.com/search

So my weekends now revolved around taking groups of cyclist out for their weekly ride (much to the dismay of my wife). Saturday isn’t too bad as most of the routes have been done before, so most of the old hands know the way. Sunday, however, i sometime feel like a tour guide. Telling where to regroup and when to turn, dropping back to make sure we have everyone, then going to the front to make sure we are going the right way. Anyway, that just seems to be part of the job.

So, if you are in the South Perth area and are looking for a ride on Sat or Sun then we would be happy to show you around. We always meet at the carpark behind BikeForce (intersection of Canning & Berwick) and always leave at 7AM.

Hope to see you on the road.