a good showing by some perth cyclists this week with jess allen and durbo the turbo getting gold medals at the world champs.  mr bonner’s gold at the state masters champs last weekend would also have to right up there as far as i am concerned, but maybe i am biased.  got me thinking once again about juniors and what can we do about getting a juniors ride started.  john barrett bought his son along to the novice group the other day and he enjoyed it immensely.  if anyone wants to see what we can put together for juniors, let me know.

state team time trial championships – this event is coming up on the 16th october.  think of it as a mini cyclo-sportif, but one in which you can get a state medal.  teams of 4 for the guys, 3 for the girls and 2 for the juniors.  you will need to have a racing licence for this but you don’t need to have a flash tt bike.  the flyer is here, but i will post more info soon so you can let us know if you want to be involved.  we cna work out teams then.  there is a masters division as well for the over 35’s and a +50’s if we can managed to get a team together (bonner, stu, schneider, big john).

spt t-shirt – keep an eye out for a blog post on this.  we are just finalising the agreement with ironhorse.

wednesday night spin – this was kicked off again in less then ideal conditions this week.  a few hardcore riders came out for the debut and kat did a good job of yelling out instructions.  there was even some stretching afterwards which surprised most of us.  come along next week if you want to go nowhere fast.

ride routes – due to the adverse conditions last week, i don’t think that the sunday hills ride eventuated.  as such, i have planned the same course again as i couldn’t be bothered trying to work out another one.

saturday 24th sept

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 40.86km (rebold hill)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 51.36km (sth lake)

sunday 25th sept

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 67.96km (greenmount & zig-zig) (skip zig-zag and do gooseberry)

long – spr sunday 95.04km (greenmount & parkerville & mundaring weir)

so i am over in queensland again for work so i have written this on tuesday evening and hoping it posts on thursday.  the long range weather says it may be a bit wet for the weekend, so hopefully that is wrong as there are a few events on in the perth bike world.

dwellingup 100 – the fat tyred riders have their big event this saturday.  more info here.

state road championships – the skinny tyred riders have their state champs this sunday.  more info here.

ride routes – as the state road champs are being held at carmel this sunday, it would be great to have the sunday hills ride swing past after the coffee to lend some vocal support.  the open race doesn’t start till 9:45 and the masters till 10:15, so by the time you have had your coffee we will be underway.  i will be taking the spr tent along so look for that if you come along.

saturday 17th sept

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 1 – spr saturday 40.72km (mosman park)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 48.67km (cresswell & herdsman)

sunday 18th sept

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 67.96km (greenmount & zig-zig) (skip zig-zag and do gooseberry) 

long – spr sunday 95.04km (greenmount & parkerville & mundaring weir)

just looked at the weather report for the week.  sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, sunny, awesomely sunny, possible rain, sunny.  i expect to see all you out there this weekend.  especially you.  you know who you are.  you have been always making excuses like “it’s too cold”, “i’m too unfit”, “my bum looks big in lycra”, “i don’t like bikes”.  so what.  your bum does look big in lycra because you haven’t been riding your bike.  the rest of us will be waiting for you on saturday.

uci cycling world tour race – this sunday bonner, ainsy and jason will be lining up in belgium for the masters world champs.  once we hear something, we will post it on the website.  please add to the comments on the previous post to give your support to our guys.

road racing – dardanup open this weekend and the kermit’s and jaffa’s will be racing for golden gnome glory.  even better if we can win the actual race, but the race within a race is very important for club pride.  state champs next weekend.  i will be entering the masters division in a bid to help mike bonner get a state title.  the sunday hills ride will be routed to head past the state title so you can come and support the spr riders on the day.

mtb racing – the dwellingup 100 is on next weekend.  not sure on all the details.  maybe scott can do a post on it as i know that there are a bunch of spr riders heading down to it.

ride routes – sunny days, excellent for bike riding.  see you out there.

saturday 10th sept

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 1 – spr saturday 39.81km (shelley & bannister)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 49.09km (abernathy rd)

sunday 11th sept

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 70.93km (kahuna)

long – spr sunday 94.64km (kahuna & canning mills)

how cool is this new greenedge team looking at the moment.  stacks of aussies joining to make is true aussie team.  hope like hell they get the backing they need to make it fly as it would be good to see them in some of the grand tours next year.  i hope their new kit is good and not a amalgamation of every aussie cliche.  speaking of grand tours, the vuelta is starting this weekend.  sbs have said that they have live telecasts, but i am not sure which stages as it is not the first few.  highlights every night at 5:30pm though.  just getting over the tour de france sleep deprivation.

collie-donnybrook – according to cycling wa, we have about 15 riders in the race on saturday.  not all will be wearing spr kit, but it’s good to see such a good turn out for the event.  i will be taking the tent and esky down for the “afterparty”.  as it is on saturday, there will be a few of us not riding the usual spr ride.  make sure you know the ride route as you may be called upon to give some navigational help.

200km challenge – looking at the busy calendar, i am searching for a spot to run this event.  currently looking at the 25th sept.  we will post some more data later, but mark that date down as a potential starter.  for those of you that didn’t take part last year, it is basically 4 laps of the river to bring up 200kms.  you can pull out after any lap, but the idea is the group all stays together.  we may be running this event as a fund raiser as well as to cover the costs of the halfway refreshments.  keep an eye on the blog.

ironhorse t-shirt – as you may have seen, we are getting the guys at ironhorse clothing to do us a t-shirt.  the 4 designs are on the blog but we require you to vote on your favourite.  the polls close next weekend, so make sure you vote as that is the one we will be getting.  voting is pretty close at the moment so make your count.  we are probably looking at about $35 per t-shirt and will open up the orders once the voting has finished.  i have taken on board some of the feedback and am currently looking for someone to model the finished product.

ride routes – leaving the sunday ride routes the same as last week as we didn’t do it again.  looking at the current forecast, we may not do them again.

saturday 20th august

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 1 – spr saturday 41.73km (canning vale reverse)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 50.72km (rebold hill & cott)

sunday 21st august

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) (follow long course out to welshpool)

long – spr sunday 101.86km (welshpool & mundaring & kalamunda)

damn the tour is getting exciting.  cadel is so close.  contador is finally finding his legs.  schleck is having a cry about having to do downhills.  voeckler is riding like he could actually win the thing.  very exciting and i am continuing to lose sleep because of it.

belgium fundraiser – a massive thanks to those companies/shops that have donated items that we can use for our belgium fundraiser.  as i mentioned before, netplus micro computers, canning bridge cycles and subway have all donated items.  we also have a farm stay from boshack, lights and accessories from knog, nutrition pack from carboshotz, a footy signed by wirrpanda from the west australian newspaper and a couple of sets of lights from nitelights.  some of these will be split up for the tipping comp and others will go towards a raffle at the fundraiser.

ride routes – it could be a bit wet this weekend.  however, it is the last few days of the tour, so get inspired and put a rain jacket on.  sunday short ride is pretty straight forward.  follow the long course and you will end up at the base of gooseberry hill.  either down the zig-zag and up kalamunda, or straight to coffee instead.

saturday 23rd july

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 1 – spr saturday 41.73km (canning vale reverse)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 49.09km (abernathy rd)

sunday 24th july

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 – follow the long course and do gooseberry hill.  option to head down the zig-zag and back up kalamunda or just straight to coffee.

long – spr sunday 100.45km (darlington & mundaring)

this has been the longest week of my life.  the weekend started as per normal with the earlybird double which makes me pretty tired by evening time.  however, with the tour on, i was obliged to stay up till midnight to watch the finish (and what a good finish it was).  jump into bed for 5 hrs sleep, then the earlybird and long hills ride making up 5 hrs of riding.  unfortunately no afternoon nanna nap but up late again for the tour.  get to sleep in till 7 monday, but already feeling seedy at work due to lack of sleep.  late night mon for stage 3 and up again at 5 for the spr tuesday ride.  work suffering.  up late for stage 4, early for spr ciao ride.  no work, but brain suffering.  late for stage 5, and slept in instead of looking after the kids as i was supposed to.  oops.  late again tonight and looking forward to the rest day after stage 9 where i will be in bed at 7pm.

tipping comp – is well underway and we have raised over $450 for the belgium trip.  we have organised a few prizes already for the category winners and i need to get a couple more.  not sure what prizes will be for which category yet, as i will wait till all prizes are donated.  if you know a business that would be interested, or you yourself want to donate something (half dozen bottles of wine, etc) then let me know.  so far shaw from netplus microcomputers has donated a samsung dvd and surround speaker package, ross from canning bridge cycles has donated a limar 608 helmet and toby has organised a whole bunch of subway vouchers.

giro donne – while the tour de france is going on, the best women in the world are competing in the women’s giro in italy.  it comprises of 9 stages over some pretty big terrain at a fast pace.  our very own davina summers is over there right now riding for the women’s uci team, bizkia-durango with a couple of other aussies.  her teammate and fellow aussie, shara gillow, managed to win the second stage which put her into the pink leaders jersey.  davina has been blogging her races on her website and is trying to keep them updated between hard racing and long transfers between stages.  you can follow her progress here.

memberships – our list for the end of june showed that we had cracked the 200 member mark with 204 members.  however, there were a handful of those members that were on a recreational licence that expires at the start of july.  the race licences run till the end of the calendar year, but the recreational licences are for a rolling year depending on when you joined.  check the expiry date on your membership card and renew online here.

ride routes – the tour seems to bring people back to the bike and even though it is winter and about 2 degrees, we still had about 40 riders turn up at 5:30am on tuesday.  as there is no rain predicted for a while now, i am expecting good numbers this weekend despite the cold forecast.  and that forecast also says easterly winds.  both the transitional and main groups can take advantage of it along benara road.  a crowd favourite.  shaw and ronny are away this week, so we will need some leaders for the trans/m3 group.

saturday 9th july

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 1 – spr saturday 39.04km (benara rd)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 50.98km (benara rd)

sunday 10th july

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 82.79km (brookton & weir rd)

long – spr sunday 97.99km (carradine & peet & observatory)

so it looks like it is basically going to rain from about midnight tonight, through to sometime sunday.  for those of you that are relatively new to cycling, welcome to winter bike riding.  it is wet, cold-ish, uncomfortable and you know that if you don’t do it, you will get fat.  the saving grace is that the rain will stop next week, but this means the return of the 3 deg mornings.  buckle up, summer has gone away for a while.

tour de france – welcome to three weeks of grumpy cyclists.  the one good thing about being 2 hrs behind the east coast is that our live telecast of the tour finishes at midnight rather than 2am.  this means that you can quickly jump into bed, get 5 hrs sleep then up again to go for a ride.  family, work colleagues and non-cycling friends watch out.  sbs has live telecast from 8:30/9:30 every night, plus the usual recap at 6pm if you fall asleep accidentally.

tour de france tipping comp – as we do every year, there will be a tour tipping comp.  this year it will be a fundraiser to help the spr guys heading over to belgium.  for those that haven’t done it before, it is a great way to follow the tour as you agonise over every sprint even for 6th place as you know that there are points on the line.  join up by heading to the tipping page here and registering your team.  first stage is saturday night so get on board and help support our club members.

ride routes – like last week, we will play saturday morning by ear as far as groups are concerned.  the impending rain will generally keep people away but there will always be the committed/hardcore/crazy few that will ride regardless.  to keep you warm, i have scheduled in ewen st.  some people ask how i decide on which rides we do on saturday.  well basically the wind will be wsw so it will mean a tailwind if we come home via dalkeith.  we will do these type of routes while we can.  once winter finishes, we will be back to easterlys and home via guilford or welshpool rds.  sunday, is pretty basic.  the short course will need to decide on either kalamunda rd or the goose on the day.

saturday 2nd july

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 1 – spr saturday 40.86km (rebold hill)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 50.23km (ewen st)

sunday 3rd july

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 67.96km (greenmount & zig-zig) (do kalamunda or gooseberry instead of zig-zag)

long – spr sunday 95.04km (greenmount & parkerville & mundaring weir)

according to strava, we had the fastest thursday ride ever.  i managed to hang on till the last hill, rolled in a couple of minutes later and still made it in under an hour.  the pace was definitely on but that was about the peak of my day.  rolled home all ready for the work day and managed to twinge my back getting off my bike.  a day on the couch with a heat pack was the result for me.  funny how you tend to take your health for granted.  make the most of it while you can.

festival of cycling –cyclo-sportif and track cycling wa get together every year and put on this event.  we have 3 teams ridingin the cyclo in the morning and hopefully a couple of people to cheer along on the track.  we will have an spr tent set up as part of the festival to try to promote our club a bit more.  there will be a couple of us manning the tent so if you are either cyclo-ing or comingto watch the track racing, drop in to say hello.  there are a couple of cyclo riders that do not have a current spr jersey.  if you are coming down, can you please bring any spare jerseys you have.  put your name in it as toby’s went walkabout last year and we never saw it again.

fundraisers – we are looking at running a few fundraisers to help the spr riders that qualified to go to belgium through the perth uci race in april.  so far bonner, ainsey and jason (90%) are looking at heading over.  stu, dianne and claire also qualified but won’t be making the trip this year.  anyway, keep an eye on the blog as we will have a few events coming up to support these guys as they fly the flag for spr.

tour de france tipping – as we do every year, we will be running a tipping comp for the tour de france.  same rules as previous years where you have to nominate a ride every day as they accumulate time and points.  this year, however, we will be usingthe tipping comp as the first of our fundraisiers.  we will get some donated prizes (any volunteers let me know) for the winners of the comp, but all the cash will be put into the spr belgium fund.  as such we will make the entry $20 this year.  if you have done it before, you know that it is a lot of fun and this year will also give something back to the club.  keep an eye on the blog for more details.

ride routes – a couple of things this week.  firstly we don’t have a novice leader as both carol and vicky are away as well as we will be missing mark for the tranny group.  let me know if you can help.  the transitional ride route this week does use part of the preston point road the we have been discussing.  i cannot think of an alternative route that will not have it’s own risks.  we will use it (begrudgingly) for now, but just be aware.  also, i have limited ride routes for the tranny group.  if you have any ideas, let me know and we can map them for you.  a bit of variation helps keep it going.  on sunday, the usual ride leaders will be possibility doingother things.  the ride will still be on, but make sure you all know the route, as you may be called on to step up and take care of business.

saturday 25th june

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 1 – spr saturday41.18km (reverse river ride)

fast, main 1, 2 & 3 – spr saturday 48.67km (cresswell & herdsman)

sunday 26th june

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 70.93km (kahuna)

long – spr sunday 87.72km (kahuna & peet & patterson)