For the third day in a row, I got my butt on a bike. The last two days have been on the MTB, Friday with Keith at Mount Dandy and Saturday with my brother and friend at Yarra Flats. Today, I took out the fixie. I think the roadie must be feeling neglected.

The meeting point with Keith, Alan and Wayne was St Kilda Marina. Just for a change I decided to take an alternate route down Church/Chapel St…then I remembered why I shouldn’t ride down there after a Saturday night…lots of bogan/hoon droppings. Fortunately, no flats and I managed to make it to the Marina.

From there the four of us headed down to Mordialloc with other we-aren’t-doing-the-ATBIAD Beeyatch Road cyclists. I thought there would be more 50km family riders at that time but as it turns out, they were heading over the Westgate Bridge. The weather was starting to heat up by this time so at Mordi we took nice long break in the shade under some trees. Once we got moving again, we decided to go and take a peek at Keith’s new place in Murrumbeena - very nice. I know where we’ll be hanging out after a Beeyatch Road ride from now on.

Back to the Marina, where Alan and Keith had parked their cars, while I headed back as fast as I could to catch the last 20 minutes of the of Stage 7 of the HST. I think the stage was taken out by an Australian Astana rider and Matt Wilson of Unibet.com won the Tour overall. After that, I wandered around a bit to see some riders finishing their ATBIAD at Alexandra Gardens, then headed home. Surprisingly, I managed nearly 90km for the day.

Offered a “carrot” to Alan several times when he needed something to perk him up. Hope I’m not sunburnt in that area.

This looks like ace fun. As the website puts it “the Professional event for Amateurs”. So… anyone else interested? Doesn’t say how much though.

London to Paris Cycle Tour

Or there’s this one, but you need to commit to raising £1000 for the charity.

Actually, the more I look the more there are: Sporting Tours - London to Paris

That one cost £900 but sounds a little easier.

This is Zara’s latest directing job which she was just finishing as I went to Malaysia. There is another one which they did at the same time but Zara is waiting for clearance to put it up - that one is quite funny.

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Prior to the Grand Final on Saturday, the city of Adelaide was buzzing with excitement as Port Adelaide was in the Grand Final. There was much talk about equalling Adelaide Crows’ number of premierships. They made front page news for a week leading up to the Grand Final and much of the news about how supporters were heading to Victoria by train and car as flights were pretty full.

On Grand Final day, the streets of the suburb of Port Adelaide were empty. Everyone was at home or in the pub watching the game. We all know that it was a thrashing and no one was happier than Yours Truly.

What was even funnier was that the Grand Final was the first news article on TV for 15 minutes from Saturday to Monday. They showed how disappointed supporters were but the best part was showing grown men cry!!! Many supporters went to Alberton Oval, home of Port Adelaide, to watch the match and were bawling when the final siren came. Call me unsympathetic (because I am) but it was hilarious to watch! As you can tell, I haven’t succumbed to the pressures of supporting the teams of my adopted home; I’m Malaysian (I mean, Victorian) through and through!

The Sunday newspaper also spent the first 8 pages reviewing the Grand Final and had fans’ opinions about the Grand Final. It was really a waste of space as all 8 pages pretty much had the same point: Port Adelaide was terrible on the day. Here’s an article from today’s newspaper!

We’ll see whether I’ll shed a tear when Essendon plays in their next Grand Final and loses: I’ll only need to wait another 16 years…

Okay, technically I know we say that it has to be 2 or more TYP riders before it’s a YPR, but I doubt I’ll ever get the numbers here so I’m going to count this one. Hay and I set off on Sunday from home to Lower Kingswood, which is where I work. For the sake of privacy, these aren’t the exact locations but you get an idea of the route here. I don’t know whether you guys are familiar with the addressing system here but what is really really impressive is that postcodes are almost specific to your address. Hence if you lived at NW1 5RU (which is actually in fact the Baker Street tube station), you could just plug that into GoogleMaps and it would pinpoint exactly where you are. What’s even more impressive is the Transport for London features that will allow you to map a route between 2 addresses and save/print it as a PDF file. Well let’s just say that that printed route map with directions came in very handy on Sunday. (That’s an understatement actually, I woulda been lost without it. On a side note, anyone know of an O2 handlebar mount?? :))

Anyway, Hay and I scheduled to set off on Sunday morning at 10am, but given that I’m still freeloading here at the moment we were ‘flexible’ (actually I slept in) and left at 11am instead. Weather was a coolish day around 20 degrees, but otherwise no rain and sunny breaks. The first 5km of the ride or so was getting out of central London. So that meant getting lost through the streets and just heading in the general direction (south) in hope that we’d join back onto the route. We vaguely followed the route and from about the 5-8km mark we traveled down a street not too dissimilar to Brunswick St (i.e. heavy/slow moving traffic, lots of shops on either side and the occasional market). For those that know London this was through the Balham and Tootling area. Traffic started to clear more as we head further south through some more ‘dodgier’ suburbs before the last 10km or so which I’d almost classify as whoop whoop (think Mountain Hwy out past Knox) where we went through Sutton before finally getting to Lower Kingswood.

The return trip felt quicker, although we did get lost a few more times before heading back into London through some of the more wealthier suburbs such as Chelsea/Kensington. I think I passed more Lamborghinis and Ferraris that day than cyclists.

The final stats were…

Distance: 72.48km
Average: 18.7 km/h
Max: 49.5 km/h
Elapsed time: 5:39
Ride time: 3:52

Overall very happy with the new bike to date. Handles pretty well although I do want some decent shoes and possibly a firmer saddle. Glad I didn’t buy a fixie!

Small market that we stopped at along the way down and pub that we contemplated at stopping at.

My work

My 2nd attempt at climbing Mt Donna Buang. However this time on the mountain bike and taking the back roads. My boss, Sandy and myself, set off from Launching Place at 8.30 am.

I was quietly thinking to myself that I should go easy on my boss (who’s in his mid-40s). It wouldn’t be very sporting of me to race ahead up the mountain. The first 3kms was a gentle uphill on asphalt towards the foot of the mountain ranges. The boss, David, was setting a fairly brisk pace, and I thought to myself: right… he’s pretty fit. Then the road became a bit steeper, but he still kept the same pace going. I was beginning to feel the twinges of an ache in my thighs. But it was still a fairly enjoyable climb at this point. My heart rate was still only about 140/min.

The road then turned into gravel at the 5km mark. David, was still keeping the same pace. But now with the slightly rougher surface, the effort required to keep up was starting to hurt. He began to pull away. My heart rate was already at 160. There wasn’t much reserve to be chasing him at this point. I knew there was still a lot more climbing to do and I didn’t want to destroy myself so I let him go. I managed to keep within about 20m for most of this part of the climb, but I think that was only because he would dawdle when he started to see me fall away.

We reached another main rd and decided to wait for Sandy. We were at the 11km mark. The road sign indicated that Mt Donna was still another 16km away. Sandy was about 5min behind. She had a slow start because she’d only had 3hrs sleep and I suspect still had some alcohol in the system. We then started to climb again, for another 5km of asphalt. All 3 of us stayed together, and so I thought: I”m not doing too badly… but then the road turned into a firetrail, and David announced that this is where the REAL climb begins. Sandy and I just looked at each other - stunned. It seemed that the previous 16km was just a warm-up for David. While Sandy and I where killing ourselves just to keep up. The firetrail began with only a gentle ascent and then a false flat. I had a glimmer of hope that I could stay in contact with the lead. But then the hill really started to kick up. David just kept grinding away in some massive gear, while I was spining my cranks like a hamster just to keep him in sight. I could only keep this up for about 10 minutes and then he was gone. It was about 5km of solo climbing now, as Sandy had stopped behind to put on some gloves.

David waited where the road joined with Donna Buang Rd. He asked if we should wait for Sandy before the final ascent. I replied “yes, it would be the polite thing to do”. What I was thinking was: please I need to rest, I’m dying here.

It was only about 1km to the top. I just died 500m from the top. The other two kept powering ahead, and I lost sight of them at this point. I geared down and just kept spinning. I reached the final gate to the top, so I knew I was close. This gave me some extra mental strength, so I stood on the pedals and powered up the last 200m, but still a couple of minutes behind the others.

Coming down all happened very quickly. Sandy had brought an entire spare wardrobe in her backpack. I was slightly better prepared this time, but only really because I was wearing my mountain-bike outfit. I was partially warmer than last time I descended Mt Donna wearing just my lycra top.

I thought that this would be a pleasant hillclimb with my middle-aged boss, but instead I was schooled at hillclimbing yesterday.

I rate this as the hardest and longest climb I’ve ever done: 27km from start to summit, in 2.5hrs