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YPR#51 BV forums RRR

YPR#50 Half Century!

IWS Race 3 – Call me soft. Soft as snow.

After 2 weeks off on holiday and a week full of freezing weather hampering my evening rides, I was hoping that it’d finally warm up a little for today’s race. When I left the house it still felt cold, but I thought it’d be bearable as I had really layered up. However whilst on the train out to the circuit, I see snow flurries falling outside.

Great.

I arrive at the circuit and it’s a full on snow shower. I did attempt a few laps whilst the commissaire evaluated the circuit and as the start time neared he announced that the race would be postponed by 30mins. The weather WAS forecast to be better than this and he was hoping for that too. They did put salt on certain areas and cordoned off others, but in the end it was just too cold on my hands and I had to call it quits. The course didn’t seem all that bad to be honest but there was just no way my hands would last even 2 laps without feeling like they’d fall off. The race did go ahead in the end and it may have been a good opportunity to earn some points had I been better prepared.

Oh well, lesson learnt from this race is always pack the snow gloves just in case!

YPR #49 – Tuong’s Initiation

Where: Lysterfield
Who: Keith, Tuong, HP, HY
Distance: about 15km

After a lot of stuffing around with the pedal on Tuong’s new bike… the pedal is still stuck. At least HP managed to source a shorter seatpost to fit.

I had the arvo off, and the rest of the guys managed to weasel out of work somehow.

We started off doing the 1st section of the Comm Games track. HP and I shot ahead, but waited each time. After a grand total of about 1km of riding, Tuong stated he didn’t feel too good – a bit dizzy and nauseous. From past experience, HP told us it was good to have a good chuck, so Tuong did. And he was right. Tuong actually felt a lot better after that.

We hit the Hug trail next. HP had another minor “off”. Since getting a duallie, he decided that he doesn’t need to pick his lines through the singletrack. He picked the worst line, straight over 2 boulders, instead of the nice flowing track on the side of them. On hitting the 2nd boulder, his fork had some extra rebound and bounced him off the track. Hilarious, once again.

Buckle trail was next. All pretty smooth sailing. Tuong was doing very well to keep up. We were all impressed that he managed most of the log rolls, quite easily and confidently. Even managing to not loose his teeth over the triple log rolls.

In summary, we’re all pretty impressed with Tuong’s performance. Even after a couple of minor “offs” he still had no fear over some impressively big log rolls. He had the balance and coordination to handle them quite well. Just a bit more fitness training and he’ll be right.

The Force is strong in this one…

YJOM December

1. HY – 562km
2. Keith – 512km
3. Norm – 290km
4. HP – 230km

I had big plans to take out YJOM for Dec. However, I was tempted by too much Starcraft. This affected my early mid-week rides. At least, I was able to discover that 500km/month is sufficient for me to maintain my current fitness level. I managed to top off the year with a decent crack at the 1in20, managing a PB of 18min58sec.

HY started off pretty slack, but some consistent daily riding saw him close the gap within the last 2 weeks, and eventually taking out both YJOM and YJOY 2008. Nice work!

Geek was off to Egypt mid-way through the month, so he retired at 290km. Which was still enough to hold off HP. But to his credit, HP probably has the highest proportion of off-road mileage.

YJOY 2008
1. HY – 3600km
2. Keith – 3575km
3. Norm – 2543km
4. HP – 611km