1. HP - 124km
2. Keith - 92km
3. HY - 58km
4. Norm - still MIA somewhere in Egypt…
5. Tuong - still having mechanical issues…

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 eventuallly 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
4. HP

As is usual around this time of year, we managed to get in a couple of rides. Saturday morning saw three of us - me, HYG and Andrew L - head out to Marysville for the ride up to the top of Lake Mountain.

We made it to Marysville ready to roll just before 9am. The climbing began straight away as soon as we rolled out of town without any warm-up. The first 20 minutes was the most painful part of the climb. I did have to stop a few times, including twice in a row within 200m. Once the first few kilometers of grinding was over and my legs and joints had loosened up, the rest was just steady plugging away. It was a solo ride for the next hour and a bit as I had dropped off from the other two.

blah blah blah [more later if I can be bothered]

Where: Yarra Trails. Burke Rd to Westerfolds
Distance: 33km
Who: Keith, HP, HY, Kev, Andrew L and another Andrew (noob)

Woohoo. It’s great now that Bastian is a little older, M has given me a bit more freedom to go riding. So instead of my usual 5am road ride, I was able to do a more civilized 8am mtb ride.

Good turnout for a fairly last minute group text message. HP and I did a bike switcheroo for the return leg. Everyone stood around bored while we stuffed around swapping our pedals. I was quite impressed with the Yeti. HP had the suspension setup quite to my liking. Still quite firm and not squishy like Andrew’s i-Drives. There wasn’t too much suspension bob, so was still able lay the power down through the fast singletrack. The corners was where I really noticed the difference between my hardtail and the duallie. The rear wheel tracked smoothly and just kept gripping. I don’t think there’s any doubt. An XC duallie is definitely gonna be potentially faster than an XC hardtail.

It wouldn’t be a TYP ride without someone falling over. Today it was HP. Somehow he managed to fall going UPHILL. Similar to HY’s achievement a few weeks ago. Apparently, he was doing a sprint climb on my bike, and didn’t realise how twitchy the steering is on it. He steered too sharply and went crashing down. Very stylish.

… or really stupid… I’ve yet to figure out which.

Bell lap. This time around I fully committed to a break so I headed straight to the front, and then beyond. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, after last season’s dismal single attempt at the Imperial Winter Series (coming last on the flat bar because of a puncture), I thought I’d sign up again and give racing a proper go for a season. The series runs from this Saturday through to early Feb, and I’ve actually signed up for a British Cycling license so I can earn points and move up the grades if I do well.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. HY - 1001.55km
2. Geek - 732km
3. Keith - 657km
4. HP - 382km

Last updated 12:00, 29/11/08 (GMT +10)

Well, that wraps it up for the first properly contested (non-retrospective) race for YJOM. It made for a very interesting month. HY was out of the blocks very early, determined to get a psychological break on the rest of us. Admittedly, this actually worked. He continued to pull away and has claimed YMOM for November, impressively breaking through the 1000km mark.

Norm came in at 2nd place. Good effort, considering how much of that riding would have been in pitch-black, 5 degree weather. It was neck and neck with myself for a good part of that month. But in the end, it was those 100km+ rides that enabled him to pull away to a convincing 2nd place.

Unfortunately for me, November was the month wife started back at work. That left me with only Wed and Fri to do mid-week riding. On top of that, it seemed to always rain on those precise days. My last ditch 78km on the Franga-Fang wasn’t even near enough to bridge the gap to even threaten Norm’s placing.

An honourable mention goes to HP, his first month of joining us on MCL. To his credit, he does do a lot of his riding off-road. A lot of this month was spent building bikes, rather than actually riding them. Hopefully, with a new roadie on the production line, we might see a bit of road mileage also, in the coming months.

Something to do if you’re bored. Maybe even get started on that dream bike. I’m still working on mine…

http://www.pedalmafia.com/mafid/mafia_id.html

I think I’m pretty set on my event for next year: La Marmotte. So just in case, anyone interested?

Should be an interesting ride between the 115km and 160km marks. Surely there’d be small rolling hills in between and it can’t be downhill for ALL 45km!??

My gosh… new record for me I think. Haven’t posted in almost 3 months!!! (And yet I’m still ahead in the total post count).

Anyway, went out for my mid-week ride today, doing some hill repeats as per last week. I don’t know what it is but I seem to be very consistent when it comes to a lot of my rides. Considering I had about 6km of traffic to deal with, it still took me almost exactly the same time to the second as my last week’s attempt.

Some other examples of my consistent performance (or lack thereof).

• Time trial course I did 2 years ago in Melbourne. My first leg out was almost identical to the second again as my return leg back.
• My regular commutes into work is usually +/-30 seconds apart from the commute back home, despite the hundreds of traffic lights that I have to deal with.

And it’s not like I try to time them that way. I just don’t look at the elapsed time figures until I get home.

Is there an explanation for this?? Or am I really just consistently slack?