Easter weekend cycling
So here I am, in bed writing this post at the end of the Easter weekend. I did manage to get out on three rides in four days, even with one night away pretending to do some fishing.
Good Friday – the plan was to squeeze in a morning ride before heading out of town later in the day so at the not-so-early time of 8am, I set off by myself from Wantirna South headed for Mount Dandenong. According to my records, my last proper mountain ride was Lake Mountain by road in January 2009. Throughout the rest of the year I had a few spells of various medical problems related to my arthritis, including a dodgy eye and screwy joints. This was going to be interesting…
I started off with the 1 in 20 at a moderate effort – not too easy that I would fall asleep but just hard enough to see where my hill climbing was at. As usual, I began the climb too hard and fast, then slowing down when I realised I’m not Alberto Contador (geez, he’s the same height as me but I have 10kg on him!), which became a few minutes of muttering and and cursing at myself before I settling into a rhythm for the rest of the climb. My time for the climb (not disclosed here) was not totally dreadful but plenty of room for improvement. After a quick rest at Sassafras, it was on to Sky High, then back to Wantirna South via the same route. Good morning of riding.
Sunday night saw HY and me heading out to Lysterfield Park. Before heading out there had to make a stop at the petrol station. I filled up, then went inside to pay. There were a bunch of kids in the line in front of me. First up was a pimply teenager trying to buy cigarettes but when asked for his ID, he had to go back to his car but could only bring back a temporary permit without a photo. Great, thanks for wasting everyone’s time. Then came three more kids buying Slurpees, each one paying separately in COINS. Now while I was waiting for these Slurpee-sucking kids, I felt something wet on the back of my knee. My first thought was, fantastic, one of these kids must have dripped something on me. I went to wipe the back of my knee. Hmmm… it’s wet but doesn’t feel sticky.Twisted my leg around to have a look. A freaking slug! So there’s me, waiting in line to pay for my petrol, finding a dirty big slug on my leg, then doing a crazy dance as I try to brush it off my leg.
Anyway, I made it to the Hallam North Road car park eventually and we set off. This was new to me as I had not ridden at Lysterfield at night before. The track was dry and dusty, and with my lights at the high setting they were washing out the details on the track. Interestingly, riding at night I often find myself doing certain parts of a course better than I would during the day when I can see everything.
Monday – HY and I decided to head to Mount Dandenong early. That was the plan anyway. In a rare occasion, I woke up on time and made it to Ringwood five minutes early! Strangely HY wasn’t ready and waiting to go. A quick knock on his bedroom window saw him peering out from behind the curtain bleary-eyed. So began a poor day of riding for him. Since we were running late he decided to eat his breakfast on the ride out to The Basin. This probably wasn’t the best idea as it meant starting the 1 in 20 with a full stomach. We rode together at an easy pace for the first 1.5km with HY still dealing with a full stomach. At this point, I decided to up my tempo a little bit. The result was 40 seconds off my Friday time, even with the slow start. Goodo!
HY rolled in to Sassafras still looking and feeling like poo so we almost decided that was it for the day. However, we managed to convince ourselves we could do one more climb so we decided on the Ferntree Gully side of the Tourist Road (the Devil’s Elbow). Now THIS is a fun descent – wide swooping turns mixed with tight hairpins which you can take faster than four-wheeled vehicles! Once at the bottom, we turned straight around and headed back up. This is where things went from bad to worse for HY. Halfway back up the mountain, he had a mini bonk and had to stop to recover. Now, this was not good form as we didn’t catch the group of three girls up the road and we were then also passed by another rider from behind us. Oh well… Eventually we made it back to Sassafras, back down to The Basin and on to Ringwood.
All up, a decent weekend of riding.
