Blather on Bicycling

My bunch ride (translation: group ride) attendance since arriving in Canberra is unmatched, even by the most hardy. This isn’t necessarily something to be proud of from a performance standpoint. After a few weeks of bunch riding after arriving, my thought was, “How do these guys go so hard, so often?” There are group rides every day of the week, but just 4  de facto rides are recognized by the racers: Tuesday Hour of Power, Wednesday Morning Bunch, Friday Hour of Terror (which also has a simultaneous slower ride from the same location), and the Saturday Bakery Bunch. All start on the Southside at the Bike Shed sharply at 6 am, except for the Saturday ride which allows for a whopping 30 minutes of sleeping in. These rides are often followed up with extra K’s by the pros. On top of that, you can throw in the Wednesday evening Crits and you have at least 5 hard efforts (translation: cross-eyed pain worse than any induced in race or group ride I have experienced at home) during the week.

When I came to Canberra, I had no idea what my training was going to be like, or if I would even be able to get in much riding. I definitely wanted to do some races in Australia, but wasn’t sure what to expect. Upon seeing the number of bunch rides on the calendar, I decided I would commit to at least doing as many of these as I could. I figured I might as well take advantage of this since this is not a luxury I have at home. Using the same line of thought, I decided to do all of the crits simply because they were races I didn’t have to travel to. Read more

A few days ago, I set out on what has become a common routine for me here in Canberra. It basically goes like this: head south on my bike while it is still dark, ride through the city dodging the glass and drunks at Civic, coast on the bridge over the lake to enjoy dawn over the water, ride under the Australian Parliament House, ride past the The Lodge (Prime Ministers House), eat a banana, and 45 minutes after departure arrive at the Bike Shed where at 6 am cyclists are swarming like Aussie flies.

On this morning it was the Hour of Power. Fast forward through some crazy hard riding and then we were at the coffee shop, which is actually the store front of a bike shop in this case. Then, I followed some guys on a trip they were referring to as “The Wet Lands.” We ended up riding on dirt, sand, chunks of pavement and then the bike path around the lake, all of which was an adventure in bike handling. I had my sights set on doing some climbing repeats, which would be a monumental effort given the thrashing my legs just received during the Hour of Power. I hadn’t chosen my mountain yet though.  Read more