A Good Ride

Saturday mornings usually involve joining the local bike shop (Cycling Obsession) ride that starts at 6:30am.  I had planned a long ride this morning (5hrs+) which would have meant doing about 3 hours extra at the end, but the knee didn't feel great, so I revised the plans and decided the 2 hour ride would be enough.

The Cycling Obsession rides alternate each week between Mt Martha (hilly) and St Kilda (flat & fast).  This week it was St Kilda, but because so many of the riders are also doing Ironman the ride was extended to Port Melbourne - an extra 13kms taking the riding distance up to 78km.

The ride out is usually done at a reasonably easy pace of 30kph, it then picks up on the way back with an especially fast section between Brighton and Mordialloc for about 16kms before cruising back to Seaford.  On the way out today we were sitting around 35kph, so I figured we probably had a slight tailwind.  I was feeling pretty good and was entertaining ideas of trying to push the pace on the way back, but wasn't so keen on doing this if it was going to be a stiff headwind - the strength of the wind usually picks up as the morning progresses.  Very fortuitously, the wind changed direction just before we reached Port Melbourne, so we ended up having a tailwind in both directions - this does not happen very often.

The pace back was moderate until Brighton where Beach Rd starts to open up and is much more bike friendly.  Four riders from the bunch took off and immediately generated a gap of over 50m.  I charged off to bridge the gap hitting 60kph, but in my eagerness I hit a pothole at speed.  The force of the pothole bounced my whole body off the bike - I landed safely on the nose of the saddle, but in doing so pushed the angle of the seat down about 10 degrees.  This suddenly made the bike very uncomfortable.  Usually I sit on the nose when I'm pushing hard for speed, but now this would result in the seat being way too low.  So I had to sit further back than usual to maintain the correct saddle height, but the tilt of the seat meant that any position was not very comfortable.  I still managed to bridge the gap, but ironically within a kilometre we got stopped at the South Rd lights and the group was re-united again.

Each time we stopped at lights, I tried to wrench my seat back into position.  I managed to improve it, but it was still a few degrees out - workable, but not comfortable.  The ride through Sandringham and Black Rock is a little hilly, and seeing as I'm supposed to avoid hills, I didn't think this was a good section to take the lead.  Once we made it to Beaumaris I could sense that the leaders were starting to tire, so I charged up to the front of the pack.  Unfortunately I charged a little too hard and instantly gapped the pack by about 30m.  I eased off to let them catch back up and as soon as I sensed them closing in, I took off.

I was riding at my highest sustainable effort and when I glanced down at my speedo I saw 55kph.  However I could not sense any difficulty coming from the riders behind.  It was a bit of a dent in my ego that my best efforts were not causing the other riders to push hard to keep up, especially when I thought most of the riders were starting to tire.  I kept the speed above 40 going up the Mentone Pub hill, but still no puffing and panting from the riders following.  Once up the hill I pushed the speed back over 50 and still no evidence that I was causing any pain, so I signaled for the rider behind to take over the lead.

To my shock, the 2 riders behind were both professional riders from the Porsche Drapac Team (I think they were Amir Rusli & Adiq Othman).  They must have passed the pack when I made my initial 30m gap, and I never noticed the lead riders when they caught back up.  The 2 Porsche Drapac riders both took turns on the front and then fed back into the back of the pack.  The actual Cycling Obsession pack was now about a 3rd of the size with lots of riders having dropped off the back and those remaining were mostly on their last legs after giving everything to stay on the wheels of the pro riders.

After reaching Mordialloc, we cruise across to Station St to wait for the other riders to regroup.  However today we only waited about 5 minutes, as it was decided that the slower riders would simply be too far behind after such a fast ride.  During the easy ride back to Seaford I started chatting with a friend Kevin from Gravity-Zero.  He was continuing on to Mornington to take the distance over 100km.  It sounded like a good idea, so I decided to join him.  The total ride ended up being 113km in 3h20m.  We took the extra ride to Mornington relatively easy, but I was still wrecked trying to ride up MorningStar hill and was very glad once I got home.

I haven't ridden with any intensity in nearly 2 months, so I was very pleased to see that I had not lost much of my top end power.   My knee seems to have pulled up well, so all in all I think the ride went very well - and it always feels good to go fast.