SHITS Beechworth, 1st October 2016 (3hour XC)

Train > ride > race.
Well that was the plan: take the train from Melbourne to Wangaratta, then ride the Mountains to Murray rail trail from Wangaratta to Beechworth (25kms approx), stay the night in a local pub & then hit out on the Six Hours In The Saddle XC event (I chose the 3hour alternative) at Beechworth. With all things considered I would finish the race at about 3:30pm, which would give me 3 hours to ride the 25kms back to Wang to catch the 6:30pm train back home.
But, it rained.
A lot.

So what happened?
Rode to Southern Cross station from home, where all the country trains depart from in Melbourne, the bike went in the rear luggage carriage & I took my seat with everyone else. I basically took with my just a 30litre backpack with my bare minimum of gear, 2x biddons & strapped the tools under the saddle. I brought lights with me just in case but they were in the backpack. The backpack weighed about 13 kilograms which doesn't sound much, but by the end of the 2nd day after the 50th km that pack was a whole world of suffering.
Rain was forcasted for the weekend, but it was really nice at home as I rode off. Showers started to flicker across the train's windows about 20mins out from Wangaratta (Wangaratta is a bout 3 hours from Melbourne by train), by the time I alighted from the train at Wang (abbv) it was - raining. I opted to hold up at a local cafe, Velo-something near the Wang station. As the rain didn't stop, I put on all my wet weather gear, polished off  my 2nd ristretto & hit the rail trail. The trail out to Beechworth is an old rail line converted to a shared path, well signed, sealed & pretty much dead flat for 20kms. There are toilets & rain water- drinking water every 15kms approx. The rain changed to passing showers out on the trail & I got swooped by maggies in the space of 100mts of each other, bastards.
At Everton, about half way tot Beechworth there is a fork in the trail, right the trail goes onto Bright & beyond a=for another 60kms, but taking the left trail takes you up a constant climb (unrelenting) for about 15kms before it gets close to flatting out. Around this point there are also MTB singletracks off the main trail, called 'Flame Trees, which are signed & directional. My original intention was to ride them, but I totally underestimated the amount of rain they had in this area & I could see how the singletrack disappeared under standing water at the low points. As the main trail is a converted train line, cuttings & embankments kept a steady gradient & water off the trail.

The scary thing was I got into Beechworth at dusk, at least 2 hours after I assumed I would get there, this was because of the cafe stop in Wangaratta & the number of stops at the trail facilities to shed a layer or wait out the worst of the downpour.  I stayed overnight at the Transwell Commerical Hotel a single 1x room for $50 for the night.

Beechworth was a buzz with the people in for the event the next day, there was an early sign in at Bridge Road Brewers pub, where it was packed & I grabbed some dinner. Spoke to a few riders I knew of other events but I was pretty tired & headed back to my room for a long nap, it was about 10pm by then.
During the whole night it rained, a lot.

Next morning I woke up to rain on the window & rain on the roof. Got up, geared up & when downstairs to scare up some breaky.
I was determined to ride this event regardless of the constant rain, although I had misgivings on what the ride back to Wangaratta would be like if I got all my riding gear wet and muddy without an option to change for the train.
My race start time (for the 3hour event riders) was 11am, by then the 6 hour riders were already out on course for 2 hours as I rolled up. It was still raining, a lot.
I watched the riders coming through and many of them were out there to 'make the distance' as if pacing was now a minor goal. Riders coming through coated in wet mud & bikes grinding through the loose sandy mud from the course, none of this looked like it was going to be fun.
It's then I made the decision to pull the pin & get away from this place. I rode into Beechworth & stocked up  on food & hot coffee for the ride back to Wang. I had time on my hands now, but the weather was bad, I was planning on doing this in stages, as I found that 10~15mins stopped at the trail shelters gave me an opportunity to dry out from the body heat of riding. The ride back was easier as it was all downhill until Everton. Stop there & the rain stopped, so I shot off for Wangaratta. Little did I know that the overnight rains had flooded areas of Wangaratta & the rail trial was under a few feet of water in places, so the diversions took some time to work out.
Jumped on to the train & back home.

Would I try this again? If the long term forcaste was "No Rain" then yes, but we'll see in 2017.

Brisbane Ranges drop 'bar gravel ride 25th August 2016

Cold, showers, 45kms. I was originally thinking of actually riding out to the ranges from home, but that would have been a big ride on really open roads. Having said that there's some magnificent vistas between You Yangs & the Brisbane Ranges off Granite Rd (back roads).
Most of the climbs are pretty punchy & I got down to my granny on most of them, the gravel roads are a solid surface but gravel roads change season to season & year to year so be prepared i suppose.
I would like to get another opportunity to get out there & do the ranges to the north for a larger 100kms (approx) loop. The bush is sparse and I'd imagine summer would be a stinker out there on a bike. No water points that I recall apart from the tourist (museum town, its all closed) of Steiglitz.

Gisborne trails 24th August 2016

Gisborne trails off Hobbs Rd between Melton/Gisborne Rd & Bacchus March Rd. If you also include the roadside singletrack into & out from Gisborne townships it totals about 35kms of trail.

Garmin ride details

Wombat Classic 50, March 5th 2016

Staged at the Wombat trails near Woodend, I rode up Fingerpost Rd from mum&dads in Bullengarook for the event. Total kms for the day 80kms. Dry kinda fun. Trails felt different during the race than while just trail riding them, seems that I was riding at a pace matching the other riders than what would have been best for me on the trails. Resulted in some suffering on climbs I should have been better pacing myself on. Have to do it again in 2017.

Golden Traingle Epic 17th April 2016.

17th April 2016, Golden Triangle Epic, 50kms (1 lap or course). Dry, fast, some ugly suffering near high tension power lines. Rear puncture @ 25km point, forgot how CO2 freezes the adapter & lost some air getting the bastard off. Looking forward to next years.

Yy

Route notes!

Fizik's variation of same.

Happy with my MTB's saddle: Fizik Gobi XM, you would think getting the same for my roadie (Specialized Diverge comp) would result in the same saddle. The new Gobi seems to have a pronounced droop in the nose and a 'rounder' pedal platform than the MTB's Gobi, which is more of a squared off nose and flatter pedal platform. Not forgetting that the Gobi has the raise rear 'Tailflex' which i kinda like for climbing.
To be honest it really doesnt make a difference to me, or more importantly my arse, but considering the weight Fizik puts on their saddle fit with their trial saddles and range, getting something near enough is not really good enough.

What was I thinking?

Never one to leave well enough alone, I took to faffing about with my recently purchased Specialized Diverge, & fit larger 700x35c tyres to make it more of a gravel grinder kind of bike. My tyres of choice were Panaracer Pasela 700x35 with tan sidewalls (because skinwall tyres are all the rage right now, don't you know). Anyway I think there was mention made at the time of the bike purchase that 700x35 tyres 'would' fit, but it wasn't really made clear. Nevertheless, on these Panarcer Pasela tyre went on & boy did they almost not fit. The raised casting seam on the tyre tread brushed the seat tube of the bike. Once on the wheels turned without binding but I wasn't convinced. I ran a length of electrical tape down the seat tube were it comes very close to the rear tyre & when off for a ride.  Sure  enough after 20kms the tape was well worn through, so the tyres had to come off.

So it was back to the original tyres the Diverge Comp came with - Specialized Roubaix Pro 700x25/28. These Specialized tyres are actually really good, running the pressures of 85~95psi as specified on the sidewall, they roll really well on the road, but give a predicable feel on dry gravel & dirt, more than I would have given them credit for. It's going to be a hard ask to top these.

I got to mention about the ride quality of the Panaracer Pasela I fitted. Sure I only did about 30kms all up, but they really felt kind heavy going & especially out on th road downright lazy. I think this feeling above all got me to toss this whole idea of larger bodied tyres on the Diverge, & just stick to what the manufacturers specified.
Also, not sure if you noticed, but I also changed the crankset due to the stock FSA Gossamer not really offering chainrings availability, on investigation, it seemed that my run of Diverge Comps came with a limited run FSA crankset that really wasn't supported with spares. So I found a discounted compact FSA crankset that was far more commonly available & supported & fitted that instead. THis endeavour costed me $100Aust, which is pretty good as far as cranksets go.

Resistance training.

The Cell Awaba 2.0 has a pretty strudy looking alloy frame that looks like it can handle bike trailer hitches and pannier racks without a problem, so its with some confidence that it carries off towing our youngest and what can feel like our kitchen sink as well with it. I had to modify the hitch that it originally came with as it spun on the bike's thru axel with heavy braking and climbing: I welded an additional tab to the regular hitch so it could exploit the bike frame's sidestand mount on the brake disk side chainstay to prevent the hitch from rotating on the tightened thru axel.

Bye buy babies.

Justifing the purchase of a new bike is always so much easier when you have secured the sale of older, less used rigs from the fleet. So the 2009 Specialized Epic and my 2007 Wilier Lavaredo were on the chopping block, to make room for something that seems to be the flavour of the moment, something to span that whole road/dirt thing - gravel grinders.  With my only stipulation being Shimano full hydro disk brakes and at least Shimano 105groupset, the short list under that magical $3K (AuD) mark resulted in Specialized Diverge Comp.

Yarra trailing

Curious about the many singletracks, any opportunity to try a new one out regardless of thw bike I might be on at the time.

De-derailled

Swapped out the offending broken rear derailluer. Not sure how 'backward compatible' current Shimano XT Deore Shadow derailluers are, considering its being mated to Shimano's Dual Controller shifters from '07.

So happy about the new cable entry point on the new derailluer.  The previous set up had the cable having to do a complete 120degree turn in what was really not enough room.

Bendigo MTB event - 3hr.

Why train when I can race? This was my stab at cashing in the few kms I commute to work by bike each day as prep for a MTB race - Bendigo 6hr, entered solo mens 3hr.

The result was a broken rear derailleur half way through my 2nd lap, about an hours worth of riding.

Course, I found, very rocky and the climbs were complicated with the rock ledges etc. My biggest issue was climbing, not being used to pace myself using a good speedy cadence so I didnt blow out grinding with feeble legs.

I stopped half way up a climb when I was really maxing out and almost felt like passing out - thats the last time I stop during a climb, bettercto use the free pedaling on the first part of the next descent to recover. 

May I never diss my granny gear - 22t chainwheel on my MTB triple crankset - that has come to my rescue so many times now.

With this DNF I'm keen to front another race start as soon as I can. I've already double-clicked on a new derailleur from Chain Reaction, and entering the Yowie at You Yangs 4th October. Hopefully I'll sneak in a roll down Yarra trails etc asap.

Stomping stoppers.

2011 & it was all about Cyclocross. Everyone wanted in on going muddy-puddle-bashing on drop ‘bar bikes, and for someone like myself who found no wrong with the filthy mash that is MTBing, I needed to get my share. So early 2012 I double-clicked on the cBroadman CX Pro from Wiggle UK & did a little hop for joy when the huge box hit my doorstep. But all was not as it should be. Little did I eventually realize, the standard brakes fitted to this, & many other CX bikes – Avids BB7 cable brakes – were not as ‘premium’ as I originally thought?  I used (still am using) my CX bike as the daily commute in all weather, so my problems were:

·                   Noisy [very] on application in wet and/or muddy going.
·       Quite a bit of travel in the brake lever required to clear the pads from the disk. Hard application sometimes brought the lever down against the handlebar. Any less travel on the lever left the pads dragging on the disk.
·       Frequent wet/muddy riding caused wear, which required adjustment. Adjustment required bringing in the pads at each side of the caliper, but it wasn’t as straight forward as that. Sometimes, an initial adjustment, required fine tuning after a short ride – multiple times, through the evening, and into the night…..

I scoured the ‘web for hints & tricks, all of which seemed to suggest what I had already been doing &, to persevere.

After a year & a half of evenings spent crouched by my brake calipers, I decided to fork out for TRP (Tektro Racing Products) Hy/RdHydro/Road calipers - essentially a hydraulic disk brake that bolts onto the end of the existing cable, in place of the Avid BB7 caliper, in my case. Not cheap at $150 per end AuD$ landed, I was happy to see that they also came with a new 160mm disk too.

I bought mine from Jensons USA, but even though only 160mm disks are specified on their website, I did receive 1x 160mm disk & 1x 140mm disk rotor in my shipment. These Tektro disks were slightly thicker than the Avid disks I ad on the bike, so I really wanted to stick with the recommended set up. I couldn’t fit the 140mm disk on the bike as both TRP Hy/Rd calipers when fitted to the bike, did not suit the smaller diameter 140mm rotor. Email to Jensens resulted in a $50 (US) credit to me with an apology, problem was the disk rotors for the Hy/Rd was unique in the Tektro range & not currently available as ‘rotor only’ in 160mm (or any other size), poo. So I opted for a Tektro Polygon (Auriga/Pro) rotor – because it looked the most like the correct 1x 160mm Hy/Rd rotor I got in the box (still en-route as I type this).

So right now my cBroadman CX Pro is running the TRP Hy/Rd calpier on the rear, with the original Avid BB& still on the front. The difference in ‘performance’ you ask? Well the Hy/Rd does bite earlier, but does not have the drag issues of the Avid BB7s – the hydraulic pistons retract the pads away enough to avoid any ‘sound’ of dragging on the rotors. Also after the ‘bite’, the Hy/Rd calipers do bear down firmer on the rotor & almost feel like they will lock up the wheel (I have already locked up the rear while riding with the Hy/Rd, but being a drop ‘bar bike all the weight it up the front so I can’t claim that they are suer powerful until I can do the same up front).

The Hy/Rd calipers [can] take Shimano Deore XT pads, which I think is a very good thing. At the moment they are running stinther metal equivalent pads. 

Wombat 100 - 50kms MTB race.

http://app.strava.com/activities/48685675

Wombat 100, rode the 50km in vets.
Loved the singletrack, hated the two-track & gravel rd climb.
Munched my drive chain between the cassette & rear hub on a long climb at about 34km mark, reverted to natures toolbox - a rock and a branch to put things right & get rolling again.
Loved the Magellan sprint section so much i rode it again on my ride back home after the event. 
Ran into some 100kms tailenders who looked like thy were in a world of hurt at their 70km point. I don't think my little white lie that the worst was behind them was very convincing.

Early Morning MTB Yarra Flats ride.

Cashed in the extra hour daylight savings gave me when we changed back this morning & took the Specialized Epic out to hit the trails along the Yarra.

Starting from just south of the pipe bridge on the west bank, then crossed over to the east bank & continue upstream past Chandler Hwy, to Dickies loop (between Bulleen Park & Bolin Bolin Billabong). Trails were well worn in & almost scary fast, with banked corners & a firm surface. Also noticed on my ride back home that some new singletrack has been gifted by the trail fairies all the way back down to the Guild Dogs home up against the freeway fence (from where it previously just crossed the sealed path to the riverbank trail which is big with walkers).

This ride was mostly a shakedown for the new groupset I just fitted (new Chainwheels 44/32/22 Shimano Deore XT, Durace chain & XT cassette 32~11), no shifting problems at all from the outset, although I did notice the rear squatting a lot on seated pedaling over really rough stuff, this did go away once I stood up out of the saddle, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that just compensated  by unloading the rear half of the bike. It was a problem only because the pace in some places this day, being a smooth and fast trail, highlighted some front end pushing out on corners. After the ride I checked the air pressure in the rear shock & dampening settings & everything ticked off OK. Hmm.

Beach roading

Ballarat Classic.

From Ballarat train station to Federation Square Melbourne, a 150km Non-competitive organized road ride.

That guilty pleasure of doing a ride that’s mostly downhill & with prevailing winds is pretty hard to beat.

Rode the Boardman CX Pro which I normally commute to work on.

Strava stat for the ride.

MAD ride 2013 - 3rd March 2013.

65km MTB loop, organized non-competitive ride. 3rd March 2013.
Rode from Mum & dads place at Bullengarook to start/finish at Woodend. 100kms approx total.

Strava stat for the day's ride.