Last Friday night i was to-ing a fro-ing with the decision to let Seb loose in the Transitional Group ride.
He was determined to do it so he eventually persuaded me he would be OK. My better half took a bit more persuasion.
Luckily the Trans group was split into 2 so it was the slightly slower group that we joined. Perfect.
Ride done, back safe and sound and a weight temporarily off my shoulder…until next time.
the novice group had an unfortunate accident today.
we were on our way down hill from the old folks home and beginning some practice roll-overs (seb’s favourite part) on shelly.
a touch of wheels, a shout, a crunching sound. two riders down.
no idea how about the finer details as i had my back to the action. ambulance was called and the two riders went off to get checked out. helmets were the saving grace. no idea anyone can argue they make cycling less safe after seeing and feeling more than a few bingles myself.
anyway, back for coffee a little subdued, and perhaps a little reflective how in the flash a nice ride can go ‘downhill’ instantly.
hoping the gals make a speedy recovery both mentally and physically. i know my ‘gumnut moment’ made me very nervous towards group riding for a while.
had a chat with transition group leader at coffee and the prospect of seb coming along next week.
i wanted to know how the midland cycling club boy (roughly seb’s age) riding with that group went. all good was the answer. do i promote him or leave him in novice for longer? he ticks the boxes for group skills, hand signals and calls.
however, he does gap a bit – not because he is struggling, just because he needs reminding that drafting will make his life easier. it’s a hard call so as long as i stick with him closely my feeling is to give it a try next week.
seb wants to to visit the midland clubs kids track session on wednesday. in fact i’m going to take both boys as zach is riding a 20” rodie now as well.
i will watch.
Ride Safe.
I have been pre-occupied with things like getting a new job and staying out of the rain and the sickness to ride that much recently. A bit on the trainer but that is it. Not even commuting (due to bike issues).
Nevertheless, i shall be back out there and hopefully on a new set of wheels. Old set worn out after 4 year or so so I guess that is to be expected.
My eldest son Seb (10 yrs) is chomping at the bit to get more cycling experience. I have the intention to keep him in the SPR Development Group to get the feel for close proximity riding and the basic roll-over techniques.
His first group ride was 2 weeks ago and he simply loved the roll-over exercises we did on Shelly. He also loved the small sprint up to the old folks home at the end of Shelly. It’s going to be a challenge to keep him in sight in a couple of years I reckon.
I have also been toying with the idea of doing a some basic coaching classes under WA Cycling. Coaching sport it something I have done in the past for a living (albeit on the snow as ski instructor in Europe) so I kind of enjoyed that – although I know this is a different kettle of fish.
We shall see what happens and maybe SPR will have a small juniors team with a couple of my sons in it.
Passing on the love of the sport feels good.
Well the other day as I was minding my own business and cycling to work, this older chap nearly t-boned me as he failed to give way.
I gave my stern look and rode on thinking that would be the end of the matter. However, The car started to tail me. Eventually it drew up along side and stayed with me. The window came down.
The chap then spoke. “Sorry I just wanted to catch you up to say sorry about that back there.”
I waved and rode on thinking wonders never cease.
Ride Safe.
brain storming on how to go from warm bed to cold bike on frosty mornings post Tour TV:
1. go to bed dressed in your cycling gear – warning: may have unintended side effects if you share a bed.
2. place alarm clock(s) in the hall way the night before.
3. if you have kids ask them to play hide-and-seek with you alarm clock the night before.
4. print a large poster of Yens looking over your bed. – i’m not even going there with any unintended side effects.
5. go to bed early…- warning….not going there.
6. have a set of scales placed next to your bed.
7. train your dog to lick you awake – warning: too scary so not really an option.
Forced onto the indoor trainer lately was not an easy pill to swallow. Nevertheless it was something I did for a couple of sessions which then prompted me the start looking around for some videos to make my 1 hour periods less tedious.
Some of the stuff available is pretty expensive (legally) like $30 or there abouts. Then i discovered The Sufferfest. Well to be honest i have heard of these but not looked into it much more than a glance at the web site.
In a nutshell, if you are after some highly scientific training program this may not be what you are looking for. but if on the other hand you simply need some ‘encouragement’ for that longest hour, this is pretty cool.
At $10 a pop you can’t complain. In fairness i have not tried the Spinervals series so i have nothing to compare this to.
I think they have 6 in total and the music is pretty much ok – anything new is good while on the trainer i reckon.
You pay via visa or whatever and do a download. a small tip here. the downloads can takes a while – like 2 to 3 hours so configure your pc’s power management to not go to sleep during that time otherwise you’re in for a long wait. I tend to do this overnight and use a free too like WinAMP to shut down my machine once the download is completed.
also having a cadence sensor is nice plus obviously a heart rate monitor. the way the workout operate is by perceived effort. so 4/10 is cruising, 7/10 is probably just over your thresh-hold and so on.
there are also sound cues to let you know what you should be doing e.g. a starters gun will fire and that means you’re attacking alberto so you have to stand-up and hit 8/10 until you hear the next cue (sound of car coming to screeching halt) to back off to 7/10 again.
these sound cues are are good idea actually as quite often you’re head is down grovelling so you’d otherwise miss the moment to kick or back off. they also inject a bit of humour like “you may want the children to leave the room about now as you will be a mess very soon…”
So if you want to suffer but not die of boredom then $10 is maybe all it takes.
Stay Safe.
I stumbled across this interesting article today. knowledge is power as they say.
Ride Safe
This week has been crazy. andrea had a conference on and i was on school drop-offs. add hockey, cross-country training and swimming then the hours left in the day to do a normal ride vanish pretty quickly.
not to be out-done i have actually hopped onto my trainer and completed two pretty descent sessions (around 1 hour each) Mon and Tues. tonight and tomorrow i will repeat just to keep some resemblance of form. i actually can feel the benefit of these sessions in terms of strength but i know the endurance is going to be lacking big time.
looks like now that seb has stepped up a level in hockey, my sat ride will be put on hold while the season lasts. i knew this day would come but so soon?
i shall tough out the winter and wait patiently for the summer to come around and hope the boys do take up afl or cricket.
i still feel motivated to ride as much as i can and am thinking of a new toy like a power-tap to keep me going will help. i can get enough stats from my garmin 500 but power output is the ultimate i reckon.
it has been just over 1 year since buying some parts for the bike (cassette) and the time has come (post inspection) to open the wallet once more. my list of essential:
some of the stuff is out of stock so i’ll have to wait a bit longer. expensive sport this cycling lark…
my wife has hinted i may be able to do a small splurge for my 50th this year.
here is one idea – the absolute ultimate in trainers and analysis of performance – aka the wattbike.
hardly a cheap splurge at $3,000 but i reckon the whole family would benefit from this if the boys get into more..(big if).
nice ride today. but my god the group was big. maybe too big.
anyway i felt so good i thought i’d be a bit cheeky and put the speed on about 1 km before we did the left turn into benara rd (official smash section). funny how the mind is stronger than the body.
soon i had burnt my small box of matches and was desperately looking for a bic lighter as we turned left onto smash rd.
not much i could do except think to myself – ‘this is what it feels like when you don’t put them kms into them legs’. and ‘what was i thinking?’ and ‘please don’t drop me’.
anyway it was still good to push the limits and feel like i was just dangling by a thread. not felt that out of form for a while . life has a way of interrupting training…excuses, excuses.
meet a new guy adam at coffee and we talked about the club as he has just moved across from the east. sounds like he may be a good addition to the b grade racers for spr.
stay safe.
