After a great night at the Bendigo Madison, and watching Shane Kelly blow the other sprinters away, and paying attention to the gear he was using, I've splashed some of my ill gotten gains from working at Cycle Science on some new bits for my Trek T1.

Shane (and Jobie) were both using Easton EC90 carbon track bars.  The T1 comes with road bars. Not ideal for track ... so, they're getting the flick (I'll put them on my old Trek 1400, it's due for some TLC, the bars on it are due for replacement) and the Eastons get fitted tonight.  Even at shop price, they're not cheap, but oh so sexy. 

Also on the list is a set of keirin gloves.  I've been looking for a decent pair of track gloves for a while - motorbike road gloves are a bit heavy and clumsy, dirtbike gloves too feeble (not meant to be bashed into and dragged along concrete or bitumen) and golf gloves have no armor and also seem a bit under-designed to work as crash protection ... but ... it turns out there's gloves designed for track racing, and they're not cheap, generally.  The ones I found first, were these Tanabi keirin gloves, and they're not readily available in Australia and cost $heaps!  Shane Kelly was wearing some black gloves with, I think, carbon/kevlar knuckle armor, but I didn't see what brand they were - maybe O'Neil?  They had a big yellow 'O' on the wrist, but I wasn't close enough to see and didn't think to ask him at the time.  Anyway ... to cut a long story short, it turns out Tuff have some.  They're a clone, and they're a lot cheaper.  About $50 RRP.  Cycle Science is a Tuff retailer.  We ordered them yesterday, if they arrive in time I'll be testing them out on Saturday at Blackburn (but, not planning on really testing them!). If you want some, have a look at mine, and/or tootle down to CS for a look at the ones Pete will have in stock.

In other news, I now have to find a truckload of cash to pay for the aboc jerseys & knicks that are done, and that I'll be picking up on Friday.  I hope some more aboc'ers want to buy them, I have stock of most sizes I hope.

I took my cameras to the madison, and with a bit of luck will have some photos published in cyclingnews this w'end. I got some good ones of Shane & Jobie, and a few half-decent handsling shots from the Madison itself.  Richard England was brave, he had a touch of wheels very early on in the madison and came down hard, but got back on and he and Leigh Howard made a bold attempt to get a lap during part of the madison with no sprints, but on their own it was doomed and they got dragged back after some 20 laps or so away off the front but unable to gain the last 150m they needed to get a lap up.  They ended up a respectable 5^th overall, but I suspect they'd have been disappointed with that. 

I've been trialling the power meter for some weeks now, and despite it having reliability issues, it's a great training tool.  Once it's sorted (I think, replaced ... will need to confirm with Mark from Trek, who are the Australian distributors for Cyclops/Saris) it'll be even better - I was doing PAP sprints this morning and it decided to cut out, just as I hit a peak effort. Doh! 

Not much else to talk about today, after having IT issues all week (which had the aboc website offline for a few hours on Tuesday last week, amongst other disasters) I'm just glad to be able to get a few good training sessions in on the bike and look forward to Blackburn track on Saturday and Glenvale on Sunday.  Legs, don't fail me this week!