Saturday morning, a good 95km ride from aboc HQ, via Doncaster Rd to the city, Beach Rd to Edithvale and back home via Spingvale Rd.  Along Beach Rd, this muppet in an old red Phonak kit keeps going through red lights.  I'd catch him in E1 (~200 watts was the target power for the ride) and he'd suck wheel, then I'd stop for a red light and he'd just keep on going.  After the third time I had a bit of a 'chat' with this clown.  Expressing to him that red lights are for everyone (he wasn't just ignoring ped crossings, it was intersections too ...) and that he should stop for them.  He told me not to care about him, I told him that what he does affects us all, and then a few insults got thrown around.  The old saying goes "There's an infinite number of idiots and a finite number of bullets". The funniest part was that he told me I should save my energy for riding.  Heh ... funny from someone I was consistanly towing along and catching every time he shot a red, eh?  He pulled off at the Brighton Yacht Club, but later caught me up some rise, but by then I'd had enough and I turned it up for the rest of the ride and dropped him pretty easily.  Idiot ...

After that incident, the rest of the ride was fine.  I saw the hellride coming back through Beaumaris, it was only using 1.5 lanes at that time, unusually 'good' for them.

Got home just in time to head out to take photos of the Baw Baw.  Mistake was to not take the motorbike, the traffic once we got past Noojee meant that I got no photos of A or B grade, but did get some of C, the masters and what was left of the women (maybe 5 of them?) at Winch Corner - 20% pinch on the climb.  I've ridden Baw Baw once (not racing, just Byron & I went out and did it a couple of years ago for 'fun'.  It's the only Hors Category climb in Oz, 6km at an average of 13%.  Gloomy light and my poor skills with a camera meant I didn't get many good shots - certainly not many suitable for cyclingnews.com, but I did get a good one of Cam Woolcock, but my shot of Les was out of focus.  Drove on up to the top to congratulate Les and Cam on finishing the beast just as it started to rain (rain?  what is this water falling from the sky?).  No snow this year ...

Dino told me later about Emily at the Siemens junior training she went to on Sat arvo.  It started out a bit stressful for her, but at the end she was all smiles and had a great time.  Well done Emily, and thankyou to Nathan for setting her bike up for 'road' use.

Sunday, we (Nathan, Dino & I) were going to head out to DISC to do the masters track training session, while Neil was going to Glenvale to shake up B grade (and by all reports he did - Mal Sawford's report mentions him).  Nath was cooked from a long ride on Saturday so didn't bring his bike(!) but did come along and provide mechanical support.  Thanks for fitting the 90" Nath!  It turned out that Stu Vaughn was away and the session was being run by Liz Randall.  Liz is a masters female world champion and knows DISC pretty well.  Dino and I had the velodrone to ourselves as no-one else showed up, and Liz taught us more about the banking, taking us -way- up the bank and we did some sprint efforts etc.  Thankyou Liz, for me, that was just what I needed to get comfortable with the bank on those corners.  I'm not 100% on them, but at least I know what the bike will do.  My Bontrager Race-Lites hung on just fine, and Dino was using Nath's Vittoria Rubino Pros which also were fine, after his bad experience with Michellin Pro-Race 2's, which are -not- good on steep boards!  We have Veloflex Records on order, will be interesting to see how they go.  It was pretty good having the whole velodrone to ourselves for three hours. I think Nath was regretting not bringing his bike, he could have rolled around and just got more track time, which at DISC I think is very worth having. Next week, Nath!

Dino's got my track kit, this Thursday is my first foray into DISC for racing.  I'm not sure about it, but will give it a go and see how I handle it. Wish me luck!