I had a ride in a train this morning with an old schoomate who's now a train driver.  Pretty amazing being at the pointy end of a 12,000 horsepower tube of people.  Thanks, big fellah, that was awesome! Apparently each carriage has 4x415v AC motors, each one is ~400 horsepower.  6 carriages ... that's some grunt!

I took the old pub bike to the local station, locked it up (why bother? I wanted to get home afterwards!), the track was a bit damp and the train does indeed spin wheels and lock brakes a little.  Quite a good fun morning.  He told me that they've lifted the ban on bikes at peak hour.  It wasn't being enforced anyway, train drivers don't get out of the cabin much, and certainly not to police bike rules.  That should make a few people happy who were upset about peak hour restrictions with bikes on trains.

I've been meaning to do a strength & conditioning course for some time now, but they've all clashed with things I needed to do... but I've committed (and spent the $'s!) to a Level 1 S&C course with the ASCA at the VIS gym on the 31st of May/1st June.  About bloody time I managed to commit to doing it ... anyway ... the weights should arrive tomorrow too, so we're almost all go for the sprinters lab at aboc HQ.  Can we turn Big Nath the Foxy Ox into the Ubersprinter?  Time will tell ...

And speaking of further education, there's a coaching seminar at DISC this Sunday evening, John Beasley's the guest speaker.  Should be good.

And .. there's talk of more structure at the masters track sessions (Sunday midday at DISC).  I haven't been to any of these recently (summer, and BBN's velodrome is free and local) but we're planning on doing these a lot over winter, so I'll keep you informed via this blog and the website in general as to how it pans out.  At the moment it's being discussed by Stu 'V-Train' Vaughan and Liz Randall.

We've had more people sign up for Hotham, there's only a few places left now, and round 4 of the TSSS is getting close too.

Vanders and Claire are back from Wildside in Tassie.  They had a great adventure, and Vanders at least is going back next year, better prepared and keen to do well.  I haven't heard from Claire yet, but I expect she'll be keen too.

Finally, the dinner, with Monique Hanley as the speaker at the new venue was a success, everyone who came along gave us good feedback, and the bigger venue certainly helped - as well as the licenced bar meaning that deciding who paid for what with drinks was very simple.  Monnas was an excellent speaker, and will be a hard one to follow, but I have a few ideas ...

Some of you who read this might remember that I wrote a blog entry a while back about racing at Crib Point, and how I mentioned to the commissaire at the race that if they had noticed and were planning to speak to a rider for a breach of the white line rule, I saw the incident and was prepared to back up any report by the follow car.  It got a little ugly at the time as one of the rider's teammates/friends took offence and got a bit stroppy, but that was the last I heard of it.  Until tonight!

Another one of the group (www.6am-ers.com) who is also a Blackburn member and a racer of some repute sent me a long and sarcastic email tonight which he must have spent a bit of time drafting (it was quite good, entertaining in a way and oddly flattering that he'd go to so much effort), which he Cc'd to his group's mailing list.  I'm not going to publish it, but you can probably sign up to their site if you're interested, it's probably doing the rounds there on their forum and mailing list. I guess one of them stumbled onto this blog somehow and the tribe must stick together, even if the rider in question didn't get in any real trouble and it was just a reminder that the rules of racing apply to us all.  Tom Leaper got his result for the 1:20 ITT at the Dougherty Tour last year binned for crossing the white line, riders I coach have been fined for doing it too.  If I got caught doing it, I'd hope I'd have the grace to accept that I did something against the rules and I'd cop it sweet and learn from it. If anyone does it by accident and gets caught they get to learn from the experience.  I don't quite know what makes this case different, except for one thing, it wasn't accidental, or at least, that's what the rider told me at the time and maybe that's why he got so worked up about it?

Perhaps a case of The Lady doth protest too much?

I suspect I'll get another reply to my reply to him, with hopefully less sarcasm and more explaining exactly why he set out to defend something that should have been accepted at the time as a slap on the wrist and then done with. I have nothing against the 6am-ers as a group, every one I've met has been a decent person and a keen cyclist, and one of them shares a house with me.  I admire their enthusiasm and their culture, it's similar in some ways to what I've been trying to build with aboc from day 1 and I like them, if I'd known of their existance when I started racing, I'd probably have wanted to join up with them and if we race together again, I'd cheerfully form an alliance if in a break or chasing etc with them.  That doesn't put individual riders wearing their colours above the rules we race by, and the person who wrote to me I would have expected to know that.

What is normal anyway?

Last night was the passing of a big deadline - my former employer, Vivitec Pty Ltd, basically went broke in November, and they generously 'gave' me the web hosting part of the business (in lieu of a redundancy payout, in a way).  To cut a very long story short, last night I finished moving all the core stuff off their servers and onto mine.  Websites with mod-perl, PHP, old versions of Zope and Plone, crusty old perl-CGI stuff etc.  Stats, logs, DNS delegations (finding who has the DNS registry keys etc ... ) and email are all working, and if Vivitec turn off their server today, none of my(!) clients will notice.

There's mopping up to be done, and there'll be some fires to put out, but generally it's complete.  The last fortnight has been 12-16 hour days getting it sorted, which has made normal life difficult to say the least.  A big thanks to Bev for doing the dinner bookings etc, I've simply not had the brain space to take care of it. And to everyone I'm coaching for their patience.  I've not been able to give you proper attention for far too long.

So now I'm pretty-much 100% self employed (except for 2 days a week at Cycle Science). If my clients pay their bills I'll be able to pay my rent!

So what else is going on?  We raced on Saturday at Blackburn, there was enough gaps in the weather to get racing done.  Dino and I and young Ed Osbourne got dropped in the combined A&B grade points race at the first sprint (gak, Tom Leaper and Steve Martin .. when they go we blow!), but we worked together and managed to avoid being lapped in the 20 or 25 lap race. It's a bit of a blur, that one ... The bunch did sit up and play cute games which helped (we were sure we'd get caught at lap 7, but the bunch sat up) so although we were dropped, we didn't lose 20 points! 

Before that we had a combined A&B scratch race, and Steve Martin, I owe you a beer, when Steve got onto the front he slowed down(!) and as a result I managed to hang on and recover a bit, and even slipped in a small attack with 5 to go.  It wasn't really an attack, I was caught between Ed's wavering wheel as he tried to avoid running into a rider in front, and Ben Schofield dropping down onto me, the safest place to be was in front of that mess so I jumped and briefly (5 seconds?) was off the front of this bunch!  Suffice to say that was the end of my race and I was quickly ejected from the back of the bunch.  86" - not enough! Legs, not strong enough!  Lungs ... *cough* urgh.

We had a team sprint, big .. 8 riders or so per team, and I was rider 2 in my bunch, and we split our bunch - communication is so important in a team sprint!  I didn't know we'd gone too hard. C'est la Vie ... and then the all in, and I keep getting paired up with strong juniors, I think we got 3rd? Thanks of course to Brian Harwood and Sue Dundas for running the days racing, and I'm sorry I don't know her name, the lady who was inside doing entries etc.

Dino and I have been doing some strength work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and Nath (aka Foxy Ox) came over last night and we used the now useful shed out the back of aboc HQ to do an ergo session, doing 30 second (10s at each level) sprint rampups.  The basic plan for me is to have a go at more focussed track sprinting.  I figure it'll take me a couple of years to see what I'm capable of.  Maybe masters worlds in 5 years?  Who knows .. I was a pretty decent (running!) sprinter as a kid and the sports I played as a kid were all sprint/power sports, so I figure I've probably got the right genes, or at least, right enough to have a go and see what I can do.  Time will tell ... One thing's for sure, if I don't have a go, I'll never know!

The big BBN Australia Day Madison is next weekend.  I've entered the support races.  Should be fun!

The TSSS round 4 is coming up soon too, if you're thinking of doing it, come and do it.  It's loads of fun and it's graded - you will get plenty of chances to race, learn and try something you've probably not done much (at all). And .. a free BBQ courtesy of aboc Cycle Coaching.  What more can you want?!

Trek US have just launched their One World Two Wheels advocacy campaign. It's kinda typical of the Yanks to call it World when it's just in the USA, but we'll forgive them their hubris, they're doing a Good Thing all the same.  Their catchcry is Go By Bike, and I'm all for it! I know Trek Australia are involved to a certain extent in the local cycling advocacy arena, I hope they up the ante on this and get more involved as well.

Dino and I had a good session this morning at the Blackburn velodrome, doing standing 150's in 96 and 98" gears.  Must. Get. Stronger.

The dinner is only 5 days away, I hope you're all coming!

On a lighter note, watch this!

The joy of ... cycling!  Got up this morning to head on down to the BBN velodrone for training, coolish (just comfortable in a jersey and undershirt at 6:45am), no breeze to speak of.  Sunny and clear.

Pat D, Dino, Emily and I did some good quality training chasing the motorcycle around the velodrone until about 9:15 or so, when Mick Thomas and young Will showed up, just in time to be Dino's holder for our 1 lap big gear pursuit to finish the session.

More words will only spoil it.  A perfect day to be on a bike.

Last night Vanders & I went 50's on this puppy :

POWER RACK + 140KG OLYMPIC SET + ADJUSTABLE BENCH

We're planning on doing some strength work - my roadies don't usually need strength training, IMO on the bike strength is enough for roadies, but track sprinters need more, so we're going to set up to do strength and power training.  Also, MTB'ers need more upper body strength, mixed in with swimming, kayaking etc some upper body work could be of benefit.

Also, a mystery bike arrived in the front garden today.  It was out there when I got home. It's an old red Malvern Star roady. No idea where it came from .. maybe Vanders found it in hard rubbish or something?  I'm sure the mystery will sort itself out soon enough.

Alarm set for 6:45, forecast for today is 41 in the mid afternoon.  Today is sprint training day (Tues & Thurs ...).  Plan : do 3 F200s, then 2 standing 300's, then work for the rest of the day at the computer.

8am ... huh?  Why didn't my alarm go off?!  I've missed my window of opportunity.  I might do the sets later on a spin trainer instead around lunchtime, next to a fridge full of cold drinks!  I have a pizza to burn off.

I don't like this new phone (Palm Treo 750)... it is not to be trusted, especially as an alarm.

Did anyone notice the ITT results from the Aussies out at Ballarat?  Jono Lovelock rode really well, and the most amazing thing was Kathy Watt.  4th in the elite womens.  She's 43 now? Amazing.

I will have to really start digging for people to come to the aboc dinner.  We're low on numbers.  I'm going to break from tradition for this one. The guest speaker is Monique Hanley, of 'Team Type 1', and she has a fantastic talk for us.  If you miss this talk, you're crazy....

I've shuffled the web page around a little - and put the 'coming events' portlet somewhere more immediatly visable.  I hope you like!

Everyone keeps asking 'how was your christmas?'.  Coming from a post-nuclear family, my ideal xmas is a non-existant one.  I used to hide at my surf life saving club when I was younger, but that's not an option anymore (I don't have time to be a lifesaver anymore).  This xmas was Dad's place on xmas eve and overnight (and a bizarre experience, sleeping on the floor in his bedroom ... ) and then riding back to Vermont on xmas morning (via the uberbikepath known as Eastlink! - this has been blogged earlier).  Then Lucie & I spent the rest of the day doing nothing and ended up having Chinese take away for dinner.  Bliss.  Boxing day was a mums-family lunch that I couldn't ride to (had to take a ... car ...!), but next year that'll be better once Lucie's done with all her chemo etc.  Might take the tandem... It needs to be ridden more, it cost me a fortune and I've hardly ridden it at all.

Anyway .. enough of that.  The rest of the gap between xmas and the turn of the year was spent up at Bonnie Doon, or. specifically, Trev's place at Peppin Point.  Myself, Rich and Lawrence (rocketboy) took MTB's and beer.  A dangerous combination! The trip up was eventful.  Rich's old Landrover (aka The Adventure Truck) is ... old ... (1973) and it has some issues.  We had a puncture just outside Yea, the jack collapsed so we had to wave down a passing car for help (can we borrow your jack for 5 minutes)!, and then the old adventure truck had carby problems, meaning that it basically took us a day to travel the 160km to Bonnie Doon from home.  I've ridden it on my roady in around the same time (but, with a lot less luggage!).  The next day RB and I rode Hurt Hill in the morning before it got too hot.  I was pretty slow up it (25 mins I think?) and RB wasn't far behind.  He rode it really well, but suffered on the descent down Maintongoon Road - I had the big Trek Fuel EX8 dualy, and he was on my old Trek 4700 (now with RockShoc Reba SL's and a front cable disk, but still a reasonably entry-level hardtail).  We spent the next few hours working on the MTB crit course through Trev's paddock (I dug, I picked and scraped, Rich testrode, and RB watched holding a beer), until I gave up around 12.  Too hot ... it was 42 degrees every day we were up there.

Later we went for a swim in the lake (riding to the lake & back, of course!), before the three of us put lights on and rode to the Bonnie Doon bridge to do the scoops and then go to the shop for ice cream (closed! at 11pm?  CRIMINALS!).  Saw 'roos, and a wombat, but no echidnas.  Three rides for the day, not bad!

Next day, RB and I rode in to town again along the river/lake bed to get a paper and some bits & pieces, and on the way back I proved you can crash a Fuel EX8.  Going up a steep ramp at around 5km/h, I hit a rut and the front wheel stopped, and I couldn't get out of the left cleat fast enough.  An inelegant topple.  Heh .. no damage.  The bike landed on me.  Rich was happy we brought him an ice coffee, shaken, not stirred.  Spent the rest of the day wilting under the ceiling fans drinking beer.  Lucie rolled up around mid afternoon and so did Trev Lightfoot.  It cooled down (35!) at about 6pm so off for a swim again, and then the boys got on the grog.  At dusk I said 'enough!' and we went up Hurt Hill again.  I was sober, the other two were not .. at least not at the start of it.  By the time we topped out (I did a 23 min, I think, ok under the circumstances) they were both stone cold sober.  We rode the rollers to Maintongoon Rd again and lights on for the descent.  Nice ride ..

Spent the next day under the ceiling fan.  42 degrees again.  No riding of note except to tootle to the lake for a swim in the arvo. I felt for the lads at the xmas track carnivals.  In that heat?  Insane ...

NYE was pretty quiet, just 4 of us and a few bottles of champers and my one remaining firecracker from the stash.  It's gone now .. RB got it into his head that we should all be nude for new years.  I think we were just drunk enough to go along with his idea for a bit.  Maybe we'll be racing at the MTB single speed worlds next year? I hear drunken nudity is de rigeur at that event?

The first day of '08 was .. hot.  Lucie & I took the Ovlov home, while Rich & RB limped home in the very sick adventure truck.

We raced at BBN this Saturday, I'm proud to record 2 DFL's in B grade, but I wasn't an idle spectator, and had some influence on the scratch race at least, and in the team sprint I managed to (as first rider) drop my second rider which was quite a surprise.  I had to back off to let them back on, and that gave Dino (riding lead for the other team) an easy first lap win over me!  I'll get you next time, Dino!  Nathan and Bev did a great job running the races, and it was great to have the V-Train along riding A grade, and also Leah Patterson was back racing after a pretty bad collar bone break in November '07.  A pretty healthy field all up, all grades had good numbers except A grade, which had only 3 (including the V-Train, who won everything!).  A special thanks to Stu, he gave his prize money to a youngster who made a bold attack in his scratch race. Stu, you're pure class mate.  Thankyou.

Tomorrow I've got an early training session at BBN doing sprint work behind a motorbike with Dino, Pat Dougherty, Emily and Simon Doran.  I'd like to specially note Emily, who had a fantastic day at one of the xmas carnivals and winning some prizemoney.  Top stuff Emily! Dino drew a dreadful mark for the wheelrace but I'm sure, knowing him, that he would have given it everything he had.

I'm organsing to do a Level 1 strength & conditioning course soon, which will fill a gap I need to fix up for training sprinters. Anything else?  The next dinner is getting close and I'm tempted to break with a short tradition and announce the speaker before hand.  It'll be a really good talk and I'm much looking forward to it.  I need more people to come! If you want to, you know what to do ...

Not because of effective advocacy, or new (unenforceable ...) laws, or bike paths etc.  But because of this :

Anyone who doubts that car use is going to go down, and bike use up for transport, probably also doubts that the earth orbits the sun, predicts the future with astrology and knows that PI is actually 4.

Last year's bike sales figures exceed car sales (as they usually do ...) again, but by a bigger margin, and at Cycle Science, we've had a noticeable increase in people buying and maintaining commuter bikes. The hoons hassling Cadel when he's out training, soon enough, will be riding themselves.

What's odd is that our governments seem oblivious.  They're still building freeways and tollroads. Who's going to use them?

Riding home from Dad's (Baxter) to home (Vermont) I thought I'd try Eastlink before it's full of cars.  Got on it at Seaford, and a security guard found me somewhere about 5k short of Wellington Rd, where the conversation went like this :

me: "G'day!  What a beauty of a bike path"

sg: "yeah!  But, can you get off at the next exit, you're not really supposed to be on it"

me: "No worries"

and that was it, he followed me as far as the next exit, but it was a freeway intersection, and after I'd ridden up the off ramp he drove away, so I turned back and rode back to Eastlink and carried on north until I got to Wellington Road.  At that point I decided to call my mini critical mass to a halt and I rode back the rest of the way on normal roads.

Eastlink will make a great bike path once petrol hits $10/l and everyone's on a bike, and Transurban are suing the state for having the gall to not make petrol free so they can slug drivers with tolls.  Evil ..

Anyway, here's some photos for your amusement.

Today a hardy few riders and volunteers showed up for the third atempt at the Blackburn christmas h'cap.

At least the ducks had a good day!

The BoM radar for the afternoon shows :

So it's not really a suprise! Aparently on Wednesday the Blackburn velodrome was flooded up to the blue line.  And DISC, last night (Friday) was closed, it seems the roof leaks, and wet concrete is one thing, but wet boards?

To put it in perspective, we need rain more than bike races.  Rain is good. We managed to squeese in two races, a all-grades 3 lap h'cap, won by Dale Reith, second place .. Dino! (helped by a lap and a half leadout by yours trully) and then after a break for rain, another 3 lap F-D grade h'cap was run and completed, and the A-C grade was called after one lap when rain started again in earnest with 35kn crosswinds. Time for the BBQ (thanks Bev!).

I managed to swing a couple of media passes to Revolution No.2 last night courtesy of a few photo sales and asking the right people the right questions, and I now have a swag more closeup racing photos and fan shots (Kerrie Meares, you are wonderful!).  It very challenging conditions for photography at Vodafone, I like to get in close with at most a 70mm lens rather than shoot from a long way out with a long lens, and running my camera at 1600asa in the dark makes for a very unforgiving depth of field with any sort of reasonable shutter speed. My camera, even at 1600asa, gets quite grainy so 3200asa isn't a good choice, and I don't like using flash, it flattens things out too much.  So I got a lot of miss-hits and blurry photos, but I did get a couple that may be worth selling, so that's good. 

The racing was very good, I'm still somewhat bemused at the inclusion of the derney race, it's kinda pointless, which isn't to say it's easy (far from it!) but that it's really a bunch of motorpaced ITTs going on at the same time.  The only way to make it interesting from a tactical perspective is to see what Graham Brown did, when his derney was too slow (!) he jumped from it to Alan Davis' derney, and then proceeded to leapfrog from derney to derney trying to make places. I'm not sure that's legal in that race, it's certainly a novel tactic and one that ultimately brought Browney unstuck as the effort took its toll and he DNF'd, but he earned the admiration of the very full crowd.  Stuart O'Grady won that particular event, some were heard to say that he had the advantage of having the biggest derney and biggest derney rider to draft, it may have helped somewhat, but the result was a popular one and the crowd was thrilled.

The night was marred by a nasty almost all-in crash in the junior mens scratch race, one rider hooked up close to the front going for a gap as another came down into it, and they wiped out almost the entire rest of the field on the back straight.  One unfortunate lad even went over the railing and almost into the crowd.  Very luckily no-one was badly hurt but a lot of bikes were broken and the field for the rest of the junior mens racing was quite sparse.

Anna and Kerrie Meares predictably dominated the womens sprinting, they're a class above the other women that were there, that doesn't mean the racing was boring, it was fantastic seeing them when they really jumped hard and just how fast they are.  Like watching Lance Armstrong win a Tour, but in about 30 seconds, not three weeks.  A great exhibition and superb to watch.

Rochelle Gilmore had a pretty quiet night, she's one of the stars of women's track enduro but she didn't feature much, it's off-season for a lot of European pros and maybe this is just a bad time of year for her?

I had a friend in the Melbourne Cup on Wheels, big Stu Vaughan (the V-Train), the current masters world champion pursuiter and general track gentleman (until he kicks, and then everyone's in a world of hurt!) was off 170 metres with a reasonable group for the major race of the night, his quartet stayed clear of the big group of backmarkers for almost long enough, but then with a lap and a bit to go they were caught and no-one had an answer to Leigh Howard's sprint (not even Browney, despite some ... assertive ... riding near the front with 100m to go, would you like any mint sauce with your chops, Graham?) and Leigh was a deserving winner of his second MCOW.

There was loads of match sprinting and a couple of kerins, and the Jayco/VIS boys did well in them, Ryan Bailey seemed a bit off but still managed to win the sprints in his usual 'monkey humping a tennisball' style. It looks awful, but it's very effective. I felt a bit sorry for Shane Kelly, he's a great champion and still has a lot of speed, but he wasn't quite there and it must have been frustrating sometimes to have the kids blow past him.  I hope he'll be at the Bendigo Madison again this coming March, watching him race is a joy, he's one of the best and a great ambassador for the sport.  He's not far off masters and I hope that he's one of those people that races for the love of racing, and that he'll keep on for a long time yet.

All my photos are here.

I managed an almost-decent 50km on Friday on the roady without too much discomfort, so I figured I should have a bit more of a fair dinkum go on Saturday at the Blackburn races.  The Besse Pool wheelrace (h'cap) was the feature race of the day, and I'm no handicap racer, nowhere to hide, just 6 laps flat out, urgh. I don't like 'em much, but it's a feature race on the BBN calender so I'd better have a go.  The races for the day was scratch, h'cap and progressive points, before the all-in.

I managed to finish the scratch race and although I was off the back with a lap and a bit to go, felt ok and didn't need to pull out - good!  I saw Dino lead Mick Thomas out for a win, so they rode well together.  The wheelrace was split into 3 divisions (A&B, C&D and E&F) and I was off 180m with Dino.  Knowing that my endurance for h'caps is junk at the best of times, and after three weeks of next to no riding, it's not going to have improved, I figured I'd just do a longish turn for Dino and then see how he went.  Job done, did about 1.5 laps on the front before peeling off, Dino just missed out of qualifying for the final, but I don't think either of us were too concerned about that!  Emily won her heat but spent too many pennies qualifying and didn't have quite the same dominance in her E & F grade final.

Rob M rode well, learning quite a bit as he went along (and learning not to do all the work!) taking a couple of really good results from the C grade races.  Tom Leaper kept Stevie Martin honest but neither of them could contain a rampant Barry 'The Wizard' Woods in A grade.  Bazz was on fire. No sign of Jamie Goodard, which was a shame, maybe he was up doing the Scott People's race?  Tom was still trashed from his ride the week before at the Tour of Bright but rode with courage.

Last up was the progressive points, and my plan was 'win the first lap, then finish'.  Done .. 1 point.  The last one of these, that would have got me 2nd place(!), but not this time, no-one escaped to mop up the lot, so I got 5th I think ... anyway, it was fun.  We finished off with the usual All In, and I was paired up with Katherine from F grade, who rode well and we only got lapped once (Who put Mick Thomas with Will?!).  Well done Katherine, you'll get stronger and stronger.

Then we threw the big armchair (Trek Fuel EX8) on the roof and drove up to Bonnie Doon. Junkfood for dinner en-route.  Got up, and felt ok, and then did a lap of the Hurt Hill Loop.  I think I set a PB up it, 21:45, then the rest of the rolling climb was quite slow (trashed legs from the climb), but the descent down Maintongoon Road was a delight (once I dropped the saddle 1cm anyway ...).  On the old 4700 hardtail the last few k's of the descent is a "I wish this was over" experience, it's rocky and rough road, but the big dualie just rode down it like it didn't care.  I made plenty of errors, bad lines through corners etc .. it just didn't give a stuff what I did, it was going to get down quickly and upright the whole way.  Wow. It's so much fun to ride and incredibly forgiving (and .. comfortable! I felt like I could ride it again, if I didn't have to go back up Sonn Berg Dve again to get there, that is ...)

Went back to the house, bacon & eggs for lunch, ducked in to Mansfield and got some more trees, came back, planted them, then it was time to start building the MTB crit track through Trev's Paddock.  I started with the jump.  I made it a bit big to start with, and when Vanders finally arrived to test it, he baulked at it and we had to make a smaller one next to it, we then had heaps of fun jumping the little jump for around an hour or so, getting timing and confidence, before at the end, we both had the balls to jump the big jump.  I did a terrible jump, landed front-wheel first, but the big EX8 just said 'heh .. you stuffed it up, but I'm not getting my paint scratched .. we're not going to fall over' and sure enough .. no worries.  I'm beginning to really enjoy riding it.  It caters for my MTB gumbieness very well indeed.

Dinner (chilli chicken wings!), then a few beers, and vanders and I decided one more ride .. down to the Bonnie Doon Maroondah Hwy bridge where there's some scoops to play in - we rode out at night with lights along the 4wd tracks along the lake, did the scoops a few times then rode back.  Along the way back the EX8 (hereafter known as my saviour) hit a cunningly concealed 45 degree rut and before I knew it I was 1m left of where I started, but .. still upright!  This bike just won't fall down! It carries on with arrogant aplom over everything my clueless handling could throw at it.

So for the w'end, 3 races and 3 MTB rides (including a PB up Hurt Hill) .. today (Monday) is a well-earned recovery day!

Rob Crowe, Barcelona Olympian.  Campaigner for the shared respect TAC rider good behaviour program. Shining example of how to do it right.

Watch these two videos

These were taken at a recent St Kilda CC linked training camp, descending Mt Hotham (a climb we at aboc know well!).  Rob, if you're going to ride all over the wrong side of the road, at least have the sense not to video it and post it on youtube.

There's a couple of things that are keeping me a bit frustrated at the moment.  The obvious one is the rib injury - as Dino can empathise, it's bloody annoying.  Around now I was expecting to hit some form and start to be more of an influential rider in the B grade races at BBN track, but that's racing, and I just have to deal with it. I've been getting around a little on the new '08 Trek Fuel EX8 which is a delightful dualie, and makes riding with rib injuries possible for sustained times, but it's no substitute for getting low and flaying my legs in sprint training. C'est la Vie ... In the overall scheme of things it's really a minor thing.  I managed to at least start all three races at Blackburn on Saturday and even actually finished the Keirin (w00t! 8 laps!) despite not being able to hold the wheel at least I ended up on the same lap.

So that's ok, under the circumstances.  I needed to be getting some more real miles in to shed some of these excess kilos, but it'll come once I'm healed. I won't be walking up CRB hill next time at Hotham in February. That was a real wakeup call.

I'm disappointed in the turnup for the Trek Summer Sprint Series.  There's a bunch of reasons (Stu Vaughan was out riding his fixie to Albury(!) for example and teh Llama was at Bright doing some enduro thing) but still having only 7 riders was really not what I was hoping for. We were hoping to get a few good A graders (Eddie Wilson, Stu Vaughan, Barry Woods etc) and while Jeremy Mclay showed up we had no-one to push him and I think for him it would have been a bit of a flat afternoon.  All of us who've worked a lot to make it happen want to see more people actually racing the program.  There's a lot of people who're racing lower grades who would also have a great time, if only they'd just have a go.  All the feedback we get from riders actually doing it is overwhelmingly positive.  Just, they don't bring their friends. 

It's a small racing field and it has to be (30 riders max) so we're really sensitive when numbers are down, and if you're thinking of coming, we really need you to, and to bring your friends.  We've asked all the clubs to put links to it on their websites, and CSV told us they'd link it too, but they didn't, which isn't helping, and I know I need to get out to DISC on Tuesdays and Thursdays more and promote it with flyers and so on.  We've got a great team running the races, event photographers taking good shots, commentary (where we actually know the rider's names!), food, drinks, music and well organised races.  We get results and photos up within 6 hours of the end of the races. We're not competing with any of the other clubs with this, it's a niche and one that no other club is filling, it's timed to avoid clashing with all the local crits and even with some other club's training, Brunswick at DISC, for example, I'm sure more of the Brunswick people would love the racing, and their training finishes at 10am ... plenty of time ... and anyway, this is once a month, not every week.

So, please, if you want to have a go at this, it's great fun and we treat our competitors with respect and want to make the series a success, but we can't do it without RIDERS!  Come and have a go.  If you're unsure, contact me and I'll make time to get you sorted on track bikes and get you doing some practice match sprints (free!) - you can't ask for more than that.

I'm a regular reader of Mike Goldie's blog over on the CCCC website.  He often has interesting things to say and is a worthwhile read.  One of his recent posts talks about comparing cyclists, and he goes on to declare that a certain cyclist is a great champion.  This got me thinking and I posted to his blog, expressing, briefly my thoughts on it, which he disagreed with, not suprisingly!  This is healthy, if everyone agreed, we'd all be redundant and the world would be a very boring place indeed.

So what does it mean to be a great champion? Success on the track or road (or MTB, BMX etc of course) is a given, for whatever definition of success you choose to use.  I think it also encompasses a greater aspect of the rider.  They have to have, I think, done it the 'right way'.  Ie: played by the rules.  This is the difference between a rider like, for example, Jan Ullrich, Bjarn Riis or Richard Virenque, and one like Eddy Merckx or Lance Armstrong or Shane Kelly (or Cadel Evans, Robbie McEwen, Ryan Bailey, Anna Meares, John Nicholson, Stuart O'Grady etc).

What's the difference?  Merckx, Armstrong, Evans, Kelly etc have never been caught cheating.  I'm careful with my choice of words here, we can never know if any of these riders have actually cheated (used banned substances, ie: deliberatly and knowingly broke the rules, I'm not talking about racing infractions which can just happen, I'm talking deliberate cheating) but we DO know that Ullrich, Virenque, Pate etc did.  They got caught (or they confessed just before they got caught). Holding them up as great champions does the sport a dis-service, I believe and implies support for the bad side of our sport.  Successful, talented and gifted cyclists, yes, but great champions?  No.  To be a true champion, you have to do it by the rules as they stand at the time. You have to have never cheated the sport. Doping is not something that these riders did by accident.  They knowingly and deliberatly cheated.

It's been over a week, I don't really count Saturday's abortive attempt, but I got back on the roady last night and managed a (soft!) 30 min 150watt session without much pain, and today I rode to work.  Not 100% by any stretch, but at least I can get on a roady and hold position without too much pain.

I managed to ride to work too, but the ride home was pretty umcomfortable.  Seated pedaling is ok, standing (take off from lights etc), not so much ...

Apart from the much deeper abrasions on my left elbow and knee which are still oozing and gooey, I took off the mefix from my other bits of roadrash this morning and have fresh new skin.  Mefix works a charm.  I expect the deeper abrasions will take another few days at least, they were deep grazes, concrete has some considerable grinding power! I think it's safe to say that the roadrash guide works.

Round 3 of the TSSS is this Sunday.  Liz Randall's hour attempt is tonight.  Work's crazy (got to get most of the old Vivitec websites moved to my server by the end of this week!).  The Fuel EX8 should arrive at the shop this week too. Got to also fix Vander's MTB after it fell off his roof on the w'end. Busy times!

In hindsight, trying to race the Blackburn races yesterday was ambitious at best.  I did feel ok in the morning, could breathe reasonably well and I got my first good night's sleep in a week.  Aggregate points on offer ... and a desire not to let an injury beat me conspired to motivate me to have a go.  I'd also just (finally!) fitted the new cranks to the T1 and wanted to give them a try.  I've gone from 165mm to 170mm cranks (my road cranks are 172.5mm) and I figured keeping them close would be of some benefit.

I slapped the T1 on the tow bike and rode to the velodrome, felt ok on the 7.2FX, and arrived feeling fine.  Even a little strong, which was odd, after a week of absolutely no riding at all and a lot of work and an injury.  I paid my entry, said hi to the crew (Dino, Rob, Nath, Mick, Will, Emily et al) and did a bit of a warmup. I was in some doubt as to whether I'd be able to hold myself up in the drops, it's quite an aggresive position, but I felt ok.  Rolled around, this isn't too bad.  I might be able to race.  Did one effort laying off the back of the motorbike ... not so strong ... did one out of the saddle kick, and nuh ... instant pain.  Ok, I'll start each race, get my points and go home. 

Scratch race - watched A grade contend with The V-Train, and Bazz "The Wizard" did a great job of organising his leadout to take a close win over The Master, Jamie and the V-Train. Our turn in B, and I warn Dino not to follow my wheel.  I held on for the first 5 laps, did a 2 lap turn to keep a tempo going, then when a kick happened, I simply had nothing and it hurt too much to push.  DNF.

Next we had a 6 lap h'cap, I started, asked not to be pushed, and simply rode up the bank and out.  Ribs getting worse.  Getting over the fence, painful!

Last, a motorpace.  I think I got on for one lap, but again, too much pain.  Pull out, grovel over the fence and get a lift home with Lucie.  I didn't have the will to do the all-in, for which I'm very sorry - normally I'm a stalwart of it (it's a great way to finish the day and encourage a sense of community amongst the club riders) but it was just too hard. I left the tow bike and the T1 at the clubrooms and will pick them up this week.

It was a good day's racing for the club - 11 A grade riders, 5 (or 6, if you count me, which is iffy at best!) in B, 8 or so in C, lots in D and the kids grades were full too, a very healthy field and some really good, close racing.  Nath showed off his new wheels, Emily's coping with her move from F to E grade well (be patient, Em, you'll get there), Dino rode well but got cruelly dealt with in the motorpace, Rob made a few tactical errors but learnt a lot, and young Will Thomas rode very well indeed in C grade.

The plan was to go up to Bonnie Doon after racing, but I was too sore to sit in a car for 2 hours, so we got takeaway and stayed home and got a bottle of champers to watch the election, celebrated the demise of the evil man and the Greedy Party at long last. Hopefully Rudd will deliver some real action on climate change and not take us to war because Uncle Sam says so.

I'm going to try and get in to DISC tomorrow night to cheer on Liz Randall as she tries to set a new world time for the hour for her age.  Might warm up with watching The Flying Scotsman, which I now have a copy of, and set up a roady on a trainer so I can do some medium intensity stuff off the road while my ribs heal.