Joining the Dark Side (and the March and April updates)

March distance: 495 Km (longest ride 52 Km)

April distance: 536 Km (longest ride 58 Km)

# of rides March: 18 rides

# of rides April: 20 rides

Weight: 94.7 Kg

I'm racking that up as a win. I was away the last 5 days in March and the first 6 days of April, so that's cost me 8 or 9 rides and probably 200 Km. I feel like I'm riding well. Yep have put on few kegs, but I think I've got a lid in that now. I don't think I'm as strong as I was for the Alpine Classic, but I'm stil riding well and in decent shape.

Now I  have though done something daft. I've bought a Mountain Bike:

Now I've ridden road pretty much 100% since jumping on a bike in 2011. Mountain biking always seemed a bit dirty, a bit sketchy and basically seemed a younger man's game.

There is though an excellent mountain biking scene here in Townsville, there's a large and active club locally (Townsville Rockwheelers) with a lot of established trails to ride. 

I guess over the month or two I'll see how I pick things up and see how well my skills transition.

The February Update

Distance: 487 Km (longest ride 42 Km)

# of rides: 20 rides

Weight: 92.7 Kg

Not exactly a brutal month. I think there was always going to be something of a let up post Alpine Classic, and so it proved. Though at 92.7 kegs, I don't feel I've pulled the ripcord.

I am though working on a few things to improve my riding:

(1) More riding out of the saddle. I used to ride 99.9% of the time in the saddle. It's very efficient way to ride, but being able to spent time standing is a good thing on long days & long climbs. It allows you to relieve the pressure and use other muscle groups for a short while at least.

(2) Descending in the drops. Descending in the drops is safer and faster - you lower your centre of gravity, and you're in a more secure position if you hit something on the road. I used to descend in the tops, as I couldn't really reach the brakes in the drops (which is kinda important). I did though get a set of new shims for my levers and tweak the lever positions a bit, so I can now sit in the drops when descending. 

Neither descending in the drops or riding out of the saddle is super comfortable yet, but no doubt it will provided I stick with it

So what's the plan?

 Alpine Classic over. What's the plan from here?

We'll I've backed off the cycling a little. Only did 5 rides last week and punched out a muscular 95 Km. Part of that is just taking a bit of a break post AC, part of that was the fact I was riding my single speed waiting to reassemble my Emonda post travel (now completed), and part of that was down to the weather in Townsville - it's rained for 6 days in a row to start February, and it's still been bloody hot - the humidity has been sickening. Might be a lot of Zwifting in the short term.

In terms of my riding moving forward, I'm going to ride harder when I'm out. Maybe ride 4 or 5 days a week rather than 6 or 7, but make the riders more purposeful. More hills, a higher average speed, (and when the weather allows me) longer rides. I think there were a few too many gentle coffee rolls: 20 Km, no real vertical, and a fairly serene pace. I think this sort of ride is a good recovery roll after a hard session, but I don't think the ratio of recovery rolls and hard sessions was right.

I think that'll help regardless whether I'm targeting Tour of the North 23 or AC 24

Snow on Hotham

30 degrees last week, snowing this week. Check out the Webcam:

https://www.mthotham.com.au/summer/on-mountain/conditions/web-cams

I really did dodge a bullet with the weather last weekend. Granted snow was always pretty unlikely, but wet & cold would have sucked. And I'm badly equipped for such things (Edit: Apart from having a solid layer of insulation)

So what happened?

I went down to do the 200 Km ride at the Alpine Classic, and only ended up completing 100 and ended up DNFing. What happened?

Well I always thought the 200 (which included over 4000 m of vertical) was a stretch target. Longer than I’ve ever ridden on a single ride (my longest to day is 140 Km), more climbing than I’ve ever attempted on a single ride (I’ve never climbed more than 1700 m in a day).

Biting off more than you can chew and chewing hard sounds cool, but it only gets you so far.

On reflection it was also probably a mistake not to change my plans when the route changed from Buffalo-Mt Beauty-Front of Falls to Buffalo-Hotham. (Based on the thoughts of others) Hotham is significantly tougher than the front of Falls Creek. Don’t get me wrong – the Front of Falls is no picnic, but it never gets beyond 7 %. Meanwhile Hotham has sections like the Meg, CRB Hill and The Diamantina, all of which go to over 12%. And yes, you do add Mt Beauty, but it too steep isn’t nor overly long. Not saying I would have finished the old route, but to me it looks an easier day out.

I think I tripped over my ego in that respect. Having originally said I was doing the 200, it seemed a bit weak to drop back to the 130, especially when there was still a 200 on offer.

I also now realize the shortcomings of my training. Did I become a stronger cyclist over the last 6 months? Absolutely. I think though my training lacked specificity. I ran around the pancake flat ‘burbs of Townsville with the odd Castle Hill thrown in. Castle Hill is tough (2.5 Km at 8%, with ramps of up to 14%), but it’s no Hotham. I needed to be doing longer rides and longer climbs. Yes, I’m limited by the NQ climate and the local topology, but perhaps I should have Zwifted much more? Or even better, started the prep properly in February rather than June, so I could have my fitness to the point where I could put those 150-200 Km rides in the legs when the seasons allowed.

And as much as I lost 13 kilos, I’m still a Clydesdale in cycling terms. Dragging 90 kilos up Mt Hotham is bloody hard work. I need to get that down to at least 80.

I don’t want though to rake this over to damn hard though. I rode strong on Saturday - 106 Km & did 1900 m of vert - it was almost certainly my biggest single ever day on the bike. 

 Unfinished business for 2024 perhaps.

Rather Cool Vid (in which I feature precisely nowhere)

 

Early scenic shots from Buffalo, later shots from Hotham. Well worth watching

The Big Kahuna: Alpine Classic Weekend 2023

So I got to Bright on the Thursday and settled in. Cool town Bright is. Lots of cafes, microbreweries, restaurants, all of which is in a lovely bush setting.

Dave, Anita and Sara rolled in to town Thursday night. Reassembled the bikes that night (thankfully Jetstar hadn't done any significant damage to my machine). And we decided on doing a quick rail trail ride in the morning just to stretch the legs and shakedown the bikes before Saturday.

We punched out a easy 50 Km on the Friday morning. And I was feeling confident - the temperature was lovely and it was the easiest 50 I'd done for a few months. A pancake flat 50, but still 50. I was feeling bullish about Saturday.

We then thrashed out a simple plan for tactics, stops, ride nutrition, etc. It was coming together nicely.

That confidence though collapsed spectacularly around 5pm Friday. I was texting we few mates about the ride, how to track me via the app, my ride number, etc, and Foz came back to me and asked what I thought would be my likely times for the various timing checkpoints on the course. Reasonable question that I hadn't thought about. So I ran the numbers and quickly came to the realization that I was going to be riding for 13 hours plus. And that's if things went well. Fucking hell. 

Now you could say "Well how long did you think it would take Greg?", but I'd been looking at the ride through the lens of kilometers not time on the bike. 200 Km didn't seem like a ridiculous step up. 13 hours certainly fucking did.  

My anxiety levels went through the roof and stayed there. I don't think I got a wink of sleep that night. Literally. We were starting the ride at 4 am, and it was a relief when the alarm went off at 3. I didn't need to lie there worrying & trying to sleep any more.

"Ready" to roll out at the start:

So the starts of these large rides are often a little hairy, but the only starters at 4am were experienced people doing the 200 or 250. It was pretty smooth.

Hit the slopes of Mt Buffalo around 15 Km down the road. It's a very steady climb - sits at 5-6% gradient for pretty much the whole 20 kilometers (and you rack up 1000 m of vertical over the climb). Settled into my work, Dave chaperoning me the whole way (Anita & Sara had settled into their own rhythm). It was hard work. 5-6% doesn't sound too bad, but the 20 kilometers of it without respite made it tough. I'd kind of expected to go up Buffalo in a canter. 

The sun came up about 2/3 the way up the climb, and I got to appreciate just how beautiful the country was. Loads of great views, imposing trees and highland meadows. 

I ground my way to the top (Dingo Dell), stopping for a quick snack break and taking a quick pic with the posse (Anita & Sara were only a minute or 2 in front of us)

Smiles aside, I was feeling pretty damn sore already.  I'd done 35 of the 200 and maybe 1/3 of the climbing. Surely I was no chance of finishing.

At least the ride back into Bright was largely descent. Now just as I'd never done a 20 Km climb, I'd never done a 20 Km descent, but I took it cautious and got to the bottom. I was passed by plenty of people on the descent, but it was all about staying upright. And it made for a cool pic:

Rolled back into Bright. A quick food stop, another iced coffee, a quick chamois cream top up, and we were off again. I was feeling a bit fresher. Maybe I could get up Hotham?

From Bright there's about 20 Km of ground to cover before you get to the base of Hotham. We jumped off the roads for that stretch and stuck to a newly laid rail trail. That was a super enjoyable 20 Km. Great surface, no cars, lots to look at and see. Great riding. But Mount Hotham loomed large.

Hotham. Brutal. Hits you with a hard slap to the face as soon as you set out (8%-ish), then doesn't really let up. My goal was to get to The Meg - a short steep (10-12%) chunk of the climb that's about 5 Km into the ascent where you cross from the West to the East side of the mountain - and I'd see what happened from there. It was starting to get pretty damn hot though, and the rail trail feelings seemed years ago. I needed to stop 3 times in 5 minutes. That signaled the end. I was spent. About 500 m shy of The Meg as it turned out. By that point I'd racked up 102 Km and 1900 m of vertical (over 5 hrs and 40 minutes).

I was going to roll down the descent back to the coffee shop and rest up before retracing my steps on the rail trail, but Dave was worried about leaving me to descend on my own (he was going to push on to try catch the girls) - I clearly wasn't travelling so well. One of the motorbike support guys stopped to check in on us, and he agreed to shadow me down to make sure I got there fine. One last pic and we went our separate ways.

Uneventful descent to Harrietville (which sits at the base of Hotham), but when we got to the coffee shop the fellow on the motorbike got me to go to the ambulance rather than grab a skinny flat white. Another sign that I clearly wasn't travelling so well. The ambos gave me a thorough once over (HR, blood pressure, blood sugar) and then sent me on my way, though they did say no more riding for today (I was a little tachycardic, but as I said, I did just try to ride up Mt Hotham).

So my Alpine Classic 2023 finished in an Ambulance. Not the finish I'd been hoping for, but I was really pleased on the day that I rode over a century and had a crack at Hotham. I could (perhaps should?) have dropped back to a shorter distance/easier ride even during the ride itself. Mt Buffalo is also the biggest climb I've ever done (by quite some margin)

I can also now better see the shortcomings in my training and skills that I'll need to address (if there will be any future attempts). Until you try a ride like this, you don't know what you don't know. I'll probably write a post along those lines in the next few days.

And yes, it was a Did Not Finish, but in spite of that it was an awesome few days with great friends in an awesome part of the world. And I feel like I laid it all out there.