The pain game

Yesterday was the first day back at work as a bike courier after a six-week break. It usually takes two weeks to get the body back in the swing of things. Riding Melbourne streets for an eight-hour shift can take its toll. Melbourne put on a beauty for me, gale force winds, rain patches and the footy parade, boy it’s great to back. The commute home had me conserving energy having signed up for Joel Read's tour of pain in the Dandenongs on Saturday morning. That boy knows how to dish out pain and he does it in large doses.

So, 7am this morning has a small but elite MTB crew meet near the base of the Dandenongs for their doses of pain. For me the pain began nice and early. This photo show my heart rate at the base of the tourist road. Keep in mind my max is about 175, but it’s no secret that I’m a sucker for pain.

This next photo was taken a couple km’s up, yep everyone is in the group bar me.

Some hills are supposed to be admired but not ridden. This is definitely the case with Terrys Ave, also know as Belgrave – Ferry Creek Rd. I have been riding in the Dandenongs for 14 years and I have never attempted to climb this puppy. The gradient from the base is enough to make your legs quiver. Thirteen minutes at an average speed of just 9km/h and a cadence of under 50 RPM’s we were all at the top only to find out Joel started the climb as a joke and was expecting us all to turn around. I don’t think anyone was laughing, especially me.

Ride highlight was descending the 'one in twenty' as a pack. My heart rate was higher than I usually climb at. It’s so much fun pushing the limits of your machine and ability. Ash Thomas, coming back from time off, was happy to sit back and watch as we disappeared into the distance with knee down Casey Stoner style. Yeh baby.

Not for sale

When you run a fleet of seven bikes (more on the whole fleet later) you tend to accumulated parts etc. I have given up on selling on ebay, the whole process sucks and I don’t want this blog filled with an inventory of stuff for sale, so I have another site for that. You can find my stuff for sale at www.bikestuff4sale.blogspot.com . I will endeavor to keep it simple and up to date. If you feel the need, have a look.

Just remember “mum’s” the word

Whilst in the US, Kona hooked me up with a top bloke (Kelly Steelman) to help out with mechanical “stuff” during the worlds. We spent the weekend after the worlds with Kelly and his wonderful family in Santa Barbara. He was able to get me a new bike to give Jayden for his Birthday. As far as I know it is the only Shred 20 in the country and it’s a pretty sweet ride for a five year old. Not sure if I’ll leave it stock or pimp it up a bit with hydros and a bit of XTR (let me know what you think). His birthday is early November, so he should have it in time to defend his title in the U/7 category at the Kona 24 minute event.



I wish I had one of these puppies when I was a little lad. I had a dragster with a blue glitter paint job.


Myself celebrating after the worlds with the old man (center) and Kelly. Notice the bandage on my arm from the drip the ambos were nice enough to hook me up with on site so I could cross the line and record a finish instead of a DNF if I was taken to hospital.

Cobwebs

Well, it’s time to brush away the travel cobwebs and get back into the training routine. With the Mont only seven weeks away and myself racing in the Kona Pro Fours Team, I need to adjust my training to suit team racing. Cool, shorter training session. Higher heart rates, not so cool.


I did odd jobs around the house whilst I waited for the courier to arrive from the airport with my bike. They finally turned up, but it looks like the bottom fell out of one of the boxes and my spares box containing tools etc is missing. Big time bummer. By the time I could get out for a ride it was getting dark, so I had to strap the Ay Up onto the road bike and head out to a newly thought of training session which involved a nearby steep but shot hill. Boy oh boy, cobwebs suck. I was very glad I chose to leave before dinner, after 20 mins of riding up and down I think I could taste lunch.

Very smart looking lights. (I'll do a full report on the Ay Up soon)

Back in Melbourne!!

We left LAX at 10 pm Friday night and arrived at Tulla 10 am Sunday morning, what happen to Saturday, oh well it feels great to be home. Back to normality. Travelling home with three bikes and five large suitcases turned out to be a challenge in its’ self.
Thanks to Air New Zealand, the trip out of Tulla was made much easier. In transit in Auckland they decided not to move the bikes over to the new aircraft we were boarding. After waiting at baggage claim for an hour we find out the bikes are still in New Zealand and we won’t be seeing them until tomorrow. It probably turned out to be a good thing, we only travelled over with two bikes and coming back with three (I’ll get to that later) I don’t think we would have got everything into the Delica.

This is what almost 200kgs of luggage looks like.

Now I'm home, it's time to get some regular rides in, start focusing on the hefty enduro season and put the worlds behind me.

All I need now is a bike to ride.....

About time I got myself a blog.

It took until the last few days of my 5 week adventure to finally get my blog site going. I can see it being a bit of a pain to get into the swing of it. But I hope I leave some interesting things on it for you to read.