Florentine mission.

The Florentine Valley is remote, but a particularly scenic destination for cycling

There's a loop that's been tempting me for a while up in the heart of the Florentine Valley, a bit over an hour north-west of Hobart. It's a shade over 100km on forestry roads and describes a more or less complete circle around the Mt Field National Park. As is usual in Tasmania, there's a fair bit of climbing, but the ride as a whole is certainly an achievable challenge. I scouted sections of this ride a few months back in the car, but to be sure the roads were passable and was impressed.

So we set off last Sunday for a lash.  Given the remoteness of some of the road and the expected lack of traffic we chucked a satellite phone and an EPIRB in my hydration park, just to be on the safe side.

Tyenna River Bridge.

 

Having carefully planned the route using the excellent RideWithGPS website and given the weather forecast due regard, I'd decided that the best way to tackle the loop was to get most of the climbing done early. To this end we started from the little town of Westerway and climbed steadily on the tarmac through National Park and Maydena, where we had a quick stop.

The gravel started at the 23km mark as we turned off the Gordon River Road. The climbing was steady, not overly so, but certainly long and taxing. The white road surface had me thinking of the famous 'strada bianca' of classic rides of Italy's L'Eroica.

I have a theory that gravel roads are much easier to ride after rain than after prolonged dry spells because the loose material on the surface tends to be compact a little into the road. Instead, we found ourselves cursing out tyres choices and pressures on the loose dry gravel, which saw us frequently sliding sideways unexpectedly on the gentle camber of some of the uphill corners.

Gravel roads can be a challenge after long dry spells.

The views along the way are well worth the effort. The range made up of Florentine Peak, Tyenna Peak and the Knobs dominate the skyline from the road, and the odd clearing where forestry work had felled a coupe allows for some spectacular photo opportunities.

We made reasonable progress in the warm, still conditions, topping the range after about two hours of solid effort. It was here I heard the first rumblings of exhaustion though, a combination of not enough miles in the legs and a lingering debilitation from having had the flu. I told Ben I wasn't sure whether I was going to get all the way around and we agreed to give it a few more kilometres and see if the feeling passed. 

The Niner RLT continues to impress as a comfortable, capable all-day all-surface bike. 

Sadly it didn't. At the 45km mark, with the worst of the day's climbing behind us, I was spent. We decided to turn back as the ride back to the car was a simpler proposition than the 60-odd kilometres ahead. In hindsight it turned out to be the right decision, despite my disappointment at not completing the loop. A bit more training would help, although I already knew 100km+ in a day might be pushing it my luck after a couple of weeks off the bike. It's better to have tried and failed etc.

The ride back was a confirmation that this ride might be best tackled in spring or late autumn. The loose gravel had us sliding all over the place and in parts we were travelling more slowly downhill that we had on the upward journey, picking our lines with great care lest we come unstuck. A short break at Maydena and we were back on our way, 90km for the day still being a decent enough effort. And the Florentine still beckons for an outing on another day.

4164km so far this year.

2012 was not one for the ages

It's not that it has taken me this long to get around to doing my annual review of my past year's riding, it's more a case that 2012 wasn't really anything for me to crow about. I've long since given up setting goals - given how infrequently I tend to hit them it's a bit of an exercise in futility. For what it's worth, here's the year that was in a nutshell.

All up I rode 4,008km last year. That's somewhat consistent with my result in the previous couple of years, which are themselves down about 2000km on average because I'm doing a lot less Audax riding in Tasmania than I did in Victoria. (Something to do with the terrain!) On the bright side, my average speed is up a shade from 19.6km/h to 20.3km/h, which might be a sign I'm getting faster or it might be assign I'm not doing as many hard rides. Or neither or both, who can tell? There were only 68 rides, an average of 32km long. I blame work. I didn't have time to train for the Alpine Classic, which also meant I wasn't fit for the Oppy. As it ended up I couldn't get the time off work anyway. Does it sound like I need a new job or what? As a plus I finally cracked he 40,000km mark since I took up cycling again a few years back. Some people probably do that in two.

What is interesting is how small the daily and weekly differences are between good and bad years, of couple of kilometers a day or a handful a week. Something to keep in mind in 2013.

The lazy days of winter

It's raining today. It hasn't rained for ages, so it came as a bit of a surprise. The unfamiliar sound of raindrops on the roof helped me make up my mind not to do that 60km I'd promised myself I'd do today. It's an indoor day instead.

It's not like I'm looking too hard for an excuse. April has been a very slack month for me. We're 20 days in and I've ridden three times for a total of 175km. It's a poor effort, my worst month to date in nearly two years. I've fallen out of the habit of commuting to work. I thought it had only been a few weeks but it's been six. The year started well with a 760km month, followed by 630km and then 550km. That's a graph heading in the wrong direction! I've fallen from 217th out of 5,020 riders on bikejournal.com to 625th. and I'm about 900km behind my target mileage to reach 10,000km by December 31 and 1,200km behind the guy currently in 217th on bikejournal. Not sure what happened to being keen to see winter.

The rot started when I took a few days off after the MAD ride on April 1 to recover from a sore achilles tendon in my right leg. Then at Easter I had a writing assignment. Then a trip to Sydney. I'm not sure what excuse I had this week - laziness I suspect. Hopefully it's just a passing phase of poor motivation. I winterised the bike this morning, putting the lights back on and fitted mudguards. It's time to try a little harder.