Mr Abbott's beater bike

It's reasonably well known federal opposition leader Tony Abbott is a keen cyclist and sometime triathlete. There were some nice shots of him riding up and down Black Mountain in Canberra braving the pre-dawn chill in the middle of the week. Keen cyclists learned something about the man who would be prime minister:

1. He has a winter beater bike in Canberra. It looks to be a steel-framed Merinda running an old eight- or nine-speed group by the look of it. The bike he's most often seen out on in Sydney is a carbon fibre Trek.

2. He's put his front wheel in backwards. The quick release lever is on the wrong side.

3. In addition to that, his front brake quick release is open.

4. It's not as obvious from this photograph, but his saddle is a little high.

Friends don't let friends ride carbon, but would you vote for a man who likes an each way bet?

(Update. I'm reliably informed Mr Abbott's beater has an aluminium frame. Shows how much I know.)

2111km so far this year.

I spoil myself again

I bought myself a natty Gilles Berthoud handlebar bag as a birthday present last week to match the little panniers I bought a while back. (Bless the strong Australian dollar and Internet shopping.) After using a handlebar bag so successfully on my tour last year I decided I'd spend the money to buy a bag which would enable me to stash things like arm warmers and beanies while on the go and having easy access to snacks and camera et cetera. I was keen on the Berthoud because it sits low - below the level of the handlebar - unlike the Topeak bag I was using.

The Berthoud bag hasn't disappointed: it looks a million dollars and sits nicely on my Nitto front rack. It is certainly commodious. I did have to relocate my headlight onto the rack, but that was no big deal.

I have a a cold at the moment and I'm unable to ride beyond short jaunts up and down the driveway. Perhaps tomorrow I'll take if for a test on the rough roads between here and town. The only drawback with such a nice piece of kit is that all that French elegance makes the Crosscheck look a little shabby. Perhaps a new frame is in order. With the Australian dollar doing so well, it's certainly being considered.

Sometimes it's the little things.

I'd planned with Bicycle Tim and Benny to go for a ride on Saturday morning and for some reason was really looking forward to riding the Bianchi. After commuting on the Crosscheck all week the red racer makes a nice change of pace, so I was up early, switching the lightweight tyres for something more durable before I put the bike in the car for the quick trip into town.


Once there and unloaded, it only took a dozen pedal strokes to realise something was badly wrong with the gears. The right brifter was all, well mushy, and the gears at first changed sluggishly and then jammed. Bugger. It didn't take long to figure out the rear gear cable had snapped.


I've heard of this happening, but I've never experienced it myself: the cable had broken inside the shifter about an inch from the nipple and my attempts to change gears had only succeeded in winding the frayed remains further inside the mechanism. It looked to me like my plans for a ride were over.


Hoping Tim might arrive shortly with a spare cable (he did!) I unwrapped the double thickness of bar tape and took the lever off. There followed an hour or fiddling with improvised tools before I was finally able to coax the cable end out. Five minutes later, I was good to go, and we had an extremely pleasant 60km ride with a coffee stop in Cygnet. 


It was a bastard of a repair job and would have been almost impossible to do by the roadside, almost but not quite enough to drive a man back into the arms of simple, old fashioned and ever-reliable friction shifting. How close must this cable have been to failing during the entire Oppy? It had literally two or three more shifts left in it, finally giving way in the next 200 metres I rode. How lucky was I not to DNF because of a dozen strands of cheap wire?  Here's a photo of what is possibly the smallest thing that nearly ruined a Saturday for me:

Guess who will be making a point of inspecting and changing his cables more regularly now? And carrying a spare!


1690km so far this year.

Travelling light

When I did a week of touring last year on the way to the Mallee Routes audax ride I cut my load down to the bare minimum and it worked really well. I had everything I needed and I was able to cover good distances each day without feeling I was being slowed down by too much gear. I made a mental note to write something on ultralightweight cycle touring for this blog but then of course forgot all about it. My memory was jogged when I was going through some photos today. 


The photo to the top left (ignore the appalling hotel bedspread background) contains everything I took for a week of touring. From left to right, the most important bits were: wool jersey, merino t-shirt, coolmax t-shirt and lightweight long pants; three pairs of and winter and summer gloves; cycling shorts and longs, lightweight off-bike shoes, toiletries, tools, lock, torch and phone. The panniers and handlebar bag are on the right. Not shown is my rain jacket.


Now this amount of gear was just fine for a hotel-based adventure where a tent and cooking gear aren't needed. That's the sort of touring I enjoy the most, it's not quite the old "credit card and toothbrush" experience but it's pretty close. 


The whole load fitted into my two small panniers, racktop back and handlebar bag. 


The wool jersey I bought last year is particularly handy for this sort of trip because it can be worn on and off the bike and can go a few days without the need for laundering. Similarly the lightweight merino undershirts which can double as t-shirts if needed. The coolmax shirts dry extremely quickly so they can be washed in a hotel sink.  


Next time I think I'll ditch the rack top back and instead buy one of the lovely Gilles Berthoud handlebar bags instead. I've declared my undying love for handlebar bags already, I just need to save my pennies. I'd probably also ditch the spare shoes, because they took up a fair bit of room in my bags. I've also refined my toolkit down considerably. 


I'm planning another trip later this year. The lessons I learned on the Mallee Routes trip last year will come in very hand indeed.


1632km so far this year.

Oppy 2011

The Oppy is my favourite ride, it has been for years. It's a challenge, but with the company and support of a bunch of good friends and some excellent night riding thrown in. The idea is to cover 360km or more in 24 hours. It requires some determination but is within the reach of the ordinary cyclist, of which I am decidedly one. This year's Oppy - my fourth - was easily the best. (2007, 2008, and 2009 rides here for comparison.) Sir Hubert Opperman, whom the ride commemorates, was Australia's greatest endurance cyclist.

There were plenty of reasons it was good, but most of all it was good because I was far fitter than I've been for a while. Having dropped some weight (about six kilograms) and putting in some hard miles in the leadup has made me a much stronger rider, enough to realise dropping another six kilograms would make me even better. 

  

There were 11 of us in the Lairs peloton this year, riding from Tooberac, doing a big loop around Shepparton, crossing briefly into NSW before heading through Echuca to Rochester.

The weather conditions were perfect, still and warm during both day and night, and not a drop of rain. We were treated to both a delightful sunset but also the rise and company of the largest full moon in years. We made the most of the conditions too, speeding through the first couple of hundred kilometres before nightfall when the something unusual happened: we actually sped up. 

Through the night we raced, sitting between 25km/h and 28km/h for long stretches and the miles fairly rolled by. We kept our rest breaks short thanks to the experience of some of our early rides when we paid the price of being slow out of controls. We had discussed earlier the option of extending the ride to a nice round 400km but for some reason enthusiasm diminished as the night drew on. Next year perhaps.

The only interruption to my otherwise perfect ride was a puncture at kilometre 336, about two kilometres from the football club were were to sleep. Quickly fixed, we were back on our way and I was able to full enjoy three hours sleep until were were up at six and on the road at seven. The last 30 kilometres into Rochester coincided with the sunrise. The brass band kicked up as we rode down the main street and the small crowd clapped and cheers as we pulled in to the park by the Oppy statue for the traditional round of backslaps and handshakes and team photographs. I'm a little tired this afternoon, but stoked that such a tough ride went so well for all of us.

There's an app for that

The humble cycle computer has come a long way since I was a kid. There's no end of GPS-enabled pieces of kit with heart rate monitors and watt meters and other handy gadgets. Though I am pretty conscientious about keeping track of my riding data, a simple cycle computer has been quite sufficient for me for the past few years, though I've been tempted by some of the bike mounted GPS units - until I see the price!

I've played with a few iPhone apps of late and have been thoroughly impressed by one in particular. Cyclemeter has all sorts of handy functions I never knew I needed. It tracks and records your ride of course, but also offers simple one-click uploading to Facebook and Twitter, calendar integration and plenty of other impressive features. And if you so desire it will tweet or update your Facebook page at set time or distance intervals and read out the responses from your friends. It auto stops and starts. My favourite feature is the voice announcements (which I have set to alert me every kilometre because I find them so charming) in which an Englishwoman's voice tells you how far and fast you have gone. As a bonus, the app is very economical on the phone's battery, provide you ride with the screen turned off. I tend to leave it in my back jersey pocket, the voice announcements cheerily reminding me that it's still working away.

1124km so far this year.

A perfect morning's excursion

I rode a very pleasant 18km to the bus this morning. It was warm, though the sun had not been up long. The blanket of fog I descended through zooming down the hill from home didn't quite reach the valley floor. Just three cars passed me in the 40 minutes it took me to ride along the rough dirt road to Huonville and the bus. I knew all the drivers and all of them waved as they slowed and gave me a wide berth passing. The wide Schwalbe tyres on the Crosscheck soaked up the bumps on the gravel road beautifully. The ride home was about the same, but without the traffic. We're a one car family for a while and though it means some minor inconvenience, it also means I'm able to get a some more time on the bike. 


It's February, which means FebFast: a month off the grog. As a challenge, my household has cut its alcohol consumption from a case (or two) of beer a week to zero. Into the bargain I've given up soft drink and bacon and egg rolls from the work canteen. If it's going to be a month of abstinence, it might as well be a good one.


As I've probably complained here before I have struggled to find a regular ride that isn't so hilly as to make daily riding exhausting or too clogged with traffic to be enjoyable. Apart from a 300m hill at the home end, the road from here to town is pretty flat by Tasmania standards. It's a nice ride: slightly harder coming home because of the hill, but pleasant enough to do every day. I've racked up 200km this week which is about twice my average. I can read on the bus - and the paper I work for pays reporters $50 for book reviews, which means my travel almost pays for itself.


Normally I'd be buggered after a week of work and riding. But the exercise and improved  diet means I've dropped about 4kg in three weeks and suddenly I'm riding faster and with less effort. I feel good when I get out of bed in the morning and don't seem to be as tired in the evenings. Diet and exercise huh? Who would have thought it?


I'm wondering how long this pleasant experience will last. I'm pretty committed to see out the next six weeks until I ride the 360km Opperman All Day Trial Summer in Tasmania is brief. This year hasn't been much of a summer at all but even so in a week or two as the days continue to get shorter I'll be leaving home in the dark, which isn't too big a problem because I have lights and sunrise won't be too far away. It will cool down, but I have warm enough clothes for that. Daylight Savings ends at the end of March, so it will be dark at both ends of the day, which means a man has to be pretty determined to push on. And I'll get my car back in a week or two and I'll have to ride past it each morning to the gate. It's temping, always tempting, despite the pleasures of the ride. We shall see. It's easy to make rash promises when its warm and dry. 


570km so far this year.

The 2010 annual report.

So another year is over. Hope your 2010 was good, though it won't go down in the annals as one of my better cycling years. I manged 5036km which is my lowest total since 2005.  Generally I aim for 7500 or so and manage 6000. Still, I'll never argue mileage is measure of fun.


In my defence, there were a couple of things which held me back. I skipped the Opperman All Day Trial this year, so there's 360km of the missing 1000km straight away. I also spent November in China where I didn't have access to a bike for most of the month. Then there a the run-in with a Metro bus in April which meant I no longer had the nerve to ride in what passes for peak hour traffic in Hobart. As a result of that, I spent a lot more time in the gym this year instead of on the road.


Enough of the readings from the Big Book of Excuses; my 5036km came up in 264 hours and at an average of 19.02km/h. I'm 2km/h slower this year, not because of the ravages of age, but because I'm riding a lot more hills and a lot more gravel so it's hard to compare with years when most of my riding was fast road commutes. I passed the 30,000km and the 1500 hour mark since resuming riding in January 2005. I managed 144 rides, or 2.19 a week. It's the first year in five years my weekly average was under 100km, at 96.85km.


On the bright side, I cracked my first thousand-kilometre month in September, with 750km in one lovely week of the "Tour de Nord", including a memorable 300km one-day ride in the Mallee Routes. Reviewing the year's photos I remember a touring weekend up at Deloraine and plenty of trips out along the dirt roads of the Tahune. I also (just) completed the 200km Alpine Classic and the Winter Challenge and had my first go at bikepacking. 


On the topic of this blog: there were 27 posts in 2010. I had 6,700 visitors from 81 countries, Australia and the USA being the most frequent and Panama, Latvia, Mozambique and Iceland among the dozen or so with one visitor each. Visitors came directly, via Google searches (Schmidt Edelux, "flying with a bike" and "STI gears" being the most common search terms)  or via the websites of dear friends in the international randonneur community. Cheers to the folk  who arrived here after searching for "slowest up a hill" and "morbidly obese cyclist".


Who knows what 2011 has in store. I've set myself bold goals here before, which I always seem to fall short of, so I'm going to refrain this year. But to everyone who wanders by here from time to time, wherever you may ride this year, may the the wind be at your back through the whole of 2011 and beyond.


66km so far this year. 

Gravel grinders of the Weld

This blog is still active, despite appearances to the contrary. 2010 hasn't been one of my better cycling years because of personal reasons and also because I spent November more of less off the bike in China - more of that in a future post.

The approach of the festive season means the weather in Tasmania should in theory at least be more conducive to outdoor activities. For the six or so months of the year from December it's a mad scramble to get as much bushwalking and kayaking and cycling in as possible. Finally having some time off meant I could open my season with a bikepacking trip down into the forests of the south-west.

Benny had planned another Bottles and Chains overnight pub trip this week but the dozen or so people who said they'd be there dwindled to one: me. We decided some gravel road bikepacking would be in order and met in Huonville at 11am Monday to pick a route. We had a rough idea we'd head out along the quiet  forestry roads into the Weld river valley and after some discussion and some advice from the nice folk at the Huon Environment Centre we set off along the North Huon Road in the rain and the mud.

About 15km into the ride comes the ascent of the Denison Range, which is long and steep and unpleasant in the cold rain we were intermittently being pelted with. We decided to make the top then decide whether to push on, which we did after some discussion of pulling the pin if things didn't stay tolerably fine. We ran into a neighbour of mine, reknowned for his local knowledge, who told us there was a serviceable shelter at our destination at Glovers Bluff and we pushed on up the soft and freshly graded dirt climb towards the Ta Ann veneer mill.

Turning off, we rode through some recently clearfelled coupes where Ben stopped to take some photos before snapping the chain his singlespeed. That was quickly fixed with the aid of a spare link and we stopped a short distance down the road for a break at the Weld River Bridge before walking parts of the big climb on the other side. Glovers Bluff was only a couple of kilometres easy travelling from the top.

What a sensational spot it was. We explored the top of the Bluff, taking in the sweeping views over the Weld Valley and the nearby logging coupes before descending a short distance to the shelter, which to our surprise was of recent construction and quite substantial enough to make for a comfortable sleeping spot. Our evening's survival assured, we wandered down to the nearby lookout for more photos and beers.

Back at the shelter we polished off the last of the beers, ate and sat by the fire telling yarns and talking bikes as we awaited the arrival of the third member of the party, Liam, who was intending to arrive later. We'd not long given up and gone to bed when he arrived around 10pm, with more beers to his eternal credit. Liam revealed he hadn't quite ridden the whole way: in fact his car was parked a couple of hundred metres up the track.

The car was to come in pretty handing in the morning when more icy rain fell and we decided the prospect of a 60km return ride in the rain was slightly less appealing than a trip in the car, even if our journey was mostly downhill. Bikes disassembled we bade Glovers Bluff adeiu for the time being: I have no doubt we'll visit this lovely spot again.

4916km so far this year.

Mallee Routes revisited

The ultimate destination of my tour was the small north-west Victorian town of Hopetoun, where the Mallee Routes is held each year. It's a great event, best when the wind isn't blowing too strong across the seemingly endless plains. It's a tremendous gathering of audax riders, who pack the local pub for a festive dinner on the Friday night before the ride.

Last year was windy and I didn't finish the 300km ride after being talked into the longer distance. This year I allowed myself to become convinced 400km was a good idea.

The weather on Saturday was superb, with light winds and mild temperatures. The usual quick run down towards Warracknebeal saw the quick and the bold speed away and the slower and more cautious riders like me were content to drift back in the field. It's a long day to be riding at someone else's pace.

Onward towards Birchip, and still feeling good, the first 100km rolled by in just over four hours of riding time. Sea Lake rolled by, and another feed, which slowed me down a bit and though the second hundred took about the same time, my legs were definitely feeling the miles by now.

The leg to Patchewollock was where things got harder. Our group of two became three for a while and then four as we tackled the undulating sandhills to Speed where a short break allowed us to turns lights on and don reflective gear.

After a welcome feed at the Patchewollock control, the 50km back to Hopetoun came after dark and though we were still making good progress, it became obvious that finishing 400km by 2am as I had planned was going to be a big ask. I was getting tired and my hamstrings were giving me some grief and the prospect of another six hours on the bike for the 100km leg out to Wonga Hut in the Wyperfeld National Park just didn't appeal at all. When we completed our loop to Hopetoun, I decided to pull the pin.

Quitting isn't an easy decision to make, particularly after a DNF last year, but I was knackered and simply didn't have another 100km in my legs. Shame, but I'm pretty happy with my ride all the same - which took 15 and a half hours including breaks. My decision to pull out was vindicated in the morning when I found out my riding companion finally finished around 5am. Bravo to him, but I just wasn't up to a night that tough. And there's always next year for another crack. I'm disappointed not to finish what I set out to do, but I had a bloody good time and that, after all, is what it should be all about.

Into the Mallee

I love riding in the Mallee country, it's such a vast and interesting landscape, so very Australian: long straight empty roads and red soils and massive farms punctuated by small towns with a pub and a shop and not much else. There is plenty of history and in spring there are of wildflowers and the long plains dotted with sparse trees lend themselves to a rather meditative state of mind. Today was another wonderful day, blessed by good luck and good winds.

We caught the train north from the delightful Pyramid Hill to the border town of Swan Hill were we were to start our ride. I braved the heavy traffic to cross the Murray River into New South Wales for a few minutes, for my own amusement. After a spot of lunch we stopped in at the Visitors and Community Comfort Centre for a wee break. What would have been a short stop took nearly half an hour as we chatted to the delightful older ladies who keep it going and were interviewed by a reporter they summoned to meet the intrepid long distance cyclists. The Comfort Centre is a wonderful facility which every town should have, long may they prosper. Travelling by bike is such an easy way to meet people, who are often keen to chat and share their stories and hear ours. We have some new friends in Swan Hill.

Back on the road for our 72km zap to Sea Lake it was apparent our luck with the wind was holding and we barreled along at speeds not normally reached by cycle tourists. We punctuated the ride with sprints for the crest of anything resembling a hill, something in pretty short supply in these parts. An hour or so saw us in Ultima, where we enjoyed an ice cream in the general store before the final push to Sea Lake - a town I've not visited before and which is close to our goal of Hopetoun. Another push of 60km tomorrow and we'll be at the home of the Mallee Routes with a rest day in hand. Apparently there's 50 riders expected for the various distances. Even the weather forecast seems favorable. Here's to the weekend.

Flood crossing, Central Victoria

Fortunately the worst we've faced so far is wet feet, though there are towns nearby sandbagged and evacuated.

A brilliant day

I've never forgotten how much I love touring, though yesterdays ride was a good chance to renew the relationship.

We started the day with a visit to Rochester's delightful Sir Hubert Opperman museum before setting out in warm and still conditions. The roads in these parts are perfect for cycling - flat and with only light traffic. The effects of the heavy drought-breaking rains made themselves felt with a couple of water crossings, though we were not seriously slowed.

Lunch was at the tiny town if Dingee after about 50km and we stopped for a break at Mitiamo 20km later. The final 20km into Pyramid Hill was more of the same: zooming along at 25km/h marvelling at what a nice day it was. We arrived at the magnificent Pyramid Hill hotel just in time for some cold beers and to learn who was to form the new federal government.

Today's ride has been amended by the flooding - the roads we were intending to travel are deep underwater and blocked by police. A detour by train to Swan Hill should get us around the worst of it by lunchtime and we shall venture forth towards Sea Lake.

About the bag.

I very seldom use a handlebar bar, preferring to carry loads in panniers on a rear rack where they are stable and out of sight. Even so, I've owned one for ages, and drag it out from time to time - like for this trip because I was keen to have a little extra room and it's a handy place to keep a few essentials together.

If I had any doubts about the usefulness of a handlebar bag for touring, I'm now a complete convert. The bag holds all the little items I need during the day and keeps them within easy reach on the go. Sunglasses, gloves, camera are right there and it's a handy place to keep cash and cards. Spare clothing can be stuffed in too as the day warms up. Since it clips off easily and has a shoulder strap, it comes off the bike at stops. It does affect handling slightly, so even after getting used to that slight change, it's best not to put too many heavy items in.

As part of an ultralight touring ensemble, it's hard to beat. My only criticism is that it sits a little high. Perhaps one of the lovely Gilles Berthoud handlebar bags would take me that short step towards perfection.

Onward to Murchison

On the road for the first proper day of our tour, the relatively short hop from Seymour to Murchison. We were on the road by 10 and quickly into a rhythm, slowed only once by water over the road after the heavy rains of Saturday, although the rivers we crossed were all mightily swollen. Lunch in Nagambie then just 20km to Murchison where we found a cheap room in the pub and a few beers and a fine meal downstairs. All in all a fast fine day of touring.

Tour de Nord

Day one of my long-planned tour of central and northern Victoria did not dawn auspiciously. To be fair, the signs weren't good from early last week, with warnings of the heaviest rainfall in a decade but I held out hope that it would somehow pass by and I'd be able to ride the wonderful Spring into Seymour as planned.

It was not to be, with heavy rain and strong winds meaning the ride was cancelled due to flooding in the course and I went back to bed.

The plan, hatched at the Alpine Classic in January, is to ride between two great audax events - the Spring into Seymour and the Mallee Routes, which this year are a week apart. From Seymour to Hopetoun is about 450km, so it's a cruise ride, very flat, though against the prevailing winds.

I'm doing the ride on my trusty old Surly Crosscheck, because it is solid and comfortable and reliable and because it has lights and mudguards and racks but with the right tyres is still capable of a decent turn of speed.

I'm traveling with just my two tiny panniers, a rack and handlebar bags. It's not quite credit card and toothbrush, but the bare minimum so I'm not too bogged down with gear.

After the rain eased yesterday I left Tooborac for the undulating 35km run to Seymour as a little shakedown ride. I'm happy to say everything worked perfectly, despite the drenching I got from a single burst of heavy rain right at the midway point. Today is a 60km roll up the road to Murchison before the 100km days start in earnest. With a clearing forecast, it should be a most enjoyable week.

As I recall.

A few days ago I noticed a bit of noise on the internet talking about a recall of some Surly bikes - Long Haul Truckers and Cross Checks to be precise. Since I own one of both I took more than a passing interest, it sounded serious. The recall seems to apply to complete bikes sold in Australia. something to do with brakes being unsafe.

I did a little research on what it's all about. There are no faulty brakes, despite what some are saying, just a lesson in what is wrong with the product recall system and the Australian Standards for bicycles.

It seems, there is concern that a bike fitted with cantilever brakes and knobby tyres, a snapped front brake cable could mean the suddenly free straddle cable drops and catches a knob and flings the rider over the bars. It has apparently happened once to someone riding a cheap bike with plastic brakes in the United States. The inevitable resulting lawsuit is here.

Such an incident can only happen on bikes without mudguards and with knobby tyres, and only on brakes set up with cantilever brakes which had straddle cables incorrectly set so short they could contact the tyre. Neither of these bikes was sold with knobby tyres. It would also only happen on bikes with no no mudguard or front reflector or light bracket, which would also deflect the cable.

In the real world, if this problem existed, it would apply to all bikes fitted with cantilever brakes. Somebody, somewhere, has decided a "brake cable catch hook" (never heard of it before) is the solution for these two bikes alone rather than correctly setting up and maintaining the bicycle. Keep in mind the only recorded case of a problem occurring happened on a completely different bike, with different tyres, and a roller pulley setup, which again neither of these bikes have.

The level of risk is so close to zero that nobody has seen fit to issue a general warning to the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who may use cantilever brakes, despite the fact it's an easy problem to detect and remedy.

I'm told the Australian Standard now requires the hook for be fitted to all new bikes. As far as I know such a hook is not required in any other country, although the waning popularity of cantilever brakes may explain why it's not more of an issue. It's part of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission crackdown to make sure every bike sold has reflectors, a bell and two working brakes, regardless of whether the owner removes them on the way out of the shop. Surely they have more serious risks to public safety with which to occupy their time.

Winter Challenge: sometimes pain hurts.

They say the time trial is the race of truth. That's true too: a big fat truthy truism of truth. Normally I'm a big fan of the truth. But sometimes it's also ugly.

Since I knew three months ago I'd be riding the 37km time trial in the Winter Challenge I immediately launched myself into a gruelling routine of gym training and weekend cycling. It was showing some results too; my weight dropped several kilograms and I felt fitter and stronger than I had in years. I'd ridden the course and had a target time which would put me just into the top 50% of riders. Everything was going swimmingly. Then I got a cold.

This season's cold is a beauty. It's not at all severe but it did have superb endurance. (Maybe it had been training.) I'm in my fourth fun week of random dry coughing, which did tend to slow my own training down a tad- well stop it really - and help the weight pile back on. So I didn't have high hopes when I fronted up to the start line on Sunday.

As it turned out, for someone who doesn't race at all, I really enjoyed the ride - apart from an exciting flat front tyre which a kindly bystanding bike mechanic fixed for me in the five minutes before the start. Once Bicycle Tim tagged me out after his extremely fast mountain bike leg and I did the cleated hop through the transition area, the open road beckoned.

I made a terrific start. The Winter Challenge course is flat and fast to start off and I was turning a big gear over quickly enough to be a little worried I was going too hard early. My heart rate monitor was showing I was working hard too - in the high 170 beats per minute range, which is about as high as I go but I was feeling good and pushed onward.

The first big test of the ride is the hill up Scotts Road. There was a rider approaching from behind and I got out of the saddle and made a good start up the hill, though gravity bit me hard in the end. The second hill up to the highway was more of a grind. I think this section is where I could show the most improvement.

The first hint of a big looming calf cramp started around the 20km mark, so I eased off a smidge for a few minutes and the threat seemed to pass. Through the downhills and past the Kermandie Pub at the 28km mark with 58 minutes on the clock - about two minutes ahead of the trial run. The wind was my biggest foe in the last ten kilometres, alternating between headwind and tailwind as the road snaked around the riverfront. Although I was getting tired I was really enjoying the sensation of speeding along between 30km/h and 40km/h - once briefly glacing at the computer to note I was surging at 44km/h along the flat.

Fortunately another rider passed me just after the pub and gave me a target to keep in sight. I dug deep and made sure kept her about 20 - 30 metres ahead for the rest of the ride, passing her briefly atop the last small rise out of Franklin before the lactic acid took the edge off my speed. Into the finish in an acceptable 1h23m, which I'm happy with given my lack of training and overall poor fitness.

But in terms of fun, the day was a blast. An average speed of 27km an hour isn't that fast by most racer's standards and my time probably put me three-quarters of the way through the field, I've never ridden so fast for so long. And, as these things usually do, I'm more motivated to get a bit fitter and do even better next time.

The other plus is that my team did really well, particularly for our first attempt. Of the 22 teams in the mixed teams division, we came 13th. Hooray for the Huonville Sauntering Club.

Other highlights included the astoundingly good organisation and the friendly atmosphere of the whole day, winning a cracking pair of expensive-looking sunglasses as a spot prize and finding $5 on the ground just as the Mr Whippy van pulled up. If you're in Tasmania and thinking of having a crack at a multisport event, I highly recommend the Winter Challenge.

3,186km so far this year.

Just in Time

I don't have ads on this blog, which is probably the only reason I'm not a millionaire, but I do like to endorse the odd handy piece of kit that I've found useful. Today's plug is for the StemCAPtain, an accessory you probably never knew you needed.

Since I mainly ride my Surly CrossCheck as as commuter and transport bike, it's been unsurprisingly handy having a dedicated clock to know whether I'm running late for work or whatever vital appointment I'm heading to. They come in a couple of other varieties: compass and photo mount and take about two minutes to fit and make a stylish addition to any bike.

3,149km so far this year.

Bags of fun

I'm getting ready for a week's touring in Victoria in September. It caused some minor angst over which bike to take because the Bianchi, which though it is good and fast for audax riding, has no rack mounts and would be no good for carrying the stuff I'll need for a week on the road. So I'm getting the Crosscheck ready for another road trip.

The tour is a ride from the end of the Spring into Seymour audax ride to the start of the Mallee Routes audax - around 400km over six days, so it's not going to be a big rush. Even so, I'm keen not to be too weighted down by gear.

Enter these rather natty Gilles Berthoud panniers and rack bag. I'd had my eye on them for a while, but the upcoming tour and a rather nice tax return brought them forward a little on the wishlist. They're canvas trimmed with leather and have a capacity of just 9 litres for the panniers and 5 for the rack bag - perfect alone or in combination for audax rides. So I'm going to have to pack light, which suits me just fine.

After using them for the last couple of weeks I'm really impressed by these panniers. They're big enough to carry everything you're likely to need on a commute and nothing more. Being so tiny, I don't even notice them at all - they have no effect on the bike's handling at all. With top hooks and a strap and buckle arrangement, they sit solidly on my tiny Velo Orange rack.

They're handmade - which makes them a tad on the pricey side - but are clearly built to last. I'm delighted with them, but I do have a couple of criticisms. The panniers have no handles for carrying them off the bike; which is a minor daily irritation. And the rack bag didn't have a tab to hold a light, although some unstitching and some needlework on the leather patch on the back today put that right. These minor niggles aside, I reckon these bags and I will do a few miles together over the coming months and years.

3085km so far this year.