Hell Ride

Nice ride in the sunshine (and cranking head wind) before work.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/13542667

Not sure if the link will work, you may need to sign in. You may also need to change the units to metric in settings if you’re interested

You should have waved - was coming back through Ricketts Point when you guys went past. Gorgeous morning.

Stu

Yeh, it was getting a bit sketchy there as usual. Loads of fun though as always.

Often see it, rarely join it :stuck_out_tongue:

I do love it. It’s fast, hectic and just part of my training that I can’t replicate on my own.

Do you do it every saturday Heatseeker? Been riding beach rd for six years and iv always been too wimpy to try it.

Really depends if or what races I’ve got coming up. I’ll be trying to do it most weeks now leading into crit season.

As a rule I don’t usually just sit in the bunch or really roll turns. When I’m feeling ok I try to use it like interval training. The bunch will be sitting on 45 - 50km/h and I’ll try and smash off the front til I’m really blown, they still take a bit to catch you so it really pushes you past your limit, then you’ve got to try and recover in the bunch and do it again.

That wasn’t really what panned out today, it was really windy so I was just rolling turns with the boys.

I’m not sure if you can open the link fully but if you can go to the ‘play’ tab where you can overlap the graphs if you’re interested. You’ll see speed, h/r etc and see if you think you’re up for it.

You should just give it a crack. If it’s a fitness thing you’re worried about, just stay in until you get spat and try to get a bit further next time. If it’s a riding in the bunch that worries you, it can be a bit messy at times but if you hold your line and stay near the front as much as possible you’ll be ok. There’s very rarely a crash on it unlike rides like North rd etc.

I hope this helps a bit, if you want to know anymore just PM me or whatever.

Cheers dude, thats awesome. Riding in a pack isnt an issue, done that for years, but the urban legend goes that your fitness has to be pretty good to do it. I’ll come down next Saturday and see how long i last. Be good to have a chat if your out and about.

Yeh, no problem.

I always look at the fitness thing like this with bunch rides: Just hang in there as long as you can as I said. If you get spat just try and make sure you get a bit further than you did last time. Eventually you’ll make it all the way, then after that you can start rolling turns.

Just a couple of words on the bunch. When there’s no traffic behind it it is fairly common for it to take over both lanes (3-5 wide). The front 20ish will rotate turns all the while people will be moving up to the front on the righ hand side to join the turns and others sliding off back into the main volume usually on the left. That’s a general guide depending on wind direction etc Also, be careful when the ride overtakes other slow bunches, the speed difference can be high sometimes and you can get caught or be dangerous changing your line suddenly.

And STOP at all red lights.

And ride a geared bike obviously, in the hands of most mortals a fixed gear in a bunch like that will be dangerous and frowned upon.

Thats all fine, i was a roadie before i was into fixed gears. sounds like a bit of fun
Thanks heaps for the info, might see you down there next week.

Thanks for sharing! I really hope I can find some road rides like this when I get back to Melbourne.

No problem. If you want a list of all the good regular road training rides in Melbourne let me know.

or just see here:

Thanks! This helps a lot!

that blog in general helps a lot.

i get the feeling wade alone has done more for cycling in melbourne than bicycle victoria and CSV combined…

co-signed. plenty of good honest writing in there…

anyone doing it this saturday?
Ill be there short of cyclone.

I’m in at this stage.

yep i agree

though you don’t have to do much to do more than BV.