M1 Cycles

Showing posts with label Richmond. Show all posts

Monday, December 31, 2012

Rapha 500: The Final Day

It appears that mother nature has cottoned on to our method of rising early to beat the wind for today the wind started howling at 2:30am and this is a little early to get up even for us!

Today is our last day on the road and we have 56k to complete our Rapha 500 journey to Hobart. Before we hit the road, let me give you some tips from the first time tourer:
1. Be prepared to ride slow. Forget the averages of the saturday smash or even the sundy hundy's - if you average 20, you're hammering.
2. Sun sleeves and a helmet with a beak is essential. Forget looking like a pro whilst touring.
3. Pack light. Start by packing what you think you need in your panniers and then put half back in the cupboard - if you have two of anything, you have have too much!

Enjoy your last day of 2012 and we'll see you in Hobart!

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Rapha 500: Day 5 Complete

Today started out as a team time trial - team Trek made up of myself and Hef and team S (evil word) made up of Helga, Jann and Smirinoff - not their real names but they spoke broken English and we could hardly understand them. Anyway, anyone who was riding a bike today had the same idea - be on the road early to beat the headwind. Right, back to the time trial. It was all over about 2k out of town, team S had the pedal down as they had to be in Hobart by 11 for a brewery tour!

As we plodded along we had a few bergs to roll over including Break-me-Neck and Bust-me-Gal which by now didn't phase us to much, but the downhill run off Bust-me-Gal was more of a ride out of a theme park with squally winds and panniers laden with GB trees!

5k out of Richmond all teamwork went out the window and Kittstar made a solo break up the final climb, hoping for a cruisey run downhill to the finish - but the headwind put a stop to that and I had to pedal flat out down the hill just to hit 35k/hr. But for the record I still held Hef off for the win!

Our K tally to date now sits at an odd 444k with one day of riding left... Here's to a break in the weather tomorrow.

Rapha 500: Pre Day 5

Today I'm excited - we're on our way to Richmond! I'm not so excited about the lumps that lay between here and there, but as Zulu said yesterday "welcome to touring!".

Hef is keen to get on the road and beat the winds that are expected again today so I must run..... Or perhaps ride....

"Smile"