Showing posts with label WINDY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WINDY. Show all posts

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.





Saturday, December 29, 2012

Rapha 500: Update 5

Can anyone read weather charts? Sneaky Pete here, filling in for Kittstar, who informs me that the internet keeps getting blown off the wires in Orford, Tasmania. I checked the weather stats for today that they would have encountered and found this snippet...
Orford weather
Take a look at those wind speeds and directions!!
Does anyone know what direction it is between Bicheno and Orford? I've had a look on a map and I reckon it's roughly SSW. So I'm sort of working out why Kittstar had a wry little chuckle when I scoffed about a little 100k ride into a 'bit of wind'. Not sure how long this day's ride took but I think Kitty mentioned 5+ hours into an average 50kmh (roughly) headwind, straight on the nose along terrain similar to the Malborough stretch. I am happy to report they are still alive...
So who's up for a quick trip around Northeast Tassie with Kittstar and Hef?