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My girlfriend, Justine, works for a large legal firm in Melbourne that's putting together a team to ride in the Around the Bay in a Day charity fun-ride. It's a 210km ride around Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay.
For some reason she thought it'd be a good idea for us to sign up.
The first training session was this Sunday. We rock up at 8.30 on our unmodified chunky-tired hybrids, dressed only in shorts and two t-shirts against the bitter cold of a southern winter the day before our solstice. I carried a backpack with water and extra clothing for the both of us. The team ride was a 40km training session around the hilliest parts of Melbourne. Which isn't saying much - L.A. it ain't.
The next team member to show up is a ferociously fit lawyer named Lloyed, on what looks like about $5000 worth of road bike. You know the type - ultra-thin tires but with amazing depth, funking carbon-fibre frame with built-in gadgets. Lloyd was wearing a full lycra body suit, that even covered his cleated riding shoes. We'd never met him before and after a quick round of introductions he cast a dubious eye over our bikes and said:
"I don't think I'd be game to ride those things 200 kilometres."
Which of course, put us in an optimistic frame of mind.
We were hoping for the remaining riders to show up closer to our standard of dress and gear - but to no avail. The only other riders to show up were geared-up simmilarly to our friend Lloyd right down to the lycra.
This wasn't a good start.
Nevertheless we set out. We'd never done drafting before, but you better believe we made as much use of it as possible.... for about 10 or 15 kms, until we got seperated by a father and daughter team, two of the hundreds of other cyclists also training on Sunday. After that we were on our own.
Made it tho. Did the 40 kms, came home, ate a huge stodgy meal and proceeded to fall asleep....
And we'll do it all again this week.
And as soon as we can afford it, put on some decent road-tires onto our bikes....
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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