Category Archives: Weather

The weather has a significant impact on life of a cyclist. Knowing how to dealt with is critical to safe and enjoyable cycling

Marv’s bike log…January 2018…where did 2017 go??

Dear Rouleurs,

As MMT’s age creeps towards the big….5…0….  sigh, he’s noticed that days just keeping slipping by at an increasing rate…boo.  There is so much to do and so many places to ride.  However, summer 2018 style has been a particularly pleasant and January was an excellent month for cycling, with lots of sun, some rain and strangely, quite a bit of humidity. The humidity came care of some heat trough that lodged itself over SE-Australia for a few weeks.  Some mornings, MMT could close his eyes and feel the warm warm moist air and think that he was in Thailand.  Ah…that’s proof that MMT is in desperate need of a holiday 😉

January was significant for a couple of other events.  First, MMT completed the ridiculous flaming, dog poo covered, jumping hoop, obstacle course that was re-applying to work with his current employer.  More on that in March, MMT hopes.  Second, MMT returned back to  the RCC crew and completed a number of speedy south side rides. Finally, MMT completed the 65km course of Cadel Evan’s Peoples Ride on a very muggy Saturday morning down in Geelong.  The last two points contributed to a bumper result for January.   Here’s my monthly graph for Janaury 2018.  Already, MMT is up on monthly target, achieving a very productive 800km even. That’s a pretty good start.

On the back of that work, MMT’s Strava graph is also very consistent.  As stated before the weather has been very good so, riding 21 out of possible 31 days, means really solid workouts on the bike.  This makes MMT very, very happy :-).  MMT’s ride log can be found here.

Before signing off, a digression about this log.  One of the things that MMT was ruminating over during the Christmas holidays was what kind of target, he should set for 2018.  Afterall, whilst MMT was YAFFed many times in 2017, he still managed nearly 8,000km.  Which is not bad for a 48 year old “Clydesdale” with a bad back, who is desperately trying to keep his weight down to something that starts with a ‘9’.  So what to do??  Well, part of the answer lies in doing a few Strava challenges to keep motivated and continuing to ride with RCC.  The final annual MMT decided on was 7500km, or approximately 145km a week.

Whole point of this effort, was three fold:

  1. Cycling is fun and MMT wants to get better at it.
  2. MMT would like to loose about 10 kg this year.
  3. MMT is aiming to complete an “l’eroica” style event in Italy or Spain, to celebrate his 50th Birthday.

So really, the 145Km target is meant to be way of getting to those goals, rather just counting kms. So there it is, why MMT keeps churning Kms and blogs.

Until next blog, ride safe.

Marv

Marv does the Cadel Evans Peoples Ride 2018

Dear Rouleurs,

Last Saturday, yours truly completed the middle distance course (65km) on the Cadel Evans Peoples Ride.  MMT did the 111km version last year, which in hindsight not the smartest of ideas, given he was still recovering from pneumonia.  That experience and the threat (and actual occurrence…) of some truly dreadful weather, scared MMT off this year.  The last 15 km of last year’s ride is something that still lingers in MMT’s mind.  Oh well.

This time MMT drove down on the morning of the event, parked in the back streets and just got to the start line ot 7am.  MMT then had to hang around 30 minutes, before being able to roll across the startline.  There were some 3,500 fellow cyclists there for the event.    Honestly, it looked a lot more than that. This photo has been creatively stolen from the Cadel Evans Road race site. Yep, C’est moi, right up the back.  Next time MMT be there at 6.30 am, to get a better spot.

 

The actual 65km ride is  ride is a pretty straightforward course.  MMT is surprised that its supposed to have 365m of climbing.  The course and profile are provided below.

2018 Course Profile

2018 Course Route

This is what MMT’s Strava account had to say about the ride.

so here’s MMT’s photo gallery.

   Getting ready for the big event…    Waiting at the start line.
   Still waiting at the start line    Crossing the start line…finally after a 30 minute wait.
   Feed zone at the beach.    View along 13th Beach.
   Another view of the feed zone.    On the road to Geelong.
  How cool is this racing trike?   Finish line in sight..hooray 😉
   Main stage in the village.    In the the village, is this Puff’s cousin?
  Team BMC signing autographs.  Looking towards the merchandising tent.

Overall, the 2018 event was really well organised.  The event seems to be growing, year to year, which is a great sign for cycling in Victoria. MMT thinks that short course of 35Km may have attracted larger numbers of recreational cyclists as opposed to Wannbes or MAMILs like MMT ;-).  About the only negative MMT experienced was the event merchandising.  The move to Santini has resulted quite nicely designed kit.  But the fitting was skin tight in the jersey which is a) a bad look on MAMILs and b) became a sweaty plastic bag after 10Km of riding.  MMT was really unimpressed with the $30 price tag of the event’s cotton cap.  MMT even overheard a fellow cyclist complaining about the quality of the cap, whilst in the Merchandising Tent.  Last year’s kit was much better value.

Until next time, ride safe.

MMT

Time to build an Ark??

Dear Rouleurs,

MTT was walking past one his workplace’s TVs when he noticed Emergency Services putting out a state wide warning for Victoria, for the next three days.  A quick search of BOM revealed the following:

Significant and widespread flooding is likely across most of Victoria from Friday onwards.

A large high pressure system near New Zealand continues to direct a hot and humid northeasterly airstream over Victoria. A trough of low pressure crossing the Bight will reach western Victoria late today then become slow moving. A low pressure system will develop on the trough over northwestern Victoria on Friday then drift slowly southeastwards over the weekend.

Heavy rain and scattered thunderstorms are likely to develop in the far west during Thursday night into Friday before extending across the remaining parts of the State during Friday. The heavy rain and thunderstorm activity will continue on Saturday and Sunday.

Three day totals of around 100-200 mm are expected across most of northern and central regions of the State. Elsewhere totals are likely to be between 30 and 100 mm. The highest totals are expected over the northeast ranges, where three day totals may exceed 250 mm.

GOOD LORD…Is this really how summer is going to start?? The synoptic charts are spectacular.

I’m guessing that I won’t be doing too much riding on the weekend…boo 🙁

Until ride safe, avoiding ridiculous thunder storms and floods.

Marv

‘Chapeau’, Monsieur Bling !!!!

.

Dear Rouleurs…Goddamit….

MMT’s mind is doing a mean impersonation of a cement mixer, rolling over and over the gunk of his employer’s latest corporate restructure. Worst still the wind has been blowing its proverbial’s off, providing shiver inducing head winds on MMT’s normal ride routes.  MMT is so sick of both these things.  So in amongst the hype of new ways of sacking people, ahem, the Tour de France concluded.

And what a race it was.  MMT can remember reading a book about the history of the TDF, where Henri Desgrange described his ideal TDF as a race where only one cyclist finished and was declared the winner.  Fortunately this year’s race didn’t come close to that apocalyptic standard.  However, of the 198 starters, only 167 finished.  The chaos of Stage 9 alone, resulted in 11 rouleurs either DNF or outside the time cut-off.

Chris Froome cemented his reputation of being the greatest drug free cyclist post world war II. But for MMT, the stand out performer was Australia’ s own Michael Matthews, the 2017 winner of the Green Jersey.  Rather have MMT wax on lyrically about, the man they call Bling here’s a plagiarised copy of what that great cycling tome, Melbourne’s Sun Herald had to say.

MMT can’t really improve that.  Except to say ‘chapeau’.

Until next time, ride safe

Marv