Tag Archives: Ginger Ninja

MMT’s 2018 Annual Report

Dear Rouleurs,

MMT has finally got around to reviewing his effort in 2018 and generally seeking to tidy up his blog.

Overall, 2018 was interesting year in the life of MMT.  MMT continued to be amazed by the development of his first daughter, the Ginger Ninja. 
Towards the end of 2018, Team MMT commenced a very exciting project.  The Team Manager, Mrs MMT, became pregnant with team’s second daughter.  At the time of writing, May 2019, that project is at the 33 week mark and progressing well. 

MMT’s efforts through out the year where fairly even, except for the last 3 months, where a 4 week holiday in Spain and the UK, clipped the end of October and start of November.  MMT finished December in style with a 1200km effort, mostly on the back of a Festive 500 effort.  MMT managed to attend 2 people’s rides, the Cadel Evans in January and the MS Cycle April. MMT didn’t really ride much with RCC. The Southside ride seemed to become a 40Km/h smashfest suitable for younger or lighter riders.

MMT’s beloved AFL football team, Richmond Tigers won the minor premiership, but ran out of gas against an impressive Collingwood in the Preliminary Final.  Going home at half time is a very bitter memory.  The alternative of sitting next to the Collingwood Cheer Squad at the city end was not an option.  Damn you Mason Cox!!!

So onto cycling, here’s bunch of pretty charts to present.  The first one shows MMTs yearly worm.   The dip at October and November reflects Team MMT’s northern hemisphere holiday.  The sharp kick at the end is the Festive 500.  The overall total of 8,269 kilometres was the first time MMT has managed more than 8,000 kilometres in a calendar

The second, has the same data set, except its month by month.  This graph shows how MMT’s efforts seesawed between months of 800+ km and 600+km for the first 9 months of the years. 

The final graph shows my ride activity month on month.  MMT averaged nearly 30 rides a month, through a mix of commuting, early morning circuits and longer weekend rides.

So in summary the numbers for 2018 look like this:

So in an average month MMT, does 29 rides, for 689km, which takes about 29 hours and burns 16,428 calories.  His overall average speed was 23.15 km/h.  MMT wonders what he could achieve if he were 10kg lighter.

Until next blog, ride safe

Marv

Take a bow Alberto, you just won the Ronde

Dear Rouleurs,

This week MMT is very,very sleep deprived. A good portion of that sleep debt accrued last Sunday night. SBS, broadcast live, the last 170km of the Ronde van Vlaanderen 2019. MMT made to the 43 km mark before his need for sleep became greater than his need to see who won.

MMT had a quick scan of Eurosports on Monday morning to discover that, a 25 year old Italian Alberto Bettiol from Education First had won. Bettiol executed a perfectly timed attack with 17 km to go, on the Oude Kwaremont and then held off, a bunch containing most of the pre-race favourites.

Bettiol completed the brutual 270km course in Six hours 18 minutes and 49 seconds after setting off from Antwerp. Bettiol dropped down into time trial mode to the finish alone as his rivals hesitated and attacked each other rather chasing him down.

Bettiol claimed his first ever UCI win, whilst the likes of Sagan, Valvarde, Naesen, Pollit, Kristoff, Benoot and a very frustrated Van Avermaet could not work together. Silly boys…..

There were 3 other really notable rides in the race, beside Bettiol. MMT raises his cap and offers a respectful ‘chapeau!’ to:

Dane Kasper Asgreen of Deceuninck-QuickStep, who spent most of the day in the breakaway and still managed a late a late chase to finish 14 seconds down on Bettiol, as a worthy second place. Pity he didn’t receive earlier support form his team. He clearly had the best legs of the star-studded Belgian team.

Mathieu van der Poel of the small Dutch team, Corendon-Circus, who crashed at speed after hitting some street furniture. The Dutchman rode like a demon to catch and pass the peloton and then contest the finish to nab fourth. The irony being that he can’t compete in this weekend’s Paris-Roubaix.

Australia’s own Michael Matthews of Team Sun Web, who finished 6th. Matthews was dropped on the final bergs and had to fight his way back to contest the bunch spirit. This follows on from his 12th in Milano-San Remo. Matthews is developing into a very capable classics rider.

So speaking of the Ronde, MMT is reading an excellent book on the race by Edward Pickering and had intended to finish it before the race started.

https://www.amazon.com/Ronde-Inside-Worlds-Toughest-Bike-ebook/dp/B072N15JFW

There’s one paragraph that MMT, just had to ‘liberate’ and include in this blog, which describes how fluid bike races can be:

This is the story of a bike race. Bike races are simple. Mostly, riders start in one place, finish in another and the first to cross the line wins. Bike races are also complex: tree diagrams of events leading to outcomes leading to more outcomes and so on. They are possibly the best example of chaos theory in sport. Compare the constrictive dimensions of a football field and the prescriptive tactical shape of the teams with the infinite possibilities of 200 riders on a road, out in the real world of weather, landscape and human culture.

Alas the other major factor in his sleep debt, his 3 year old daughter, the ginger ninja, is causing MMT to fall asleep after 3 pages of reading. After reading about some of these famous bergs, MMT is determined to visit Belgium and try riding up some of less ridiculously steep one.

Speaking of ridiculously difficult rides, MMT will add to his sleep debt this weekend with the SBS coverage of the Paris-Roubiax. MMT can’t wait for that race hopefully it will be just as exciting as the Ronde.

Until next time, ride safe,

MMT