Tag Archives: Weather

‘Chapeau’, Monsieur Bling !!!!

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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

 

Melbourne…the windy city

Dear Rouleurs,

Last blog, I made a couple of throwaway lines about how f%#king windy Melbourne has been over the last few months.  Of course, copping some serious wind on my first attempt at RTB 2016 100Km version was not fun.  So it was really very, very unsurprising to come across this article, in The Age, a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately the photo of this I took is completely rubbish, so I’ve added a link to the article.

20161119-melbournewind

One paragraph in this article stood out.  Here it is fully plagarised in all its beauty.

In a month which saw 50 severe weather warnings issued and gusts reaching 80-kilometres-an-hour in Melbourne and up to 100-kilometres-an-hour in the state’s north, the wind run data for October easily surpassed the figures for the same month last year.

Tullamarine managed 14,399 kilometres in October 2015, Laverton accumulated 12,155 kilometres and Moorabbin 12,068 kilometres. Enough to comfortably get you to Buenos Aires, Salvador and Santiago respectively.

Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Blair Trewin said these measurements were 20 to 30 per cent up on data from the same month in previous years. The last October with comparable winds was 2007.

All I can say is WTF….50 wind warnings…that’s almost 2 a day and 20 to 30% more than usual.  Now, if you clicked on the link in the ’50 severe weather warnings’ you would have seen an earlier Age article.  This one  had another memorable quote and graph that is just plain horrible to look at, if you are a cyclist.

Here’s the quote:

Senior climatologist Kevin Smith said all this gusty weather comes down to several factors – a perfect storm, if you will.  Mr Smith said there were seven major storm events across Victoria during October. “We normally average about three,” he said.

Again….WTF!!! here’s the Alan Kohler style money shot graph:

20161121-windgraph

May be I need to install a motor or a sail on my bike or move to another city.  I hope summer isn’t this f#%king windy.

Until next time, ride safe…in hopefully still conditions.

Marv

Marv’s September Bike Log

Dear Rouleurs,

September was a wet and windy month that really cramped Team MMT’s cycling. With various parts of Victoria being underwater, MMT probably should be grateful for this minor inconvenience. So here’s the log and stats for September.

After last month’s mega effort 630km seems paltry by comparison. However the bigger picture is that I was within in 250Km of 6,000Km ridden, MMT’s goal for 2016.  I’m guessing that I passed the total on my Round the Bay ride.  More on that next month.

2016-september-graph

I don’t have any events organised for November, so I’ll have to hunt around.  I have registered for the 2017 version of MS Cycle.

Until next blog, ride safe.

Marv

Marv does the Ride the Bellerine

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Dear Rouleurs,

Its been a huge weekend at MMT, with AFL and Comedy Festival in full swing in Melbourne. Sadly, one half of MMT was in Bay M23 watching his beloved Tigers impersonating Greg Norman, circa 1996 USA Masters, when they lost in the last 15 seconds to Collingwood by 1 point.  Enough said…..

Last Sunday, 3rd April, was the third charity ride event on MMT’s calendar, Ride the Bellerine, ac charity event intended to raise funds to end Polio contagion in developing countries. Being organised by the good people of Rotary in Geelong, its a well run event for a very worthwhile cause.

20160404-EndPolio

MMT noticed the inaugural ride in 2015, but couldn’t get his act together to attend.  Apparently, the weather on that day was truly awful, so MMT isn’t feeling too bad about missing out.  However this Sunday’s weather was perfect, cool, overcast and not much wind to speak of.

The course starts and ends in Geelong’s Eastern Gardens and loops around the Bellerine peninsula via Barwon Waters and 13th Beach.  I did the short course 60 km, as I was uncertain of what the various hills in that part of the world.

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Apart from one reasonably steep hill between the 10-12km mark, it was a relatively easy ride. The course and gradient chart is shown below.

60km_ride

So onto the some photos, again MMT was fortune to coax the other half of the team into support and photographic duties.  So have a couple of nice photos, plus the ones I took on the ride.

C'est Moi :-) With new Jersey and old Wilier.

C’est Moi 🙂 With new Jersey and old Wilier.

Start line in Eastern Gardens.

Start line in Eastern Gardens.

Feed and Drink Stop at Barwon Waters.

Feed and Drink Stop at Barwon Waters.

Barwon Waters Causeway.

Barwon Waters Causeway.

Posing in front of the event banner.

Posing in front of the event banner.

Wild surf on 13th Beach.

Wild surf on 13th Beach.

I have to say I really enjoyed the day and was glad MMT made the trip down to Geelong. My next planned ride is the BAD ride in Ballarat in May.  Before I sign off, I have to say to Peter Sagan who seems to have shrugged off the ‘curse of the rainbow’ jersey  easily with a very impressive win in the Tour of Flanders on Sunday night.  I really thought Fabian Cancellara was going to catch him there for while.

Until next blog, ride safe

Marv