160 km / Around Lake Taupo
www.cyclechallenge.com
Time:
Category Placing:
Taupo is such a boring and monotonous course. I won't do this event again.
The organizers ran out of tag holders and duct taped my tag to my fork rendering it unreadable so I have no time, nor do I have a computer time because, of all days, my batteries ran out before the halfway mark. I think I did under 5 based on the group I started with and checking times with other riders along the way.
31.10.09
K2 2009
200km / Whitianga to Whitianga
www.arcevents.co.nz/k2cycle/content
Time: 7:13:06
Category Placing: 10th
www.arcevents.co.nz/k2cycle/content
Time: 7:13:06
Category Placing: 10th
26.7.09
25.4.09
14.2.09
8.2.09
My New Wheels Rule.
After much envious perving of bikes and their bits at race starts, a couple of months ago I decided it was high time my bike got some new wheels. The stock wheelset that came with my bike have proven to be more than durable and have endured countless encounters with potholes and inadvertent offroad excursions, but they certainly aren't anything special in terms of lightness and aerodynamics.
After a bit of net research and some sweet advice from the GCs on Vorb, I decided on some American Classic 420's. I read a lot of reviews and the only faults I could see were issues with riders 70kg+ (the rim lightness has to mean a compromise somewhere!) and comments on inadequate braking surface. At 55 kg and with an increasingly blasé attitude toward my personal safety when it comes to the exhilaration of caning down hills, I figured they were just about perfect for what I wanted - something light for climbing but which would also help me roll faster for longer on the flats and in bunch riding.
They are by far the lightest alloy set (1440g) within their price bracket (~$1000) and with a 34 mm deep rim are much more aero than what I'm accustomed to - but certainly not deep enough to be much of a burden in cross winds.
My maiden ride with them (along with a shiny new chain and cassette) was pretty fragile to say the least, I was climbing pretty gingerly and freaking out at the spokes intermittently pinging (that settled down after the first 2 kms of climbing) upon standing. After 3 laps up and down Reid Road I decided this nervousness was all a bit silly, so I pumped up the decibels on my iPod to drown out any potentially disconcerting clunks and creaks and pings and hauled up the hill and caned down a couple more times and much more recklessly.
That weekend I rode over the course for the Wild West Mountain Cycle Challenge in west Auckland which I am doing next week. I was very pleased with how they felt. I also took them up a lap of Mountain Road, a notorious mother fuck of a hill to climb with portions gracing a grade upward of 17%. I figured if the front wheel can endure that, with as much of my weight as could be possible laboured onto the front half of my bike, then they must be fine.
They have now endured about 1000 kms and a few gnarly potholes with no apparent detrimental effect so my qualms about their fragility have largely been quashed.
The most notable improvements I have found are how much more 'responsive' they feel, especially accelerating out of corners and on pinch climbs, as well as an obvious increase in speed along long flat roads.
Most importantly, they look killer. And I was certainly not oblivious to the riders perving on my hot steed at the last event I did. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked with my new wheels!
After a bit of net research and some sweet advice from the GCs on Vorb, I decided on some American Classic 420's. I read a lot of reviews and the only faults I could see were issues with riders 70kg+ (the rim lightness has to mean a compromise somewhere!) and comments on inadequate braking surface. At 55 kg and with an increasingly blasé attitude toward my personal safety when it comes to the exhilaration of caning down hills, I figured they were just about perfect for what I wanted - something light for climbing but which would also help me roll faster for longer on the flats and in bunch riding.
They are by far the lightest alloy set (1440g) within their price bracket (~$1000) and with a 34 mm deep rim are much more aero than what I'm accustomed to - but certainly not deep enough to be much of a burden in cross winds.
My maiden ride with them (along with a shiny new chain and cassette) was pretty fragile to say the least, I was climbing pretty gingerly and freaking out at the spokes intermittently pinging (that settled down after the first 2 kms of climbing) upon standing. After 3 laps up and down Reid Road I decided this nervousness was all a bit silly, so I pumped up the decibels on my iPod to drown out any potentially disconcerting clunks and creaks and pings and hauled up the hill and caned down a couple more times and much more recklessly.
That weekend I rode over the course for the Wild West Mountain Cycle Challenge in west Auckland which I am doing next week. I was very pleased with how they felt. I also took them up a lap of Mountain Road, a notorious mother fuck of a hill to climb with portions gracing a grade upward of 17%. I figured if the front wheel can endure that, with as much of my weight as could be possible laboured onto the front half of my bike, then they must be fine.
They have now endured about 1000 kms and a few gnarly potholes with no apparent detrimental effect so my qualms about their fragility have largely been quashed.
The most notable improvements I have found are how much more 'responsive' they feel, especially accelerating out of corners and on pinch climbs, as well as an obvious increase in speed along long flat roads.
Most importantly, they look killer. And I was certainly not oblivious to the riders perving on my hot steed at the last event I did. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked with my new wheels!
6.2.09
Waka-Roc Twin Dams 2009
125 km | Putaruru and surrounding area
www.wakaroc.co.nz/pagefiles/twindams.html
Time: pending
Category Placing: pending
This was.. interesting. Actually it sucked. The course itself was pretty nice, but me, I sucked.
A spur of the moment decision last night saw me dressing up my wheels in a pair of hardly used Michelin Pro Race tyres. It wasn't till I was doing some last minute embedded glass checking before the race that I noticed a 6-7 mm slash in the front tyre. Faaarrrk! I hastily whipped off the tyre and patched the offending spot with a Park Tool adhesive tube patch on the inside of the tyre, just for safety's sake.
But the tyres ended up being the least of my problems. In fact they roll pretty nice. I think I'm going to use them more often.
So the riding.. The race split into 2 bunches at about the 25 km mark. I was in the second bunch but fairly confident of catching up with a lot of the riders ahead once we got to 'the hills' (which, by the way, were not what they should be according to mapmyride.com. Lies, lies, lies!). As it was, that never happened, but I think there were only one, or two at the most, girls who didn't get dropped from that front bunch.
I rode with mostly the same bunch up until a cluster of small hills that I couldn't resist having some fun on and as per usual left the rest of the bunch somewhere 'back there'. After that I rode solo till I caught up with two girls on another hill and on the descending side we were caught by my old bunch and a couple of other girls who I had passed on the hills earlier. I stayed with them up until the biggest hill of the day (which isn't that big, maybe 2km max albeit quite steep) where I couldn't help but just go (a lot) faster up it. I had it in the back of my mind that I'd go up at the same pace as the bunch but I was finding it much, much harder to go slow and not have any rhythm in my legs, or something!
I managed to keep that group of riders at bay for a lot longer than I had anticipated. It was about this point (I have no idea where I was, it must have been somewhere between 70-90 km) I realised there was no way I was going to be able to comfortably ration the remaining 750ml bottle of fluid I had left (there was no water stops anywhere on the course). I was reluctant to eat anything for fear of further dehydrating myself. Those 2 things were I guess the reason everything went downhill from that point on...
One minute I was feeling pretty damn good at my stellar (possible delusional term of word) breakaway on that hill, the next I was lethargically churning the pedals just to keep from stopping. And not sweating. That freaked me out a bit. After that point, and to the end of the race, things just slowed, and slowed, and slowed. I got passed by what felt like everyone (but lucky for my ego wasn't) and could not think straight at all to the point where I was actually having immense difficulty calculating how many km's to go..! I have pretty much no recollection of the last 20kms, apart from three elite riders who yelled at me for not being far enough left and and salivating at the sight of an old, half full water bottle on the side of the road in my glue-mouth dehydrated state. Fun times.
So yeah. That's the gist of that. Pretty disappointing really. Much hateful vibes toward useless body parts right now. My speedo post-ride reads an average speed of 30 km/h which isn't too bad but could have been so much better! I've never bonked so radically and as spontaneously as that. I don't really know what went so drastically wrong because I've had worse days, much worse days, nutrition/water wise.
One cool thing, post race some riders who were in my bunches told me I was superwoman on the hills and one guy said he'd never seen anyone climb like that. That was a bit rad.. if only my efforts weren't inevitably futile!
www.wakaroc.co.nz/pagefiles/twindams.html
Time: pending
Category Placing: pending
This was.. interesting. Actually it sucked. The course itself was pretty nice, but me, I sucked.
A spur of the moment decision last night saw me dressing up my wheels in a pair of hardly used Michelin Pro Race tyres. It wasn't till I was doing some last minute embedded glass checking before the race that I noticed a 6-7 mm slash in the front tyre. Faaarrrk! I hastily whipped off the tyre and patched the offending spot with a Park Tool adhesive tube patch on the inside of the tyre, just for safety's sake.
But the tyres ended up being the least of my problems. In fact they roll pretty nice. I think I'm going to use them more often.
So the riding.. The race split into 2 bunches at about the 25 km mark. I was in the second bunch but fairly confident of catching up with a lot of the riders ahead once we got to 'the hills' (which, by the way, were not what they should be according to mapmyride.com. Lies, lies, lies!). As it was, that never happened, but I think there were only one, or two at the most, girls who didn't get dropped from that front bunch.
I rode with mostly the same bunch up until a cluster of small hills that I couldn't resist having some fun on and as per usual left the rest of the bunch somewhere 'back there'. After that I rode solo till I caught up with two girls on another hill and on the descending side we were caught by my old bunch and a couple of other girls who I had passed on the hills earlier. I stayed with them up until the biggest hill of the day (which isn't that big, maybe 2km max albeit quite steep) where I couldn't help but just go (a lot) faster up it. I had it in the back of my mind that I'd go up at the same pace as the bunch but I was finding it much, much harder to go slow and not have any rhythm in my legs, or something!
I managed to keep that group of riders at bay for a lot longer than I had anticipated. It was about this point (I have no idea where I was, it must have been somewhere between 70-90 km) I realised there was no way I was going to be able to comfortably ration the remaining 750ml bottle of fluid I had left (there was no water stops anywhere on the course). I was reluctant to eat anything for fear of further dehydrating myself. Those 2 things were I guess the reason everything went downhill from that point on...
One minute I was feeling pretty damn good at my stellar (possible delusional term of word) breakaway on that hill, the next I was lethargically churning the pedals just to keep from stopping. And not sweating. That freaked me out a bit. After that point, and to the end of the race, things just slowed, and slowed, and slowed. I got passed by what felt like everyone (but lucky for my ego wasn't) and could not think straight at all to the point where I was actually having immense difficulty calculating how many km's to go..! I have pretty much no recollection of the last 20kms, apart from three elite riders who yelled at me for not being far enough left and and salivating at the sight of an old, half full water bottle on the side of the road in my glue-mouth dehydrated state. Fun times.
So yeah. That's the gist of that. Pretty disappointing really. Much hateful vibes toward useless body parts right now. My speedo post-ride reads an average speed of 30 km/h which isn't too bad but could have been so much better! I've never bonked so radically and as spontaneously as that. I don't really know what went so drastically wrong because I've had worse days, much worse days, nutrition/water wise.
One cool thing, post race some riders who were in my bunches told me I was superwoman on the hills and one guy said he'd never seen anyone climb like that. That was a bit rad.. if only my efforts weren't inevitably futile!
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