Road to Dargo

It was a nervous sleep last Fridy night as a group of us were riding to Dargo on Saturday. The actual profile can be found here, although we didnt do the final hill which is a killer, I was on a 42/27 and might have made most of it had I not ridden 108km before the hills really start to get BIGGER. IT was a great ride, 7 of us rode to Dargo and Shane and I rode about 5km past Dargo, but decided to turn around as I had done enough and until then was enjoying the ride and had a smile on my face.

Some that went on had the same gearing as me, but some had more gears.......

Then Sunday we did 60km and yesterday 50, it was supposed to be more but I got a flat tyre, which reminds me, that tyre is buggered and I need to put a new one on. We ride Vredestein Tricomps which are good allraound tyres, and we buy them when they are cheap so that makes them even better. Havent really experimented with different tyres as we like these. We did try the Vredestein superlights, but on the rougher road surfaces, they got a bit chewed up and didnt last all that long really, maybe a good racing tyre, but not for training and expecting to get a lot of kms out of.

I ate honey sandwiches on the ride, I have a terrible problem with food choices as I have a fussy stomach when I ride and it either is a good food ie honey sandwiches, or my stomach says - nope, cant digest that one quick enough and I subsequently throw up...(pleasant reading huh!).....So I just trial and error foods and the time betwween eating and riding which also affects the digestion. Eg; Salad sandwich needs about 5-6 hours. Weetbix - not very long - 30 minutes to an hour......etc etc....and the amount of water consumed also affects the whole thing too...such as bad food and lots of water just speeds up the process...

So 120km of hilly riding and I was pretty happy with my hill climbing, would like to improve which means just getting out there and doing more hills.

The weather in Melbourne over the last few days has been freakishly bad, but here in Sale we have missed a lot of bad weather and even though the weekend had storms and bad hailstorms in parts of the state and millions of dollars in damage, all of our rides were quite pleasant, the Dargo ride was quite humid really, but ok for riding.

Special mentions in the Dargo ride to Ben who smashed up the killer hill and looked like something out of a scary movie according to Ruby when he got to the top, bulging eyes and a red face, and to Phil who just made hill climbing look too easy, Phil follows Joe Friel and it seems to be a good programme and doing wonders for him as he climbed easily up the hills. Kristy keeps improving and her hill climbing will get better when she gets a lighter bike and Ruby also had a great ride, taking on the Beverleys Road section on her own, which is no mean feat.......we were all happy campers.....