Atb

After spending the last three weeks in Colorado and only managing a total of a half day on a bike in that time, I was certainly apprehensive about riding ATB 2005, let alone getting the full 220klms behind me ( yep it was at least 220, not the 210 BV reckon), so armed with the best possible weather report, heaps of gatorade, a good night's sleep and 125psi in the hp's it was time be adventurous on ATB 2005.

Now being domestique for a ladies team ( brave you say? see below!!)...was a very interesting way to do ATB this year, doing the classic anti-clockwise, a , after the Westgate, it was a mundane run to Geelong via the bland westside with detours through Altona and the lakes, funny to take note of the hammer heads ripping the first 100ks, very interesting to see many of them bonked before Balcombe Hill or struggling to get up to Mt Eliza/Mt Martha's bumps.

The gals 14 of them , bless 'em) held it together superbly, tight lines, steady pace, rotating turns, and me as the gate keeper, fending off varous leacherous tail pervers and free-riders.
We were having nothing of any unknown quantities pushing in, hassling or causing unpredictable outcomes from erratic manouvres.

We ran 4 hours neat to Queenscliff and 3 hours 20 to Docklands from Sorrento, the average from Frankston to Docklands in the home stretch was 31kph and when many teams were ragged, bonking or just plain fragmented this bunch of gals held it tight, and muscled home.

The helped me make a great ride a great cruise, fantastic weather and BV actually got just about everything right....maybe a few more signs and some riper bananas, but full marks to get the 7,500 or so classics riders on track , transported and fed. Not too many crazies , but a few too many who wanted to ride socially two abreast on narrow segments, causing some wide overtaking manouvres by a lot of the peleton teams.

Well done Pink Inc ladies, you were the best looking, best discliplined and best fun team there.........I was proud to be with you on ATB 2005.

"Schmob"-The gatekeeper Roo

dave said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Ohhh I finally bonked halfway up the west gate.

Regarding bonking, the only way to avoid it is to eat, eat, eat. I learned that early on in the army, in our daily ration backs there'd be a couple of bars of Kendal Mint Cake (mmmmmm) which was specifcally for fuelling high intensity activities such as FIBUA (thank goodness I never had to do it for real.)

Three days before the event I started piling in food with lots of carbs. I ate about double what I'd normally eat in a day, about 5-6000 calories.

On the day I had a Hammer Gel at hours one and two on the way to Sorrento as well as 1/4 of a protein bar and about 2 litres of water. At the ferry I ate just about everything for lunch except the snack bar. We had a longer ride from Queenscliff back to the city and so with about an hour and a half to go I was out of food. Up until that point it was a Hammer Gel, 1/4 of a protein bar every hour or so.

I didn't bonk at all and it's the first time I've done an event of this distance. Longest ride prior to this was about 100kms. I reckon I did drink too much water though, I had to stop five times. Maybe eight litres in the day's a bit excessive?

flyingdutch said:

right! give us an address and we'll swing by on Sunday 😄

PS anyone spot any blatant chalk propoganda™ (of a bv-political nature😄) on the ATB?

cheers
FD

No ,the only BV blatant chalk propoganda I've seen is on the Yarra trail.

I wonder who might be repsonsible for that?!?!?

flyingdutch said:

right! give us an address and we'll swing by on Sunday 😄

PS anyone spot any blatant chalk propoganda™ (of a bv-political nature😄) on the ATB?

cheers
FD

Yeah I saw it 🙄

EuanB said:

dave said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Ohhh I finally bonked halfway up the west gate.

Regarding bonking, the only way to avoid it is to eat, eat, eat. I
learned that early on in the army, in our daily ration backs there'd be
a couple of bars of Kendal Mint Cake (mmmmmm) which was specifcally for
fuelling high intensity activities such as FIBUA (thank goodness I
never had to do it for real.)

Three days before the event I started piling in food with lots of
carbs. I ate about double what I'd normally eat in a day, about 5-6000
calories.

Old school.

Here's how to do it :

http://www.aboc.com.au/perl/tips.pl?p=carboload

You only need 24 hours to do a carbo load. The study done was
at UWA in 2003. It's referenced in the above article.

Other good things to eat while riding (a lot cheaper than [censored] gels!)
are
things like fruitcake, banana bread (680g (1 loaf)of BB has ~340g of
carbohydrate
in it, *and* it's yummy, and reasonably cheap and easy to carry (wrap
in greaseproof paper in a jersey pocket). Wankergels work too, but are
very expensive. ~$3 for 60g of sugar. Jelly snakes are *much* cheaper
and have just as much sugar in them, and they're easier to eat and even
possible to share, and don't leave a sticky mess in your pocket (we all

dispose of our packaging in a bin, right? 🙂 )

Deest said:

flyingdutch said:

right! give us an address and we'll swing by on Sunday 😄

PS anyone spot any blatant chalk propoganda™ (of a bv-political
nature😄) on the ATB?

I saw it ... Lorimer St. Too bad I've already voted FD 🙂

flyingdutch said:

right! give us an address and we'll swing by on Sunday 😄

PS anyone spot any blatant chalk propoganda™ (of a bv-political nature😄) on the ATB?

cheers
FD

yeah, I was going to say something about that:-) I didn't see you kissing babies at the finish line though:-)

I went the Sorrento way ( for the last time I hope) and averaged 30km/hr on that leg! I just hopped from group to group ( well piked up the next one as I got dropped). The second half really showed up my lack of preparation, slow on every hill, very sore botty. I still finished 1 and 1/2 hours quicker than my last attempt and best of all, barely sore:-) Lots of comments about my Bike Friday.

Bleve said:

dave said:

Deest wrote:

Quoted message said:

My gf kathy saw them. I hadnt thought about Olivers Hill. I wonder.
Does anyone know.

I saw them somewhere along the ride, but they were walking - can't
remember exactly where.

Quoted message said:

I was really disapointed with myself. Will have to do some serious
work. I seem to have somewhat lost my bottle. I was riding strong all
day. Apparently our ride time was actually 10 mins lest than last year
which was a personal best. Our total time was [censored] but wth. Both Ian
and I have been crook.. me for more than a month, so I
am sort of happy with the physical performance especially in the light
of other stuf I will write about later. But I was really [censored] and [censored]
scared on the desents and nervous in the bunches. Have to do something
about that. I used to have those skills.

RTB bunches are very jittery at the best of times, and especially
towards the end when most of them are blown. No blood sugar (bonk/hit
the wall) and your brain stops working very well - balance goes
bigtime.

Yeah.. not where I was going. I accept that giving em more room was
wise but I was far too jittery myself if you see what I mean. Now I
know how good my reflexes are and that wasnt the issue. I dont know..
just a bit overly nervy. Beyond what is sensible.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Practice, and possibly, eat more, and/or carbo load before big
rides.

Er I did. And I was riding very strongly. I would do my turn up front ,
no worries.. fall back.. keep leaving gaps and get endged back.. fall
off the back..push .. catch up, sometimes go straight up the front..
and so on.

Quoted message said:

EuanB said:

dave said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Ohhh I finally bonked halfway up the west gate.

Regarding bonking, the only way to avoid it is to eat, eat, eat. I
learned that early on in the army, in our daily ration backs there'd be
a couple of bars of Kendal Mint Cake (mmmmmm) which was specifcally for
fuelling high intensity activities such as FIBUA (thank goodness I
never had to do it for real.)

I ate my body weight yesterday. sheesh. THe emergency snakes got me
thru. It was more a hickup than a reall bonk, nothing in the boiler
for a few mins.

Quoted message said:

Three days before the event I started piling in food with lots of
carbs. I ate about double what I'd normally eat in a day, about 5-6000
calories.

On the day I had a Hammer Gel at hours one and two on the way to
Sorrento as well as 1/4 of a protein bar and about 2 litres of water.
At the ferry I ate just about everything for lunch except the snack
bar. We had a longer ride from Queenscliff back to the city and so
with about an hour and a half to go I was out of food. Up until that
point it was a Hammer Gel, 1/4 of a protein bar every hour or so.

I ate at least twice that 🙂

Quoted message said:

I didn't bonk at all and it's the first time I've done an event of
this distance. Longest ride prior to this was about 100kms. I reckon
I did drink too much water though, I had to stop five times. Maybe
eight litres in the day's a bit excessive?

Hmmm I had 2 litres of staminade and 3 of water. And I [censored] about
that much. I dont seem to need lots of water. Ian drank at least 8
litres.

Quoted message said:

quote='Bleve'EuanB said:

dave said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Ohhh I finally bonked halfway up the west gate.

Regarding bonking, the only way to avoid it is to eat, eat, eat. I
learned that early on in the army, in our daily ration backs there'd be
a couple of bars of Kendal Mint Cake (mmmmmm) which was specifcally for
fuelling high intensity activities such as FIBUA (thank goodness I
never had to do it for real.)

Three days before the event I started piling in food with lots of
carbs. I ate about double what I'd normally eat in a day, about 5-6000
calories.

Old school.

Here's how to do it :

aboc.com.autips.plOpen ↗

You only need 24 hours to do a carbo load. The study done was
at UWA in 2003. It's referenced in the above article.
[/QUOTE] What, and ruin a good excuse for over eating? Are you MAD???? ;-)

Thanks, I'll try that next time*.

Quoted post said:

Other good things to eat while riding (a lot cheaper than [censored] gels!)

Ordinarily you'd be correct, however the price for my [censored] gels was wearing a free cycling jersey :-) It doesn't hurt that I like BSC as a shop anyway.

Quoted post said:

Jelly snakes are *much* cheaper
and have just as much sugar in them, and they're easier to eat

I love Jelly snakes but I find them a bit hard to eat while riding. I dunno why, it just seems to take forver for me to chew them up and get them down.

Quoted post said:

and even
possible to share, and don't leave a sticky mess in your pocket (we all
dispose of our packaging in a bin, right? 🙂 )

Mine are still in my jersey pocket, haven't gotten around to cleaning up yet.

*Next ATB being dependent on whether I'm in country or not, I've a wedding to attend in the UK and that might clash.

dave said:

EuanB said:

dave said:

All usefull advice accepted btw.

Ohhh I finally bonked halfway up the west gate.

Regarding bonking, the only way to avoid it is to eat, eat, eat. I
learned that early on in the army, in our daily ration backs there'd be
a couple of bars of Kendal Mint Cake (mmmmmm) which was specifcally for
fuelling high intensity activities such as FIBUA (thank goodness I
never had to do it for real.)

I ate my body weight yesterday. sheesh. THe emergency snakes got me
thru. It was more a hickup than a reall bonk, nothing in the boiler
for a few mins.

It's also not just how much you eat, but what you eat, what you
ate the day before, how aerobically fit you are and what intensity
you ride at. The higher the relative intensity, the more glygogen you
burn
through. (obvious, eh? 🙂 ). Keep your blood sugar levels up,
work at a sustainable intensity, and you can ride all day.

Quoted message said:

Hmmm I had 2 litres of staminade and 3 of water. And I [censored] about
that much. I dont seem to need lots of water. Ian drank at least 8
litres.

5 litres is probably about right - most people can only absorb
~750ml-1l
per hour. Staminade is the stuff too, it's the only readily available
sports drink (powder) you can get at the stupormarket which has
magnesium in it.

The way we did this year was to mix one normal strength (3 tspns
per bidon) and one concentrate - 24 tspns in the second bidon, then
when the first was empty, squirt some of the concentrate into the
first, and
fill with water. No fuss, very simple to do at rest stops, no
packets of powder etc ... I went through 6 bidons on the ride, and one
softdrink on the ferry.

Marx SS said:

The un-offical ATB started for me at 5:30am at Kerford rd with a 4 mates. We headed south/east towards Frankston & beyond, rode through Sorrento & to the Portsea back beach, hooked a u-ie & returned.
About 225kms door to door. Averaged about 29kms/hr.

Best weather in years. That slight southerly later in the morning was a blessing.
No mishaps, or flats.
Saw 2x amulances attending, but considering the mix of riders & the sheer numbers out there that could be regarded as a fair result.
I kinda thought that offical ATB jersey looked pretty spiffy too.
3x unicycles spotted, anyone see them do the hills?

I saw two girls on unicycles looking a touch nervous (absolutely [censored] scared) at the top of Olivers hill.

EuanB said:

Quoted message said:

You only need 24 hours to do a carbo load. The study done was
at UWA in 2003. It's referenced in the above article.

What, and ruin a good excuse for over eating? Are you MAD???? ;-)

heh 🙂

If you're doing enough riding, eating too much is not enough anyway 🙂

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Jelly snakes are *much* cheaper
and have just as much sugar in them, and they're easier to eat
I love Jelly snakes but I find them a bit hard to eat while riding. I

dunno why, it just seems to take forver for me to chew them up and get
them down.

Try the natural confectionary co. (now crapbury-schewppes) ones if you
haven't already. They're
lots softer than a lot of the other brands.

On 2005-10-17, EuanB (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

Bleve said:

Jelly snakes are *much* cheaper
and have just as much sugar in them, and they're easier to eat
I love Jelly snakes but I find them a bit hard to eat while riding. I

dunno why, it just seems to take forver for me to chew them up and get
them down.

I have that problem with musili bars. Can't swallow when breathing
hard!

Snakes are pretty easy though. When I can chew -- it's why I didn't
ride yesterday. Don't eat, then you don't [censored], and if you don't
[censored], you die 🙂

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

and even
possible to share, and don't leave a sticky mess in your pocket (we
all
dispose of our packaging in a bin, right? 🙂 )

Mine are still in my jersey pocket, haven't gotten around to cleaning
up yet.

I put a dead banana skin in my pocket one day on a touring ride, and
it never occurred to me what mess would be created. Sigh. I ended up
just ditching the skin, and attempting to clean up all the muck in my
pocket, before continuing on. Banana skin is biodegradable anyway 🙂

Quoted message said:

*Next ATB being dependent on whether I'm in country or not, I've a
wedding to attend in the UK and that might clash.

Similar problem, differing reason. I WOULD HAVE REALLY LIKED TO HAVE
RIDDEN THIS YEAR! RARRRRGH!

--
TimC

Quoted message said:

aibohphobia, n., The fear of palindromes

And here I thought it was the fear of robotic Japanese dogs.
-- Tom "Tom" Harrington

On 2005-10-17, Bleve (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

Try the natural confectionary co. (now crapbury-schewppes) ones if you
haven't already. They're
lots softer than a lot of the other brands.

Any particular reason for snakes?

Spoil yourself on those yummy juicer boosters, or what have we.

Or does the ooh-yummy effect come at a cost of a ooh-power effect?

--
TimC
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

TimC said:

On 2005-10-17, Bleve (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

Try the natural confectionary co. (now crapbury-schewppes) ones if you
haven't already. They're
lots softer than a lot of the other brands.

Any particular reason for snakes?

Yep. They're easy to grab from the packet without dropping on
the road, especially when wearing full finger gloves. The other
shapes are less easy to handle, I find. Same ingredients (sugar,
gelatin, water, some colour ...) but a very convenient to handle
and eat than the others.

Quoted message said:

Spoil yourself on those yummy juicer boosters, or what have we.

Or does the ooh-yummy effect come at a cost of a ooh-power effect?

Heh, I doubt it 🙂

On the subject of eating, the guy I rode with took off with 600 mls of water, a banana and a few snakes. He didn't finish the water until Frankston and only ate the banana and the BV lunch (minus their green banana). Oh and he went through all of three snakes. He was still going strong at the end.

Is he a freak? I was the good Italian host and did fill him up with a huge bowl of spaghetti the night before though 🙂

FWIW I did the aboc carbo load mentioned above and it worked a treat and I ate and drank a helluve lot more than my riding partner

TimC said:

Similar problem, differing reason. I WOULD HAVE REALLY LIKED TO HAVE
RIDDEN THIS YEAR! RARRRRGH!

There'll be other years, and other rides. Get well soon.

The great thing about riding bikes? No matter how good your
last ride was, there's always more rides to do, that're even
better!

On 2005-10-17, Deest (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

On the subject of eating, the guy I rode with took off with 600 mls of
water, a banana and a few snakes. He didn't finish the water until
Frankston and only ate the banana and the BV lunch (minus their green
banana). Oh and he went through all of three snakes. He was still going
strong at the end.

Is he a freak? I was the good Italian host and did fill him up with a
huge bowl of spaghetti the night before though 🙂

FWIW I did the aboc carbo load mentioned above and it worked a treat
and I ate and drank a helluve lot more than my riding partner

If I read it correctly (I bookmarked it in a really easy to remember
location 🙂, it said eat about 1.5kg of pasta, the 24 hours
beforehand.

I experimented, and was surprised when I could eat half a packet of
linguini (250g) for dinner, and still be hungry in half an hour time
(my usual pasta dinners are probably 175g). So I figured, although it
sounded an extremely large amount of food, that I would be fine.
Pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and rice for snacks. Yum. For
a day.

And it suits well with my fake mediteranian heritage. 🙂
(The contents of my pantry have confused more than one person)

PS. Sore mouth is teh suck. Can't pile my pasta full of herbs and
spices that burn the road rash (has anyone ever contemplated the
possibility of road rash on lips before? It's not something I can say
I ever thought of beforehand, and it's something quite out of the
ordinary).

--
TimC
Theoretically one might have been wearing pants at work.
-- Anthony de Boer in Scary Devil Monastry

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>> "TimC" == TimC <[email hidden]> writes:

TimC> Similar problem, differing reason. I WOULD HAVE REALLY LIKED
TimC> TO HAVE RIDDEN THIS YEAR! RARRRRGH!

Yeah, sympathies about that. All the same it was good to see you at the
end :-)
--
Cheers | ~~ __@
Euan | ~~ _-\<,
Melbourne, Australia | ~ (*)/ (*)