Sydney to Gong ride

[Duckwah]

Hey there everyone this is my first post since i only just got back on a bike a few weeks ago (some sod nicked my bike in june and i had to buy another one)<br /><br />Anyway did anyone else do the Sydney to the Gong ride today?<br /><br />I learnt some new things about cycling in Sydney today.<br /><br />1. There are some insanely fit people on very nice bikes in Sydney.<br />2. There are some people who are just plain insane riding 90km on FS mountain bikes with knobbies.<br />3. To go fast it is necessarry to dress in either perfectly colour co-ordinated clothing and bike or the most horribly clashing colours possible.<br />4. the older you are the more fluoro you wear.<br />5. I need better brake pads since mine melted on the downhills.<br />6. If I ever find the lazy bugger that drafted off me for 10km without taking the lead the resulting conversation will not be fit for under 18s<br />7. I wish there was this much police and volunteer support evertime i got on a bike to train.<br />8. PB lemon lime sports gel constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.<br />9. Their chocolate bar is not much better.<br />10.in spite of my wish to become a hard core rider i will not be ditching the granny ring cause it came in handy after i bonked.<br /><br />PS if anyone here rides around Drummoyne let me know

 

[Lab_Rat]

hehehe, <br /><br />Know how you feel Duckwah. ;D ;D<br /><br />I did a 105km ride, which turned out to be 109km with lots of cruel hills and even more cruel wind. We got dropped on the first climb, which was a *****, and couldn't close the gap of around 600m from the leading bunch.<br /><br />We managed to form a &quot;through and off&quot; echleon, but after 60kms at a hard pace, most of us were knackered. Be broke our group of about 15 to a group of about 8. We were poked though and started losing time on the bunch in front of us, but we could still see them ahead of us.<br /><br />I managed to break on the third last climb of the day, but can you believe it, a traffic officer stopped me to let some cars through an intersection. Boy was I miffed. Managed to hold off the group over the second last climb and had an 80km/h descent where the group was closing the gap.<br /><br />Our times were horrible, but considering we had a strong cross wind, meaning that we did not have a tail-wind advantage out or back did slow everyone up.<br /><br />After 2 powerbar gels and an energy dynamics bar, I couldn't stomach another energy substance and would rather have suffered like a dog with just plain water.

 

[Vo2]

Why would anyone riding a bike at 35km/h, heart rate at 95% max, legs burning like hell, lungs close to collapse, want to consume an energy substance that is actually palatable?<br />I reckon a &quot;vrot&quot; tasting energy bar is just a further extension of the overall pain of riding a bike as hard as you possibly can.

 

[Duckwah]

You may have a point but this gel stuff was like eating lactic acid. It had the wonderful taste of cough syrup combined with the the burning sensation of eating something like washing powder. In the end i stopped and bought jelly snakes to eat. Much better!!!