grt046 wrote:Just read an article in "Bike" magazine featuring a 160K loop in the Illawarra listing many of the locations and climbs mentioned regularly in reports by Shane, Grant and others.
A big rap on the area "this is the best riding close to Sydney if not Australia" makes it sound like Gods own cycling country ...... if the weather is fine I guess
Yes, we do have some nice riding around here. Back in 2010 I put together a
route covering a few local climbs. At the time it was t give someone a link to some of the climbs around the area and a bit of a distant future goal one day being a strong enough rider to complete the loop. Fast forward three years and I've ridden all the climbs in the route at some stage but the most I'd ever done on a single ride was two of the four, I'd also forgotten about this course I'd put together as since then I'd found strava so if I wanted to point out some climbs to someone I'd send them a segment link. Then I went on the Tour da Country and a journalist had decided to cover the Tour. I met James when he joined us for stage 1 and he'd mentioned the article he'd put in Bike about riding the area around here. He had to head back home that night but rejoined us again for the second week of the Tour, bringing a copy of the magazine with him. I should mention that on that first stage he'd earnt the nickname of Ninja due to his stealth skills that enabled him to ride up ahead to take a photo and completely disappear and not be seen again until his announcing that he's back on.
Anyway, reading the article and further discussions on what became known amongst Tour riders as The Ninja Loop jogged my memory about the course I'd put together. Turns out the only difference between the Ninja Loop and the course I'd put together was that I turned right at the top of Saddleback to go to the lookout before turning around and heading back down and rejoining the Ninja loop after the short detour. I didn't know about Cambewarra Lookout or the short, steep climb to it back then so that one was missed on both our courses.
So continued discussion between riders showed there was a few riders who would like to have a crack at The Ninja Loop, adding both lookouts and a possible final detour out to
Mellows Rd to see just how far we can get before breaking ourselves. So, hopefully our schedules line up and the weather is fine so we can do the ride next month. Should make for some great training for the ACE250.
Mustang, if you have a look at the profile of the loop you may understand how we get the 100000m. I live inside the loop, so there's not a lot of options around that don't involve a decent amount of climbing.
Colin and David, well done on knocking over your targets.
I guess if I was 40 years younger there may be a chance, well done to all you mountain men. 
so i will end on a good figure that i didn't think i would get to this year, over 10,000 i'm happy 
but I've got the left overs of yesterday's calf cramp that didn't completely free up. 