A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

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ldrcycles
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:09 pm

Funny you say that.... :lol:

For lunch we went up to a strawberry farm at Wolvi that does paella from their little restaurant every sunday, after getting back from there I mowed the lawn and finished just as a rather vigorous looking storm was approaching.

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(photo from a local FB page)


I was at my parent's place on the western side of town when it hit, proper cyclonic conditions, complete whiteout with winds around 90kmh. There was remarkably little debris on the road on the western side of town, on the east (where we live) there were trees down everywhere. Our road was completely blocked, so I had to walk the last few hundred metres home to get my chainsaws to cut my way out and get back to the main road to clear a huge tree blocking the road in a very dangerous spot. The first tree only took about half an hour, but the second was full of vines and was a mammoth task, the local fire brigade turned up after I'd been at it for about an hour, then I worked alongside them for another hour before I was completely spent. Woke up this morning still exhausted and needed to get a massage this afternoon to settle my back, but all the effort has got me down to 88.7kgs :mrgreen: .


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Just as an aside, most of the work was done with my Husqvarna 340, bought about 12yrs ago and flogged mercilessly ever since. I cheap out on a lot of stuff, but when it comes to things like chainsaws, spending the extra to get the best pays off when things get really serious.

Off to bed now, up early tomorrow for a spin around Noosa before work.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby Kronos » Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:14 pm

I was out at Beachmere (Caboolture) last night but the wind at least from that storm was something else. We were pretty sure it went out over the ocean picked up some wind gust and came back in. That's a nice picture of a shelf cloud.

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:49 pm

No riding today :evil: . Needed extra sleep to recover from the storm cleanup, which ruled out riding before work, then Mrs LDR decided to plow her car into the back of a Subaru and dealing with that situation put paid to riding after work too. No injuries, other than grievous harm to the bank account in the near future.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:28 am

Terrible news on the accident mate. Pleased to hear it is only the car that's injured.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:54 pm

With yesterday's stress a pre work ride wasn't on the cards today, so plan B was to squeeze in a few kms before and after the evening interval session at the crit track. Unfortunately the Vivente started making a very unhappy noise the second I got going (leaning towards a broken rear axle) and the heat and humidity were shocking, so 7 full gas laps had me pretty well toasted.

Onto the CX bike tomorrow until I work out what the problem is with the Vivente. Good timing as an off road adventure with singlespeedscott and smithstreet is on the cards for sunday :) .

In farm news, the boys are going along very nicely, and hooking into their hay well.


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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:29 pm

BIG ride today, words and photos tomorrow as i am very hurty and in need of sleep :)
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Mon Feb 19, 2018 10:46 pm

Flat out all day today, so no time for words yet. Here's a photo to tide you over :)


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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Tue Feb 20, 2018 6:54 am

Like the photo mate
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby Smithstreet » Thu Feb 22, 2018 6:14 pm

Still tired mate......
:D

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:13 pm

I had it written up last night, hit submit and my session had timed out, lost the lot. Switched the computer off and very quietly and calmly went to bed without punching any walls, quite proud of that effort :lol:

Been held up this evening by flooding, we're on an island at the moment.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby Kronos » Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:17 pm

ldrcycles wrote:I had it written up last night, hit submit and my session had timed out, lost the lot. Switched the computer off and very quietly and calmly went to bed without punching any walls, quite proud of that effort :lol:

Been held up this evening by flooding, we're on an island at the moment.
Two days of rain, I haven't been out either. It's turning me into a grouch.

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:12 am

ldrcycles wrote:I had it written up last night, hit submit and my session had timed out, lost the lot. Switched the computer off and very quietly and calmly went to bed without punching any walls, quite proud of that effort :lol:

Been held up this evening by flooding, we're on an island at the moment.
You need to type it up in word and then copy paste.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby BianchiCam » Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:02 pm

Yay!
You are back.
I am a bit late to the thread but love your tales.
Keep at it.

Cam

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:49 pm

With the ride due to start at 5:30 in Wamuran, I seriously considered driving down to Cruice Park near Woodford on Saturday night and camping, but after weighing up the brownie points required to be away overnight, and the ability of my $20 tent to resist yowie attack, waking up at obscene o'clock to drive 120kms didn't look so bad.

A late night didn't help, but with everything pre-loaded in the Koeniggetz I got away on time and after a stop at Wild Horse Mountain for Macca's and Red Bull, I got to Wamuran. EARLY! :shock:

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Yes really, and there's even photographic proof!


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After exchanging pleasantries with smithstreet, singlespeedscott and two new faces (Cam and Peter), we headed out on some quiet and very pleasant backroads, until Scott directed us off onto some rough MTB tracks with some surprisingly steep hills. I asked if by "rail trail" he meant a COG railway, but it turned out we were just taking a shortcut, and were soon onto the rail trail itself.

And what a trail! While it was unfortunately strewn with fallen branches, and had quite a few mudholes that need filling, it is still a spectacular few kms, with rock lined cuttings and earth embankments over some deep gullies, with lush rainforest all through. Sadly my mobile phone's camera maxime obscura gave some incredibly poor results in the low light conditions, but these are the best-

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Sadly despite the beautiful nature of the trail, it's only a short distance and ends on a nondescript bitumen road in the middle of nowhere. Luckily Scott knew the way and we carried on, enjoying the sight of 2 dogs chasing a huge roo (safely on the other side of the fence). Naturally it wasn't long before we again abandoned the bitumen and turned onto forestry trails for the rest of the way to Woodford. There were some fantastic photo opportunities through here, or would have been if only the others had slowed down enough for me to get everything lined up! In the end I didn't get a single decent photo, and spent pretty much the whole time pushing hard to catch up after faffing about with my phone.

When we reached Woodford after only 20kms, smithstreet and the 2 new faces immediately made for the nearest cafe. Huh? Seemed like tremendously odd behaviour to me but I took the opportunity to fill my water bottles, as there was a big waterless gap between Woodford and the Bellthorpe Hall.

We took the D'Aguilar Highway through to Stoney Creek Rd, with pleasantly light and well behaved traffic.

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As we rolled along the flats we looked up at the cloud covered ranges and wondered just how hot and humid it was going to be up there...

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In short order the climb began, and it was everything I was hoping for. How does 8.3km at 6% average gradient sound, least of all on fairly rough gravel? I soon found out the hard way the stock gearing on my CX bike was not up to the task, 30x26 was alright for the reasonable lower slopes but had me walking when it ramped up. In all, that 8.3km took me a whopping 54 minutes, it's a brutal climb.

After the first 2kms I started to feel like I was in the groove, and caught the lead bunch (smithstreet taking a slow and steady approach further back) but when the gradient kicked up I had to up the pace to get a workable cadence which I soon found the legs weren't up to. They went pop and I was on my own for a while, enjoying the scenery and fresh snake tracks.


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Smithstreet's measured approach evidently worked well, as he caught me well before the top and then easily left me on the few downhills (but then he was on 56mm tyres to my 42/38 so that doesn't count).

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Luckily for me, Cam (i think) had a flat which allowed me to catch up and grab a pic of a passing Ural sidecar.

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After some more ups and downs we finally reached Bellthorpe Hall, and I decided to take the short way back to Woodford down Bellthorpe Range Rd while the others went round on Stanley River Rd. I hadn't accounted for just how much heat the big canti pads put into the rims, and ended up stopping 3 times and using a whole bottle of water to keep them cool (as it was only then I realised I had 2 spare tubes but no pump or levers :shock: ).

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Running Creek at the base of the climb was looking very clean, so I was happy to replace my lost water from there and carry on. With a bit of a headwind and the temperature slowly climbing I didn't set any records back to Woodford, and decided to retrace the offroad route to Wamuran rather than staying on the highway. While I didn't have any issues navigating, the sun was blisteringly hot through the pine forest section, and by the time I reached Wamuran I was pretty well spent. But then, the GPS was reading just on 90kms, and it would be ridiculous to not just ride 5kms out of town in a straight line and back to get the tonne. So off I went, crawling along at 20odd kmh and somehow exactly matching an out and back TT segment to get 2nd place :lol: . That was only 8.7kms, so with my legs continuing to complain I dawdled around a little longer until I had 100.2km done.

After grabbing some feed for the calves at the massive Wamuran Produce store, and feed for myself at the BP, I happily headed north only to remember that it was my sister's birthday and I had to meet the family at the Noosa River. Somehow I managed to spend an hour swimming in the river with Winnie and my nephew, then after a little rest I got home and decided the back yard was just too damn overgrown and fired up the mower too. That would explain why I was pretty damn tired Monday!


Since then, the weather hasn't been much chop, so only two half hour sessions on the mag trainer this week. Haven't decided quite what I'm up to tomorrow but ideally at least 100kms so the progress chart doesn't look too bad.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:09 pm

singlespeedscott wrote: You need to type it up in word and then copy paste.
Normally I keep the forum active in another tab, or copy a long post just before I hit submit, but that one lapse of concentration :roll:

BianchiCam wrote:Yay!
You are back.
I am a bit late to the thread but love your tales.
Keep at it.

Cam
Good to be back :)
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:04 pm

Great write up mate. What where you doing dragging the brakes going down Bellthorpe. You’ll have to practice your descending before your Everest attempt.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby Smithstreet » Sun Feb 25, 2018 12:30 pm

Yeah, another good write up Lachlan.
What do you mean about 'slow and steady approach'? That's all I had!! :shock:

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:12 pm

singlespeedscott wrote:Great write up mate. What where you doing dragging the brakes going down Bellthorpe. You’ll have to practice your descending before your Everest attempt.
I let the brakes off as much as I can but on a hill that steep, keeping to a speed I'm happy with naturally involves a lot of braking :) . Everesting day will be using discs like last time, so the only issue will be getting up the bugger in the first place :lol:
Smithstreet wrote:Yeah, another good write up Lachlan.
What do you mean about 'slow and steady approach'? That's all I had!! :shock:
Maybe so, but it was enough to burn me off your wheel!
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:19 pm

With yet more rain forecast for today, I decided to ditch the idea of a 100km road ride and instead embark on a Cherry Picking Tour. What's that you ask? Easy, you chuck the bike in the car and drive around to ride only the most interesting bits of road, cutting out the boring stuff in between!

The plan was to use the teensy gears and disc brakes of the newly acquired 29er to have a crack at some of the steepest, ugliest climbs on the coast. For a variety of dull and frustrating reasons, I didn't get on the road until 7am, so time was of the essence. The first stop for the day was Stoney Creek Road, after last Sunday's ride I was convinced shorter gears and fatter tyres would have me soaring up through the rainforest like a lycra covered eagle.

Well, no. For starters, it was as hot and humid as a sauna, with not a breath of wind most of the way up, and the bigger issue- my legs aren't worth a damn uphill at the moment. After crossing the creek I took the first couple of kms steady, bracing myself for the steep section. Once I was onto that steep section, I found myself in the 22x32 granny, sitting bang on 100% and just keeping things going. The recent rain had left a few washouts and exposed rocks which didn't help, but the big problem was that climb just doesn't quit. As happened last week, after what seemed like an eternity of slogging away I thought "when the hell does this finish" and looked at my Garmin for the answer; another 5kms!

While my pace wasn't exactly electrifying, I was at least able to keep moving without blowing up, and no stopping for pics on the way up (or for a passing convoy of 8 4wds) meant I ended up nearly 5.5 minutes faster than last week. Mind you, that's still nearly 11 minutes adrift of singlespeedscott's KOM...

The run back down didn't present any issues, and I stopped a few times to get some photos. Sadly my phone doesn't do justice to the incredibly vivid greenery, suffice to say the scenery up there is breathtaking.


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And yes, you would have thought that in a group of EIGHT 4wds at least one person would have a snatch strap and spend the 60 seconds to pull this branch off the road but apparently not...

Given the up and back of Stoney Creek took over 2 hours, I decided to skip Bellthorpe (the main reason to ride there was to see if the MTB was a viable option for both up and down, my feeling is it's too damn heavy) and go on to the much feared Postman's Track near Maleny. I knew it had been a while since I last went out there, but didn't realise it's been just over 3 years. While I remembered it was crazy steep, time had dulled my memory of just how ridiculous, how vicious, how utterly terrifying that climb is. I can't fit together the right words to describe what it feels like to be out of the saddle, just barely the right side of complete physical shutdown in that 22x32 granny at perhaps 4kmh on a FORTY PERCENT grade :shock: When a climb is so intense that a section at 15% is a welcome relief, you know it's bad.

While I managed to clear it without walking for the first time, that short gear and my out of form legs meant it took nearly 14 minutes to do 1.2kms :shock: Nearly 3.5mins slower than my pb! I'll be back there again, because I'm a glutton for the most severe punishment, but there will need to be a LOT of specific training beforehand.

By this time, the window for crucifying myself on cliff faces was closing (as I had promised Mrs LDR my presence for at least part of the afternoon) so headed for home. We then set off to Maryborough, intending to surprise my brother who had been sent there on swift water rescue standby, only to find he had been sent back to Rockhampton the day before :oops: Still, Teddington Weir with a strong flow was interesting, and I was proud of my little car covering nearly 600kms for the day.

Off to bed now, hill repeats tomorrow morning, the weather will determine whether they're in Kin Kin or Noosa.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby Kronos » Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:35 am

Hills man? Go to Coolum and then ride up to Lows Lookout and back again.

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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Tue Feb 27, 2018 9:06 am

Kronos wrote:Hills man? Go to Coolum and then ride up to Lows Lookout and back again.
Been there, had the KOM :) Was relegated to 2nd place a few years ago but it's not long or steep enough for me to be all that keen on reclaiming it.


More rain about overnight, so with my luck on wet roundabouts that means getting on the mag trainer in the shed at work. Even with a laptop in arm's reach to distract me, a whole hour in there was torture. If it's still wet tomorrow I'll just take the CX bike up and down the Como Range.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:17 am

Just a quick post while I have a chance to catch up. After my 1hr session on the trainer last Tuesday, I found I hadn't set the roller up properly and had completely melted the rear tyre on the Vivente :oops: . With the parts cupboard bare of replacements, she's off the road til new tyres arrive, and the Shiv TT bike will have to do the majority of work.

Wednesday morning the roads had dried out enough for me to be happy negotiating the town of a million roundabouts, and I got in 41km at 34kmh average without pushing very hard. On Wednesday night my sister-in-law came over, and I had the idea of hiking up to Shepperson's Hill lookout. It had been a good few years since I was last up there, so I'd forgotten just how long and steep it was (2km at 7%), with the result that it was dark well before we even started to head back down. We did have torches, and Mrs LDR approached it with a rare sense of adventure and a good time was had by all (especially Winnie, who managed to fall asleep on my shoulders).

The next morning I headed up there on the 29er, and was happy with 21st given the 20 ahead of me are all XC whippets.


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Thursday night was another 41km TT effort, this time with a bit more welly (and a little impromptu motorpacing) for a 1hr10m51s 35kmh average. I'm confident I'll have that sub hour by the end of May, and I'll need to be at that level to hit my first goal.

Friday I was planning to do some hill repeats at Gyndier Drive on the ex-pro Merida, but she had a LOT of problems. I ended up tracing the worst of those to a busted cable housing end cap.

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With no time to get a replacement, that meant the Shiv would have to step in for hill repeat duties too, and while she functioned flawlessly, the hills are most definitely not the natural habitat of the TT bike. I still managed some reasonable times.

Sunday's plan was for 100kms, riding down to Noosa for a couple of loops and then back. Only a km in I bumped into local Strava gun Tony B, and ended up riding with him for the next 65kms, which meant NO resting :) . It was jolly hot and windy for the last 20odd kms, so I settled for 85k and a 29.4kmh average.

Then this morning, just a 21km spin around Noosa to keep the legs loose.


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Last week ended up at 267km, somewhat annoyingly that's my biggest week for the year so far. My body is feeling pretty good and I'm almost 10kgs down from Jan 1, so I should be more around 350-400kms/week soon.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:47 pm

Good to see you progressing mate. 10 kg in 2 months is mighty impressive. You will be slaying us soon enough.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby ldrcycles » Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:05 am

A few years back I lost 20kgs in 3 months, if I'd had less stress I'd have been at the 10kg mark mid Feb.

I've caught yet another dose of Winthrax, so no riding yesterday and only 20km this morning. Here's hoping I don't get the diarrhea that Winnie has :shock: .
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer- Part 4- The Comeback!

Postby singlespeedscott » Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:17 pm

Joys of kids in daycare. It doesn’t stop until they hit high school mate.
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