On Sunday I’d wangled one of those rarest of things, a Sunday morning leave pass. Thought I’d head out with some blokes I very occasionally ride with, but mucked up the times so got there late. Headed out through Doncaster, as that’s where I was pretty sure where they were going, but as I was nearing the end of Mt Pleasant Rd I was thinking nah, completely missed them. But they came whooshing down the final climb so I turned around and set off after them. Caught them on the first climb, and got up near the front. Jesus, this group have come to cycling in the last few years but the better ones really push it. After that climb not quite spewing, meanwhile they’re up for a chat, wondering how I’ve been. I could only manage grunts. When I need to get into the red these are people I try to get out with, it hurts but it gets me motivated and starts to get some speed back in to my legs.
After only being on the road bike for a fortnight got some time on the Yarra trails recently. Got my wheel back from the bike shop formerly known as VicMTB, turns out a spacer was missing and ended up with some new bearings too. Tried to put wheel in the bike, just not happening, there’s no axle for one drop out. Turns out an internal spacer had shifted, so they fixed it for me on the spot and that afternoon managed to actually get muddy. Which surprised me. When you don’t get on the trails for a while you lose sense of their state. I knew there’d been quite a bit of rain but also it had been warm and windy. So dry trails but all the worn parts of the trails were ponds. And so also since I hadn’t been out for a while was rusty, tentative and slow. Seat felt way too low, which hasn’t happened on the mountain bike before, so for the next ride I’m putting it up a tad to see what that feels like. The ride itself? Disappointing. I thought I’d just love being in the dirt again, but felt dead, heavy and slow. There was some rotor rub happening up front, so maybe I can pass it off as that? Cyclists have lots of excuses.
Ended last week with a decent ride down to Mordy. More bloody good weather for being on the bike. Light southerly that kept things comfortable and more tail wind than cross wind heading home. Always nice. Didn’t get out at all on the weekend. I realise that’s pretty backwards but I’m divorced, second marriage, so when my first kids are here that pretty much means clear the decks. Today I did another couple of hours out to Mt Pleasant Rd. Bit boring but a good ride. The nice thing about this ride is that even when I’m just aiming to do the k’s and not try to go hard the climbs are steep enough to put me well into the red. Becomes a strength session by default.
In other news I’ve had a sore knee for a while. Been getting progressively worse on the road bike (no problems on the mountain bike). So finally went to the physio. I was sure it was from carrying the 3 y.o. on my hip but he didn’t think much of that. Look at it, prodded, poked and probed, bit of deep tissue torture and asked a few questions. That’s when I realised I had new pedals on the road bike and that might be it. Left with some stretches to do, but on the way home realised the pedals where on the old road bike too and weren’t a problem. Then I realised. New shoes. I knew the cleats on the right weren’t where they had been, so moved them around and now I’m painless. Glad that was such an easy fix.
Yesterday braved the northerly and what just felt like a hot day (subjectively I think I found much hotter than it actually was) to head out to Mt Pleasant Rd again. With the heat, which I don’t enjoy much, I gave myself an out so didn’t do the return of Mt Pleasant Rd but again soft pedalled it down to Research and Eltham. Was quite a bit slower than two days ago, which I put down to the wind and the warmth. Not to mention all the sitting up I did. One of those days when you think you’re suffering much more than you are, but I often have those days when I’ve been off the bike and try to put in a decent week of actually getting some bike time in. Did manage to smash the screen of my mobile phone though. It was in my pocket, multitool in another pocket, and on the descent to Research unzipped the jumper to cool off. I’m pretty sure in the wind the jersey flapped and whipped around and managed to land the phone screen right onto the multitool. Even remember hearing the crack and wondering what it was. Seriously pissed off. Really stupid way to lose an expensive phone since yes, I guess it should have been in some sort of padding, but also just rotten luck to actually have happen – I mean who doesn’t ride with a mobile in a jersey pocket?
So today, I should go out and climb, but if I do some longer hours down Beach Rd then I’ll have a nice block this week of time and ks. So tossing up, 2 hours of climbing or 3 hours of Beach Rd? Of course it could be 3 hours of climbing but I’m quietly nudging that to next week. And still no news on my wheels and the pawls. Coming up to two weeks without a mountain bike. Not good.
Had to do some office time today, so was 50km down to Blackrock and into work. Perfect weather, faint bit of a sea breeze to keep things cool, clear crisp blueness, perhaps a cross wind that seemed to be a tail wind pretty often. Just rolled the k’s, this was a ride just to get time in the legs. Tomorrow I’ll head up some climbs again, but was a bloody nice morning to be on a bike.
So actually did get on the bike and headed out to Mt Pleasant Road. For those that don’t know it, this comes off Main Rd, Eltham, where you turn off to go to Monsalvat (at the servo just over the creek as you’re coming into to Eltham) and is a 15 to 20 minute ride with 4 small but very in your face climbs. The ride out there involves climbs, since it’s north east of the city. I usually do this as pretty much out and back (with a detour round past Rosanna golf course on the way home and up Burgundy St) but today got to the end of Mt Pleasant Road and took the easy option to the road down to Research and Eltham. Was a good ride, heart rate higher than usual but that wasn’t surprising, today it was just a case of getting up the climbs – didn’t really have a lot of options in terms of doing it harder or easier. But that’ll come pretty quickly as long as I keep heading out that way.
Tomorrow, well, that will be Beach Rd as I have to be in the office, so I’ll head through the city, down to Blackrock and then back to the city. Will be a very decent 2 hours.
In other news had pencilled in my first ever dirt crit tonight but new pawls have not arrived which means I have no back wheel. Bummer, but hopefully we’ll be right for the next one.
Another week of finding excuses and outs for not putting the leg over a top tube and my bum on a skinny bit of faux leather. Enough. Even when I did get out for some decent bike time I kept to the flat, persuading myself that I needed to just get some km’s in the legs before worrying about any climbs. OK. HTFU. Tomorrow I’m going for a ride and it will include climbs. I reckon I can get four days in a row in this week, then I won’t be able to ride on the weekend so it needs to have some climbing. That’s it. I need to get my bike mojo back and the easiest way is to put in some pain, and the easiest way to do that is to get the bike pointing up.
Working from home today and after getting a few k’s in the legs last week thought OK, this week can keep it going. Bloody hell. Monday was a planning day in the city all day. Tuesday I managed three hours. Wednesday had various commitments which meant needed to get the train into the city. Today, thought OK will go to Kinglake, haven’t done that ride for ages and I need some climbing. Day opened with lots of rain. That’s OK, started working at home. Unfortunately I got stuck right into redesigning and rebuilding 9 years of my videoblog site. The sort of thing I can do for hours. Before I knew it it was lunch time. Still time, but perhaps will just do Eltham loop instead since I do have to pick up the 3 year old from daycare. Lunch, I’ll just go back and do a bit more… That become nearly 90 minutes, then I thought, fuck it, have to get out and ride. Oh, sky seems a bit dark. Quick check of the radar and big dirty thunderstorm on its way (currently smashing and bashing around my ears). Tomorrow I have the child all day, I can probably get a leave pass for one day on the weekend. So my week has become, at best, two rides. This is not good.
Thought I’d manage two or three hours on the Yarra Trails this week. Partly in the heat being on the dirt is that much cooler than out on the road, and, well, it is always good to just be out on the dirt without the traffic. Headed out but had the rear cassette lock up. No freewheel, so pretty much had to not ride it like a fixie to get home. Figured I hadn’t cleaned out the freewheel pawls for a while and they had seen some mud and dust. So got home and pulled them off. Turns out one of the pawls is broken, they’re Mavic CrossMax Enduro’s and there are two pawls. Sort of T shaped and on one of them one end of the T has broken. Not sure if this caused the problem, or if a bit of play developed and a pawl slipped out somehow and then it broke. Either way needs replacing and also it did a bit of damage with some small marks on the hub where the freewheel goes. 
If that wasn’t bad enough the lock ring on one side was undone (a LBS did the service for me last time) so I think the axle has wound itself along the thread so the cones (don’t know if they are even cones on this since they’re sealed bearings) need readjusting. I can’t for the life of me work out how to do this. I mean I know how to tighten them, but I just don’t know how much axle should be sticking out each side, and when I go to tighten the freewheel side the whole axle tightens up on the bearings. No I know it isn’t supposed to do this. So what with the broken pawl and not quite figuring this out took them to the bike shop formerly known as VicMTB since they usually don’t make mistakes, and if they do they’ve always been happy to fix it immediately.
VicMTB is under new management, and is now Ride on Bikes, which given the signage etc must be the same bike shop crew from Cowes (Phillip Island). Only found this out by checking out the website a couple of weeks ago, but dropped by today looking for a new floor pump. They didn’t have what I was after, but there are changes afoot. The last few months they’ve had bugger all floor stock in terms of bikes, the previous manager went a while ago, and while they are one of the best places to get your bike serviced in Melbourne they just weren’t the place you went to to buy much stuff. They just didn’t have a whole lot. But today, nice line up of Sidi mountain bike shoes, shop full of nice new Scott’s, people in there actually buying bikes. They even had a couple of road bikes and kids bike. Good signs for some renewal.
