With all the running around getting finance and documentation together to buy the apartment, followed by time spent doing work on the place and being available to let tradies in to do their thing, cycling has taken a back seat since November. That was annoying as I’d built up a decent bit of fitness to handle the 180km+ of the Gone Ride Return and had hoped to build on that leading in to Christmas. Alas, it was not to be, so once again I begin a new year in a relatively unfit state as evidenced by the graph below.

The blue line is a measure of bike fitness, being the amount of work done per day averaged over the previous 3 months. It declined from a peak of just over 60 in November, to just above 20 in the New Year. The pink line is the average work done over the previous week, which fluctuates a bit more.

Anyway, it is what it is. I’m off to Europe this summer to ride my bike in the Alps again, so, the rebuild begins!

The big news in the last six months is that myself and Jacqui have bought an apartment. After a few years of half-hearted looking we finally found somewhere that we liked enough to actually bid on.

Jacqui always wanted a bit of outdoor space, so a courtyard or garden was a must. She spotted ana apartment in Maroubra which looked great. Decent sized garden, recently renovated, move in, nothing to spend sort of place. It met all the requirements, so we got our finances in order and headed off to the auction.

The agent had quoted an expected price around $520k, so, Aussie agents being what they are, we knew that would probably be a bare minimum. Although this was our first auction, there were found being held at the venue before ours, so there was plenty of time to get a feel for how things were running. Standard procedure seemed to see lots of frantic bidding, then a pause when it appeared it was finally down to two buyers, but then the serious bidders would come in and the final stage was reached.

When our auction started I figured I’d bide my time and see what happened. Bidding started at $450k and I was hopeful of getting the apartment for a decent price, but it quickly ended up at two couples duking it out at $540k. After the “going twice” announcement, I started bidding and we ended up bowing out at $570k. Damn! I was a bit disappointed, but Jacqui was heartbroken.

Back to the drawing-board, or so we thought. A couple of days later the estate agent called us to say that the owner of the apartment next door, in the same building, wanted to sell. We went to check it out and it was identical in layout and size to the apartment we’d missed at auction. The only downside was that, while there were no structural issues, it was a rental property, so would need a complete paint, a new kitchen and a few other things done to get it up to the standard we wanted.

Luckily our bid of $525k was accepted and, after all the legalese was over with, we picked up the keys on November 23rd. Here’s a few photos of the state it was in when we bought it.

With the help of Jimmy, my builder mate, we quickly worked through the major items needing to be done so we could move in before December 10th.

• rip out carpets and built-ins in both bedrooms
• rip out carpet and lay a wooden floor in my office
• install many extra plug sockets
• sand & white-wash the floorboards throughout
• prune the trees in the garden and get rid of the weeds

Here’s a few photos of the work in progress. We’ve now moved in and had a BBQ/housewarming on NYE which went pretty well. We’ve a new kitchen on the way, plus a few final touches to sort out before the major work is finished. More photos to come!

Suffering across the finish line...

Last Friday week was my second visit out to RAW Track racing at Dunc Gray Velodrome in Bankstown. I opted to race Novice again as it had been a month since my first visit, so I figured I should refresh my learning of the ropes before stepping up to Div. 5.

There were 8 of us novices this time around, making for a different experience from the first time when it was just myself and Kylee. As before, the races were all handicapped to even out the differences in standards.

I had some good results, finishing 4th twice before winning the final race (see photo). I went off 4th rider with another 4 chasing behind me for an 8-lap race. I caught the guys in front of me after 4 laps, but the guys chasing me still had a bit of work to do. I knew that the guy immediately behind me was a similar standard to me, perhaps slightly faster, so, instead of going around the guys I’d caught I opted to sit-in, make the other guy work to catch us and then hope to out-sprint him at the finish.

As Hannibal says in the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together! The Sydney Uni rider caught us with about a lap and a half to go and chose to sit on for a bit. I bided my time, periodically checking over my shoulder, until, with half a lap to go I went for it, sprinting as hard as I could around Royds in front of me into the final bend and hoping it was enough to get the win. As it turned out, it was! The Sydney Uni guy congratulated me afterwards, confirming that he had been lining me up but that I had accelerated too quickly for him and he couldn’t close the gap. Always good to hear :)

This Friday sees me move up to Div. 5 sporting a new 14-tooth cog at the rear for a bit of extra top speed. Should be fun.

Well, what can I say? The first Australian to ever win the Tour de France. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s worth the wait! Twice second in ‘07 and ‘08, followed by crashes and injuries in ‘09 and ‘10, it sometimes seemed that Cadel would never reach the top step. His World Championship win in ‘09 gave him a confidence boost, and the move to BMC, who built a team for the Tour solely focused on the GC, resulted in a calm & relaxed Cadel who was free to focus on his riding. The results speak for themselves.

This year’s Tour has been the best that I can remember. Right from the start we’ve had a variety of riders animating the race, and, more importantly, it’s been who has been animating the race that’s been significant. Thor Hushovd, Philippe Gilbert & Jeremy Roy are widely regarded as clean riders, as are Cadel and Thomas Voeckler. To see them all up the front, attacking and making it stick, is a big clue that cycling is getting its act together and the efforts to fight doping are working.

I’m sure there are still dopers out there, but they’re definitely doping less. The days of a Mr. 60% like Pantani or Riis are long gone, as are the Armstrong years where a single team controlled the race from start to finish. The introduction of the bio-passport to the peloton in 2008 was the turning point. For the first time, all riders were subject to longitudinal testing, not just the French and, as more data has been gathered, it has been possible to construct individual, year-round profiles for each rider, greatly minimising the opportunities for any doping, and completely removing the possibility of taking large amounts of drugs.

The climb times and power to weight ratios on the decisive climbs back this view up, with times up to 3 minutes slower on crucial climbs than the Armstrong era. This, coupled with the resurgence of French teams, plus the strength of teams with a strong anti-doping stance like Garmin-Cervelo, Sky and HTC, point to a brighter future for the sport. I’m pretty confident that we’ve just witnessed the cleanest Tour in at least 20 years. Long may it continue.

Anyway, after three weeks staying up until 1 or 2am watching the race, it’s time for me to get back on the bike and cycle myself instead of watching others do so!

Last night I headed out to Dunc Gray Velodrome, built for the Sydney Olympics, to try racong on the velodrome for the first time. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous for a number of reasons;

• I’d never ridden a track bike before, and since they have no brakes slowing down could be a problem if there’s a crash or something
• they also have a fixed hub, so you can’t freewheel and if you stop pedalling, well the pedals keep going around taking your legs with them and you get bumped out of the saddle
• the corners at each end of the lap are banked at 45° (see photo!) so I wasn’t sure how to ride them properly, or how fast you need to go so you don’t slide off!

I arrived with about half an hour of the warm-up to go, registered, paid and showed my Cycling Australia race licence, picked up my race number and signed on in the Novice category. I figured I’d just get on the bike and get out there. In all my years on a bike, whether commuting, road riding or MTBing, I’ve only crashed once, and that was while doing jumps on the MTB, so I figured I should be OK.

After a couple of laps around the skirt (the flat bit just on the inside of the track proper) I bit the bullet and went up on to the boards, accelerating hard to carry a bit of speed into the first turn. It was a little nerve-wracking at first as my natural instinct was to turn the bike but that just felt like the bike was going to fall off the slope, so in the end I just relaxed and let the bike do what it wanted and all was well. The secret is not to actively turn the bike but to let speed, the banking and the laws of physics guide you around the turn. After a few laps I was fine, though I still wasn’t comfortable riding close to other riders, a hangover of not having any brakes!

The first race was a 6-lapper (each lap is 250m) and there was only myself and a friend Kylee in the novices. Two more experienced riders went out with us to get us up to speed and get us swapping off turns at the front, then with 500m to go they pull out and it’s mano-a-mano between myself and Kylee. I knew that I could punch out more power than Kylee, but she was fitter than I was, so I just stayed behind her until 100m to go and put the hammer down around the last bend. First race, first win!

The second race was a 4-lap handicap, and this time they gave Kylee a 40m head start. I caught her with about a lap to go and came around her again on the last bend for the win.

The final race was an 8-lap handicap and this time we each had a more experienced rider to pace us for the first four laps and then we were on our own. Kylee was given a 125m head start this time and I had to chase her down. My chaperone was Gary Mandy, who I found out later, rode for Zimbabwe in the 1988 Olympics, so he quickly got me up to speed and while we were catching Kylee slowly but surely, my lack of fitness was making itself felt and my legs were already toast just following Gary! He swung off and while I continued to catch Kylee I just wasn’t fit enough to close the full gap and she won by about 40m.

All in all a bloody good night’s racing! Next time I’ll move up to Division 5 where there are a lot more people, as I’m comfortable enough riding the banking now and need to get used to having other people near me whilst riding at pace. Unfortunately I will no longer have a weight & power advantage, so there won’t be any more wins for a while!

Seeing as how I’m going track racing I figured I might as well find out how unfit I am. I’ve been doing little for the past few months and only started cycling infrequently about a month ago. My riding has basically consisted of a 70km cruise with Marc every second Saturday with little else.

I resolved to cycle a bit more regularly last week, so got a ride in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then figured I should do a MAP test to see exactly where my fitness was. I’d done one previously, about 18 months ago, when I first started training for La Marmotte and the procedure is the same; after a thorough warm-up, start cycling at an effort of 100W and increase by 25W/minute until you collapse in a heap. The best average power achieved for a minute is your Maximum Aerobic Power (MAP) and your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is approximately 75% of your MAP. Your FTP is the power you can sustain for a one-hour, all-out effort and is used as the basis for setting training levels.

Anyway, to the test:

The results…

The above is the graph of the actual test, with the yellow line being power output. I finished up with a MAP of 367W, leading to an FTP of 275W, and a power to weight ratio at FTP of 3.05W. The test 18 months ago resulted in MAP 406W & FTP 305W, so I’m a little over 105 less fit than I was then. There’s work to be done!

Tomorrow I’m making my track debut! As another part of keeping my cycling going over the winter (or restarting it at least), I’ve decided to give track racing a go. There’s a race series called RAW (Race All Winter) which started in June, runs every Friday night through winter, and is held at Dunc Gray Velodrome, built specially for the Sydney Olympics. No slumming it for me. We’re talking world-class facilities!

A few triathlon friends had been talking about it last year, saying how enjoyable it is and I’d been thinking about giving it a go this year. Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought myself a Felt TK3 track bike.

A Felt TK3…

Now the astute amongst you will no doubt have noticed that there’s no brakes. That’s not such a big deal as it’s a 250m track, there are no obstacles and everyone can only go in one direction. If someone in front of you crashes it usually happens so quick that even if you had brakes you wouldn’t be able to stop anyway. The best you can hope for is that you can swerve around them.

There are also no gears. That’s standard fare for track bikes. You can change gears, but only be manually removing one cog/chainring and replacing it with a different one, before the race starts. Once you’re moving your top speed is determined solely by how fast you can turn your legs. Top track cyclists can hit 160rpm+ whereas I struggle with about 110rpm!

So, tomorrow night’s my debut. I’ve never ridden a track bike, and never been on a velodrome, though I did head out to the first RAW night a few weeks ago to take photos and to see what it was all about. I basically sign on as a novice and they tell me everything I need to know. There’ll be other novices to race against and you can stay in the novice grade until you’re comfortable on track, at which point you can step up to Div 5. Div 1 sees a few Masters World Champions mixing it up with Australia’s stars of the future preparing for the Junior World Championships in Moscow this August. Should be fun!

Over the last few months I’ve been sitting on my arse doing nothing and increasingly feeling that I should get back out on the bike again. I’ve made a few abortive attempts which usually involved going for a ride on a Monday morning, then again on Tuesday whereupon we’d get one of those Sydney weeks of torrential rain and I’d be back to square one.

With that in mind, I bit the bullet and bought myself an indoor trainer, the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine.

The Kurt Kinetic on the back balcony…

The Kurt Kinetic with bike attached…

Riding on a trainer is usually pretty boring, so I’m not going to be replacing my weekend long ride with a multi-hour session on it, but it will be very good for the short, hard interval work which you can’t really do on the road, or, if you do find somewhere to try them like Centennial Park, it’s invariably windy & gusty which makes it very tough to stick to a particular effort level.

At least now if I wake up and the weather’s atrocious I can set up the trainer on the back balcony and do a shorter, more intense workout. Better than nothing!

Time for a new look around here! I decided to go with a name change. The old “Swim On” was appropriate back when I started as i was getting back into swimming after a long lay off, but times have changed and I don’t really bother with swim training any more. I’m now getting much more enjoyment out of riding my bike, so I’ve changed the name to 34x28 and have also bought the 34x28.com domain name.

Inspired by the name of a site run by one of cycling’s most notorious doping doctors, Michele Ferrari, 53x12.com, which signifies riding at speed in top gear (53-tooth front chainring and 12-tooth rear cog), I’ve opted for the complete opposite, a 34-tooth “compact” front chain ring and a 28-tooth rear cog, to signify a complete contrast with Ferrari’s outlook. Not only am I strongly against doping in cycling, but I’m also a crap cyclist, with 34x28 being my default gear once the roads head into the mountains :)

Also, in case you’re wondering, the background photo is taken in Bourg d’Oisans in France, near the bottom of the famed Alpe d’Huez climb, looking along the valley floor in the direction of the Col du Lauteret. I climbed Lauteret last year, but never made it up the Alpe due to a dodgy knee. Unfinished business!

What’s been going on. No updates in almost six months. Oops. So, a quick run down of what I’ve been up to is warranted. September saw us attending Steve & Nikki’s wedding over in Manly followed in November by Ange & Marksy’s wedding down in Gerroa. Two very enjoyable events, with the long weekend away in Gerroa an added bonus.

On the exercise front, I withdrew from the Canberra Half Ironman with a few weeks to go as I just wasn’t enjoying running. I figured this exercise lark was supposed to be fun, so why waste my time doing something that wasn’t? Instead, I took my refunded entry fee and used it to join Randwick-Botany Cycling Club, one of Australia’s oldest cycling clubs. They hold weekly races at 3pm on Saturdays, though I’ve only been down once and smashed myself for 50 minutes in C grade.

New Year’s Eve was a blast as Anna & Nathan put on a fancy dress boat party on the Harbour, so we were front and centre for the world famous Sydney NYE fireworks.

The beginning of the year has been busy as well, with me heading down to Bright in Victoria to ride the Alpine Classic, a 200km jaunt through the mountains with 3900m altitude gain. Pretty tough day on the bike, especially as the final climb was done in almost 40C. I spent most of that deliberately going as slow as possible so I didn’t overheat!

The weekend after that it was Nathan’s 40th, so we all decamped to Craig’s place in the Hunter Valley to celebrate with a barbie, drinks and a few dips in the pool. After that it was off to Japan for two weeks snowboarding! We’d been talking about going for years, ever since we got back from Canada, so when Nath decided he wanted to go for his 40th it was pretty easy to persuade the rest of us to join in.

There were 7 of us in the end, after Floody and Darrell got their respective other halves pregnant, forcing them to miss out, plus three guys who came over from the UK. Over the course of the two weeks we ended up with 1.5 metres of fresh, light powder, so to say we had a great time would be a bit of an understatement. After a few hours wandering around Tokyo it was back to the real world, so here I am at the beginning of March and it’s time to get back out on the bike and enjoy the remains of summer.