Spring cycling and up and coming events

It is now mid October and the weather certainly has picked up and made it more bearable to ride outdoors.


October and November will be a couple of busy months for me with regards to cycling commitments and events.


I have the Ride Daylesford on the 28th October and it is a 146km ride (with over 1700m of climbing, most of it done on the last 50km) so I will need to get some distance/stress in my legs in order to get myself through comfortably. So for this week's long ride (21st Oct), I will ride from my house to Heidelberg (30km) for the 7am start and then ride home. I will be a > 100km day with hopefully over 1500m of climbing. I will be writing off the remainder of the day as I will be in a deep recovery sleep to recover.


I will be heading to Bright over the long weekend for some training with Lead Out 4th through to 7th November. I am looking forward to being back in the Alpine region and to see how I have improved (if any) especially in the descents.


Work has entered me in the Property Industry Foundation charity ride on the 17th November which is a 50 or 75km ride from Healesville. I am suspecting that this ride will be a hilly one but it is fully supported and catered for. Depending on how hectic this ride is, I may or may not ride again on the Saturday.


The week after, it will be my main event for 2017 which is the Giro della Donna on the 26th November. My main aim for this ride is to be stronger on the climbs and more comfortable on the descents. My weight to power ratio will not be great since I have put on weight compared to 2015. The ride is 125km with 2750m elevation. I have not ridden Donna Buang since 2015 so ideally, I should ride up that climb before the 26th November but with so many social and work events coming up, it will look like it may only be done on the event day.


I have done two Mt Pleasant rides within the last few weeks. The sessions were not too dramatic and I didn't tear up after the sessions from exhaustion and defeat. Compared to my first ride with LOC out that way, I am feeling much stronger. Last week was recovery week for Lead Out and I completed the two mid week training sessions but didn't end up riding on Saturday as I wanted to do a long session with the Point Cook Cycling Group (PCCG) riding from Point Cook towards You Yangs and some hill repeats.


The pace towards You Yangs was fairly comfortable with speeds < 25km/hr. Because I was feeling relatively OK, I pushed myself on the hill repeats as the loop is 3km with a climb of 100m over 1.2km. The ride back towards Point Cook was also fairy comfortable for me and I didn't feel too exhausted by the end of the ride which was good feedback for me and how I will get through Ride Daylesford.