Monday 8 January 2018

#Festive500 for 2017

Apologies for the delay of this post related to the #Festive500, I avoided my laptop for the holidays. For the 2nd year in a row, I finished the 500km and I completed it over 6 days. The Festive500 is a challenge to ride 500km between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve (8 days). In 2016, I finished this over 7 days with an average of 70km per day but this year, I stepped it up to an average of 80km per day and finished in 6 days.




Day 1
The first day was Christmas Eve (24th Dec) which was a Sunday. I did a solo ride towards Frankston then up to Café Racer and then back home. This was a 85km day but as it was my first long ride since the Giro crash, I took it relatively easy and manageable.  There was a Southerly so the ride down to Frankston was a bit of a tough one. I was mostly in the small chain ring and tried to spin out >80rpm as much as I could.




Day 2
I have been riding on Christmas Day for many years. I have not celebrated Christmas for years and years. The roads was not surprisingly quiet. I rode up to Sharon & Pete's house in Port Melbourne after riding a lap of Albert Park and the group ride went down to Black Rock and back to Port Melbourne. I had a small break at their house and then I ended up riding about 30 or so more around the neighbourhood, relatively relaxed which made up the shortest ride of 80km for the challenge.




Day 3
I didn't get a chance to do many laps of Albert Park Lake on Christmas Day so this day was dedicated to doing laps of the park, incorporating sprints and some skill work. As this ride was done by myself, I could practice on my no-hands on handlebars skills as much as I could. I got up to 6 pedal strokes but I find that my position on the saddle needs to be adjusted so I can remain balanced. I worked on sprint efforts along the pit straight too. I need to find the balance between higher cadence and heavy gears. After doing 30km or so around the lake, I rode down to Mordialloc and then back home which resulted in my longest day of 95km.






Day 4
The 27th Dec was my bday and also a day where strong gusts of hot Northerly winds were present. I decided to stay away from Beach Road and rode towards Studley Park instead. The ride towards Studley Park from home is already 20km. My plan was to ride both Studley Park and Richmond Blvd for 40km and then ride home. I bumped into Nat (from LOC) and we ended up riding together which alleviated my boredom. The ride home was enjoyable as I had a great northerly tailwind. The total ride for the day 83km.




Day 5
I slept in a bit more than the previous days and my friend Dayna messaged me whilst I was getting ready for the ride. We rode together, doing the same route as Day 1 but I had 2km extra as we ended up the ride at her house so I could visit her 10month old daughter.




Day 6
I only needed to do 70km for the day to finish the challenge. Dayna and I planned on doing the same route as Day 1 and 5 so I was sure that I was going to finish the #Festive500 on this day. We ended up bumping into friends and we chatted along the way through and even stopped at Café Racer for a coffee/tea break.




I was so glad I finished the challenge and I slept in for the remainder of the days of the challenge. My glutes really needed a break and I wanted the remainder of the holidays to be dedicated to cleaning my car and my house.


It is too early to plan for #Festive500 for 2018 as I don't know if I will be able to ride during the holidays or not but I will definitely look into either increasing the distance or try and complete the challenge over 5 days (ave 100km per day).

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