For the third year in a row I headed off to Mt Buninyong yesterday to watch the Road National Champs. It was an extraordinary day, and perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had at the event. The fact that only 15 of 127 riders finished the men’s race is a testament to what a grueling…
I was moved by Peter Sagan’s victory speech at the Road World Championships in Richmond, Virginia. Not only was his win electrifying, he took his huge achievement and dedicated it to the fight against human suffering. Many media outlets have mentioned Sagan gave much of his speech to discussing the refugee crisis in Europe, though…
I gasped for air and fell clumsily against my bike at the side of the road. I’d just won the fourth and final stage of the Three Day Tour with a 60km solo breakaway. Anxiously, I looked up the road to see if the chasing group were coming. I needed 51 seconds for the unlikely…
I was pretty happy with my racing at the Mansfield Tour and assumed I’d build on my form. Then my luck changed. I got sick for the first time since 2013. I started to rebuild, planning to work a city commute into my training, but on my first commute I crashed in the rain. When…
I almost didn’t race in the inaugural Mansfield Tour. Following the Tour of Bright I had managed to maintain the long-term fitness I’d reached, but wasn’t training with any focus. There were a few glimmers of hope in the numbers, and I was setting consistent, if not best times, on a range of local climbs.…
There was some temptation to stay home and watch the inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on TV. Steady light rain was falling over Eltham as we woke. The radar looked a bit better over Geelong, however, and this was Cadel’s last race, so how could we not go? The car was rocked about…
If you weren’t at the Road Nationals on Sunday you missed an exciting race. There was probably more going on over the course of the race than last year, with greater uncertainty as to whether the big world tour guys would feature in the finish. When the finish came, uncertainty was stretched out to the…
Another year over, and a new one just begun … This time last year I was nursing a broken arm, having gotten too personal with a damp Flat Rock Rd. I’d reached a point, at the end of 2013, where I intended to put cycling aside to some extent, to focus on the ‘outside’ world.…
Post ToB I’ve been looking for some different cycling related activity. On 10 December I watched the Coburg CC track champs and took a few photos: These photos were all taken during the scratch race which was won by Chris Michaelides: There’s a lot of history in the Coburg club rooms. Understandable, given the club…
When I began road cycling and first surveyed the lay of the land, the Tour of Bright seemed almost mythological. Here was a multi-stage tour with time-trialling and mountain climbing in the exquisite surrounds of Victoria’s high country. For an Australian amateur road racer this is as close as you can get to the general…
Allez Alain 