Not a lot to say but I have a few hectic days coming up and may not get the time to update so I may as well do it now while I have a few minutes to spare.
The heat will chow down hard on us again today, another 34 degree strangler and I really am getting sick of the oppressive weather. Summer is great but endless days beyond 30 degrees, pointing towards 40 starts to get trying and I have over the last week or so been thinking that winter will be a welcome change.
That being said I notice the weather in Europe has been very cold, in fact the continent has been shut down from time to time due to snow, no rail services and big delays to transport. Our winters in Australia often follow the pattern set by the previous European winter although it doesn’t get anywhere near as cold here but it can be a harbinger of what lies ahead.
The forecast for the next week seems to read as if it will be a little more on the mild side, high twenties which will make the days much more pleasant if predictions ring true. We can only hope.
I have been doing a bit of riding and can feel the accumulated stress building in my legs, a sign of repetitive movement and training and long dormant muscles complaining about being forced to work as they did in the old days. I rode my first lap for many years of the old Tharwa loop yesterday, a regular training ride of yore and while I certainly enjoyed getting out there, the sensations and feelings in my body which it engendered hardly filled me full of good cheer. I’m not sure if I was tired or hadn’t eaten enough or simply that the years of sedentary living have taken their toll and all ability from the past has been lost and I need to train myself more heavily to improve my condition.
I seem to be fine riding along at a pace on the bike paths but out on the road, up the long climb out of the Point Hutt valley the whole shebang started to seize up and it became a grovel rather than a cheer.
I felt something similar the last time I was riding seriously eight or nine years ago but will push on and see if I can push through. If the lack of condition continues despite reasonable training I may have to get myself checked out. I am sure there is nothing much wrong with me as I feel healthier than I ever have in my life but sometimes we just need a few crinks ironed out. We shall see.
A funny thing happened as I pedalled home through Tuggeranong. I was riding across the causeway between the suburbs of the Valley which are on my right as I head home and the Point Hutt recreation reserve on my left when I looked ahead and saw a number of well trained cyclists heading my way from the opposite direction. These guys definitely knew their stuff as I could tell from riding position and pedalling action that it wasn’t a local Pedal Power group venturing out for the day.
It suddenly dawned on me who they were and as they drew nearer my suspicions were proven correct.
The women’s team of the Orica-Greenedge outfit launched their season in Canberra on Monday and I figured it had to be them gliding out through Tuggeranong and into the hills beyond. A fair days training.
Now cyclists from my experience, particularly those who may be a little fond of themselves or feel they are of the elite persuasion, have in the past, in this town at least, been prone to ignoring those who are riding in the opposite direction. Why, I don’t know. I have always felt that as we are all in some way a part of the same great sport that camaraderie should be first and foremost and giving a nod or a wink to a fellow cyclist should be the way of the world. Not in Canberra!
This isn’t a new problem for in the days that I was racing pushbikes seriously and occasionally successfully I would encounter the same conundrum out and about in this town. I had a training and racing partner who would get very angry if a wave to a fellow cyclist was not acknowledged and, although I wasn’t with him on this particular day, he once chased and abused a cyclist who didn’t return his greeting!
So I wasn’t expecting much but I thought times may have changed. I was wrong!
I was wearing my grubby red t-shirt and had a trade team musette over my shoulder, cycling knicks on of course, my new lairy red helmet and matching sunglasses and riding on my racing machine. I had just finished descending quite a steep hill and was pedalling a smallish gear at high cadence across the causeway. Anyone who knows anything about cycling would have known from position, style, etcetera that I just wasn’t another tourist out for the day but probably an ex-racer who had forgone a racing jersey for a more comfortable t-shirt for his morning ride.
As the crew opposite drew closer I noticed the lady on the front was the newly crowned Australian Road Racing Champion as she had the national jersey on and she is in fact from Canberra and a member of this particular team and so there really was no doubt who they were.
I have always felt being ignorant in such a situation is being too rude so despite my doubts about the chances of receiving an acknowledgement of a greeting I gave them a wave as they hurtled past and……nothing. Just dumb looks as if I had crawled out of the Murrumbidgee River which meanders along it’s own course a few hundred metres from where my ill-fated encounter with the Orica team was taking place.
I’ve been ignored by better bike riders than them.
It doesn’t worry me at all, just intrigues me. Why wouldn’t one, in the normal course of the day, return a wave given to you by a fellow cyclist, no matter who you or they are? It’s a condition among cyclists which has always baffled me.
I momentarily felt like firing off an email to Gerry Ryan, owner of Orica Greenedge and mentioning the incident and suggesting that the public relations arm of his squad needs to talk to his riders about their image but then again, why would I bother? It is a malaise which affects many who strut around these parts on expensive racing bikes and I am certainly not going to stop waving to fellow pedallers as not all are as ignorant as those so called “elite” riders I encountered yesterday.
So I struggled home and spent the afternoon recounting my experiences of the day to my ex-racing cyclist father who has a fairly dim view on women’s racing at the best of times and I won’t repeat on this blog what he said I should have shouted to them after snubbing me! I will leave it to the reader’s imagination.
Today is a rest day, no cycling, not just because I am feeling a bit tired but I have several things to do. Linda’s mother is arriving from West Wyalong, I have to take a friend to the airport and clean up the house and then I’m sure there are other things which will pop up that will require my attention.
Tomorrow is the much anticipated engagement party for Linda’s daughter and then off to West Wyalong on Sunday to deposit Linda’s mother safely back home. So, all in all, a busy few days.
So I will sign off for now and get to it as time waits for no man and I hope, wherever you are you are having a pleasant day.
Until next time.
The heat will chow down hard on us again today, another 34 degree strangler and I really am getting sick of the oppressive weather. Summer is great but endless days beyond 30 degrees, pointing towards 40 starts to get trying and I have over the last week or so been thinking that winter will be a welcome change.
That being said I notice the weather in Europe has been very cold, in fact the continent has been shut down from time to time due to snow, no rail services and big delays to transport. Our winters in Australia often follow the pattern set by the previous European winter although it doesn’t get anywhere near as cold here but it can be a harbinger of what lies ahead.
The forecast for the next week seems to read as if it will be a little more on the mild side, high twenties which will make the days much more pleasant if predictions ring true. We can only hope.
I have been doing a bit of riding and can feel the accumulated stress building in my legs, a sign of repetitive movement and training and long dormant muscles complaining about being forced to work as they did in the old days. I rode my first lap for many years of the old Tharwa loop yesterday, a regular training ride of yore and while I certainly enjoyed getting out there, the sensations and feelings in my body which it engendered hardly filled me full of good cheer. I’m not sure if I was tired or hadn’t eaten enough or simply that the years of sedentary living have taken their toll and all ability from the past has been lost and I need to train myself more heavily to improve my condition.
I seem to be fine riding along at a pace on the bike paths but out on the road, up the long climb out of the Point Hutt valley the whole shebang started to seize up and it became a grovel rather than a cheer.
I felt something similar the last time I was riding seriously eight or nine years ago but will push on and see if I can push through. If the lack of condition continues despite reasonable training I may have to get myself checked out. I am sure there is nothing much wrong with me as I feel healthier than I ever have in my life but sometimes we just need a few crinks ironed out. We shall see.
A funny thing happened as I pedalled home through Tuggeranong. I was riding across the causeway between the suburbs of the Valley which are on my right as I head home and the Point Hutt recreation reserve on my left when I looked ahead and saw a number of well trained cyclists heading my way from the opposite direction. These guys definitely knew their stuff as I could tell from riding position and pedalling action that it wasn’t a local Pedal Power group venturing out for the day.
It suddenly dawned on me who they were and as they drew nearer my suspicions were proven correct.
The women’s team of the Orica-Greenedge outfit launched their season in Canberra on Monday and I figured it had to be them gliding out through Tuggeranong and into the hills beyond. A fair days training.
Now cyclists from my experience, particularly those who may be a little fond of themselves or feel they are of the elite persuasion, have in the past, in this town at least, been prone to ignoring those who are riding in the opposite direction. Why, I don’t know. I have always felt that as we are all in some way a part of the same great sport that camaraderie should be first and foremost and giving a nod or a wink to a fellow cyclist should be the way of the world. Not in Canberra!
This isn’t a new problem for in the days that I was racing pushbikes seriously and occasionally successfully I would encounter the same conundrum out and about in this town. I had a training and racing partner who would get very angry if a wave to a fellow cyclist was not acknowledged and, although I wasn’t with him on this particular day, he once chased and abused a cyclist who didn’t return his greeting!
So I wasn’t expecting much but I thought times may have changed. I was wrong!
I was wearing my grubby red t-shirt and had a trade team musette over my shoulder, cycling knicks on of course, my new lairy red helmet and matching sunglasses and riding on my racing machine. I had just finished descending quite a steep hill and was pedalling a smallish gear at high cadence across the causeway. Anyone who knows anything about cycling would have known from position, style, etcetera that I just wasn’t another tourist out for the day but probably an ex-racer who had forgone a racing jersey for a more comfortable t-shirt for his morning ride.
As the crew opposite drew closer I noticed the lady on the front was the newly crowned Australian Road Racing Champion as she had the national jersey on and she is in fact from Canberra and a member of this particular team and so there really was no doubt who they were.
I have always felt being ignorant in such a situation is being too rude so despite my doubts about the chances of receiving an acknowledgement of a greeting I gave them a wave as they hurtled past and……nothing. Just dumb looks as if I had crawled out of the Murrumbidgee River which meanders along it’s own course a few hundred metres from where my ill-fated encounter with the Orica team was taking place.
I’ve been ignored by better bike riders than them.
It doesn’t worry me at all, just intrigues me. Why wouldn’t one, in the normal course of the day, return a wave given to you by a fellow cyclist, no matter who you or they are? It’s a condition among cyclists which has always baffled me.
I momentarily felt like firing off an email to Gerry Ryan, owner of Orica Greenedge and mentioning the incident and suggesting that the public relations arm of his squad needs to talk to his riders about their image but then again, why would I bother? It is a malaise which affects many who strut around these parts on expensive racing bikes and I am certainly not going to stop waving to fellow pedallers as not all are as ignorant as those so called “elite” riders I encountered yesterday.
So I struggled home and spent the afternoon recounting my experiences of the day to my ex-racing cyclist father who has a fairly dim view on women’s racing at the best of times and I won’t repeat on this blog what he said I should have shouted to them after snubbing me! I will leave it to the reader’s imagination.
Today is a rest day, no cycling, not just because I am feeling a bit tired but I have several things to do. Linda’s mother is arriving from West Wyalong, I have to take a friend to the airport and clean up the house and then I’m sure there are other things which will pop up that will require my attention.
Tomorrow is the much anticipated engagement party for Linda’s daughter and then off to West Wyalong on Sunday to deposit Linda’s mother safely back home. So, all in all, a busy few days.
So I will sign off for now and get to it as time waits for no man and I hope, wherever you are you are having a pleasant day.
Until next time.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 