Why should you get professional cycling coaching?

Cricket and footy teams have a coach to watch them play and golf clubs have a resident pro who helps player’s swing and approach to the game so why shouldn’t cyclists who are serious about improving their riding, keeping up with their mates or perhaps the occasional race, have a coach?

Last week I wrote about my fitness…

A Weekend of Different Styles of Rides

Saturday had a big combination of rides. A commute to the Start of the SSRC 'L' Ride route 2 from McLaren Vale, the SSRC 'L Ride, a difficult hill climb and the SSRC "Rag Tag Trailer ride" in the afternoon from Willunga. On Sunday a long ride to Jaspers, Gawler and back trying out a new, shorter route to see what the benefit might be.

Lets Dissect Saturday

Ride Down to SSRC 'L' Ride

Leaving home at 6:35am to meet Matt…

This blog post previously included some discussion about a guy (the Donvale Demon) who was aiming to ride the Three Peaks in March 2012. I (and a few others) suggested that 3Peaks 2013 might be a more realistic goal because he had only started riding recently and was (in my view) starting his training very late in the piece. Well, he proved me and several others completely wrong and finished the event easily. Chapeau! I am retracting all my previous comments and leaving this blog merely as a…

Thought I'd share a couple of my recent rides.



The first of these was my first time up lofty (from the city side). See, I live in Basket Range, which means I don't have to ride up a great big hill, 'cause the playground is at my doorstep, so to speak, and I regularly spin up through Ashton and to the top.  But on Tuesday morning, I got together with some friends, and we made our way up the old freeway from the other side. We were all at various fitness levels, and it was a fairly…

The domestique and I went out early to get some extra KMs in our legs. Up the Gorge then on to a yet unplanned route. We chose Fox Creek. The road to the climb is wonderful and the climb is... so so, but we did it. After a bit of refuelling and enjoying the fast gentle descent into Lenswood we thought we'd take Swamp Rd to Oakbank but few KMs along we saw Stentiford Rd - signposted Basket Range and Adelaide - and feeling like we needed a new road to enjoy we gave it a go. Oh to the Gods of…

You may ask why am I writing about hillclimbing?



I am not an elite cyclist but someone that has ridden a bike around the place for a few years and have covered my fair share of kilometres. Even though I live on the flats, I manage to get up in the Adelaide Hills often. To be comfortable riding up hills you need to ride them, and do it often. Incorporate a few hills into your weekly riding schedule, and get into them.

Importantly I need to acknowledge my…

Hello AC Family,

Well today started out well, met the Norton Virgins at the Tower Hotel @ 8am, all pumped up for me climbing Norton Summit for the first time and lose my Norton Virginity.

*Sue Giving Her Norton Virgin Briefing*…

I'd like to say that the day dawned bright and sunny for the 2011 Bicycle Victoria 3 Peaks Challenge. Instead, it emerged slowly like a grumpy teenager with a bad hangover and continued to shout obscenities at us for half the day. I had a bad nights sleep, awake on and off since 2am and I finally gave up on pretending to be asleep around 530am. Outside, the Falls Creek ski village was cloaked in heavy cloud, visibility around 50m or less. Nervously we ate…

I had a great last training ride on Sunday - the Bike SA Coast to Coast ride from Glenelg to Victor Harbour. I ate well the whole ride and I think that may have been why I felt really strong the whole way. I took a few test bags of my 3Peaks ride food (small zip lock bag containing a museli bar cut into 4 pieces, a handful of dates and some jelly babies) and these worked really well. Easy to get into while riding and I just grabbed a small handful of something every 20-30 min and shoved it…

Anyone, other than my family, who has a passing interest in our progress at the 3 Peaks Challenge this weekend can always tune to Twitter (call sign @dahondude) or wait for the full write-up with photos next week. With luck we will have mobile phone reception at most of the food/rest stops.

Weather forecast for Sunday is looking confusing...fine and sunny for the two mountains (Hotham and Falls) but showers for Omeo. Not sure how this works.

Six more…

In the interests of keeping my obsessive list making habit happy I've compiled a food-baggie checklist - 10 zip-lock bags of food for 10 hours riding. Each bag contains around 60g of carb and there are three different "flavours".

Flavour 1 contains: 1 museli bar, 1 spicy fruit roll (the nearest thing to a fig roll), 4 dates, and 2 jelly babies

Flavour 2 contains: 1 UpandGo drink, 1 spicy fruit roll, 2 dates and 2 jelly babies

Flavour 3 contains: 1 Whingers Bar, 1 spicy…

Just received a final email from BV with loads of info on the ride. One new piece of information that I hadn't seen before (or maybe just missed) is that they are providing all the riders with transponders to fit to our bikes. The transponders record us passing the start and finish of each climb (Tawonga, Hotham and Falls) which provides a time up each climb but also allows the organisers and family to track riders at approx. 40km intervals. Its not the same as those groovy Tour de France…

Weather could be a critical factor for this ride. Last year the weather was terrible - it rained almost constantly - resulting in a very high drop out (many people didnt even bother starting, and about a third didnt finish). People I have spoken to tell of being colder than they have ever been in their life.

I've been looking at the weather forecast for the next few days and coming from an Adelaide summer (even the relatively cool one we are having this year) it could be a…

Not much happening in the training stakes, although a number of people have offered their opinions on my ability to complete the ride (thanks for all the positive support you guys!). 70kms on a mostly flat ride last Sat morning (up Belair Rd, down Shepherds Hill, then down past Hallets Cove and back home via Henley Beach). I saw a bunch of the CVSA guys heading out of Glenelg and waved madly at them. I think AVO spotted me, but everyone else had the look of "Who the hell is that waving at…

Just received a new email from BV with, amongst other things,  a recommended training schedule for Jan-March. Accordingly, I am meant to have been doing around 300-400km per week riding 3 weekdays and both weekend days (2x 50km rides, 1 x 70km ride, 1 x 180km ride and one recovery 30km ride). Obviously this kind of schedule precludes going to work or having a family or doing anything else useful other than pedalling, eating, sleeping or cleaning the bike. Needless to say I am still wallowing…

More on the food issues surrounding endurance riding. If you havent cottoned on to the theme yet, you might be able to deduce that I've never really thought much about sport nutrition and I have a healthy scepticism for all this fancy schmancy (read $$$$) sports food and drink you can buy. Another on my list of "sounds like a crock to me" was always carb loading. I, perhaps like many, always thought that carbo loading involved stuffing as much pasta down my cake hole for several days before…

OK, so having read Durian Rider's post about how much carbohydrate riders need to consume and Mike independently discovering the same information we now know that we need to be shovelling around 70g of carbohydrate per hour into our gobs...every hour for around 10 hours. Sheesh...

I'm pretty keen to avoid expensive bars and gels (and to be honest I have never used them anyway) so we are thinking about fig newtons (2 per hour = 44 g of carbs), dates and dried apricots (6 per hour, 4 g…

My usual 40km loop from home - Norton Summit - Mt Lofty - Old Freeway - home this morning. 17 min 05 climb of Norton Summit which I think may be a PB, and a "mere" 6 minutes longer than Jack Borbidge's record. Crossing the summit I had one of those light-bulb moments. I did 600km last week riding to watch the TDU but most of this was done at a moderate pace, unlike my normal training rides which are mostly done at 90% effort, under the assumption that the harder you train the easier an event…

I received an email on day in early December from a mate of mine in Hobart asking me if I wanted to ride the 2011 3 Peaks Challenge with him. Entries (including a "free" jersey if you finished) closed the next day, so without thinking too much about the consequences of what I was about to do I entered (and so did my brother). I've heard alot about the first 3 Peaks Challenge held in March 2010, and this…

Unfortunately, I missed out on riding with some people who I haven't met before due to a mix-up in my understanding of where we were supposed to be meeting...

BUT...

I had a grand day out none the less.

Having missed the meet-up, I decided to head out North of the city, since I don't get many chances to go out that way. I headed out to Gorge Rd via Greenhill and Penfolds Rds and started to plod my way up the Gorge Rd. Off to my right I happened…