The Great Ocean Road

Last week's training was good and I am getting use to everything here, the food, the roads, the winds etc. The race over the weekend was not very good. On Saturday, the rain came and went and came and went, so the race organisers have to stop and continue the race several times. The race stopped for a short while when the rain got heavier and we waited for about 5mins before the organisers decide to continue the race for another 30mins(race suppose to be 50mins, and we already rode 30mins). So the race went on and i felt really good, despite getting on a bad start, having to close many gaps in the strong winds as I AGAIN didn't start at the front. This time I forced my way to the front, and with about 10mins to go, I broke away alone, opened a gap about 1/4 of the course. The pack didn' t think i was strong enough, because I was reeled back many times during the start of the race. This time I stayed up for 2 laps, and when the A graders came by, I leeched on them. The gap was opening up slowly, but guess what, the rain came and they stopped the race. haha..

Sunday's race was at Torquay Bay and it reminded me of the Yew Tee "hotdog" crit, but it was L-shape hotdog this time. I know it's not my cup of tea, but I decided to use it as training because it required a lot of accelerations and I really suck at it. And so the race went on, I was drafting behind this big guy, really huge fella which cannot U-turn and always open a gap at every U-turn. It was more tiring then anything to follow him because he was not so "smooth". I was getting really tired, and saw that david was the last guy behind alone, about 20m away, just relaxing and i decided to join him. We worked together and slowly inch closer to the pack. More people dropped back to us and we soon have 4 riders, but they were not working. I made a move to bridge up to the group ahead. At this point, we were about 20mins into the race, and I took my time to recover. Then I decided to attack. I did it the first time, and lasted about 1/2 a lap, then another time, lasted 1 lap, then another time, 2 laps. I was really tired but it was good training. With 5 mins to go, I went again, hard before the U-turn and lasted 4 laps, and there was just 2 laps to go. I didn't finish in a good place again, but I felt strong.

Ok, enough of race updates.

Yesterday I rode a very very long ride and went to the Great Ocean Road by myself. I almost got lost on the way there but manage to find my way in the end. The GOR was not as windy as I thought it would be, but the view and scenery was really awesome. I've never come across anything like that before, so it was very nice to ride by the ocean. I also came across a 20mins climb that felt like GAP, and it was a good training climb, too bad that its too far from home. So I rode 170km yesterday and felt really satisfied.

I went to the gym today, and my weight was 59.6kg, not a very good sign because I think im losing weight very rapidly. Hope i dun lose the muscles.

Ok time to sleep now. good night my friends. Will update soon and I hope to race better this weekend and learn more in the coming weeks.

After week 1 of training..

hello people, its been a week of long hard training and racing over the weekend. As Daniel (Plews) said, I have to do more un-singaporean things here, and so I did eat un-singaporeanly, ride un-singaporeanly on the roads and raced un-singaporeanly. The racing over the weekend was an eye opener, and I raced in B grade criteriums on both Saturday and Sunday. It was a good experience and I learnt alot from it, and I will do it again this week! I also went to THE velodrome for the first time in my life and rode on it, and did some sprints. Very nice indeed.

For training, the winds are getting stronger each day because of the cool change and it has been very very cold for the past 5 days. I was so happy to see the Sun again today, although it was still cold.

Today was a good day, did some tim-trialing and gym after that. Bonked twice, once at the 3hr 15mins mark and another time in the gym. Quite a hectic start...
I am looking forward to training tomorrow..and talking to U later..

Now I know what STRONG wind means...

Today, I got up at 515am then had a nice breakfast before heading to the gym. Got there at 7am and I must say that the facilities are good. Slightly different from SSC's though. I though I might be the first and only person there but gosh..the gym was quite crowded already!

After gym, went back to meet ADI and then we did a 4 hour ride with some intervals that Dr Plews gave us. The winds are exceptionally strong today as there will be a Cool Change soon, which means a sudden drop in temperature. Strong winds make you want to bite you handlebar and eat bar tape, even though they are very dirty. Anyway, I didn't really sleep well last night. I don't know if they showed it in the news in S'pore, but last night was one of the hottest nights in Aussie in dunno how many donkey years. Temperature didn't drop below 30 deg I think. Time to show you guys one of my meals, not too pleasing to look at but after a ride, anything goes!

The time, the friend.

This is the first time in my life I felt lost in time when we came here. I always thought that the australian time is 2 hours ahead of Singapore time and since the time we touched down, I've made that assumption. On Saturday, we were suppose to go riding at 9am in the morning with David's colleague and other room-mate, Klaus. I planned to get up at 730am but somehow got stuck in bed till 8am. Then I heard someone knocking on our door, all geared up to go riding. "Tim, Adi, are you still going to ride?" (with a slight German accent) We jumped out of bed and told him it was only 8am, but he said it was 9 and confirmed with David as well that it was 9am.

We then quickly changed up and decided to ride at 10am instead. Indeed, the australian time is 3 hours ahead of Singapore time and we have been late for 1 hour on every occasion since we touched down. What a sotong....

Ok, I shall talk more about Klaus. This German chap is a 40 year old engineer that speaks pretty good english but still learning and gets lost in his sentences at times. Anyway, I found him really irritating at first because he gets really to comfortable with people at times and always like to lay down "ground rules" before doing anything. For instance, before saturday's ride, he made us sit at the table to standardize the signals we will use when riding on the roads and it was really detailed, like having to keep the extreme end of the handlebar 0.4m from the white lin by the side of the road......what the...

I really felt uncomfortable with him at first, but i thought that he had really good intentions, just that he gets abit too nervous and intense at times. Over a short 2 days, I got to know him abit better and understood where he's coming from. Klaus is not that bad afterall, at least for now.=)

Oh yes I found a gym today, abit expensive but nice. I think it's worth it. I'll be gyming alone here...no Junrong..



Spot the Klaus.

Participation ride?

Hello all again!

Today we went to watch the Elite Men's Road Race of the Australia National Championships. Prior to that, we took part in a ride, had to pay 30bucks and it was not suppose to be a race..BUT...we had number tags and there was a MTB to be won! So whether its a race or not..its up to the participants to decide.

The 'ride' was a 2 hours ride around a 10.2km circuit of the National Championship course. There was a King of Mountain section, about 1 km of climbing and before that, a uphill section of 1.5km. So lots of climbs! It started out with about 50 plus riders, didn't really count, and as the race went along, people started dropping off like bird droppings on the climb especially. I was really struggling at first as my legs felt really tired from yesterday's 5 hours ride and we didn't really warm up properly and it gets really chilly here in the morning. I started cramping up on the 4th lap, then it was like 12 of us left and Adi was also struggling. This was the exact same feeling I felt during National Champs in October last year. I told myself that I must get over this otherwise it will keep coming back and I just pushed on, trying to use more of my hamstring instead of my cramping quads. During the 5th lap, I felt better and it was down to 8 of us, Adi stopped as he cramped up and someone just took off to the front! I wanted to go with him but if I push any harder I'll just cramp up and its all over so I just stuck to a riding rythm till I got better. On the last lap, there were already 2 riders up ahead and I was with 5 others. I felt much better and David was with me as well. I attacked as soon as we got up the crest of the climb as I know I can't out sprint the rest. They caught me really soon as the wind was strong and they were all so big, so while they glide down the descents with the help of gravity, I have to keep meshing on the cranks. Close to 4 km to go, I attacked again, this time on a slight bump but again they caught me. I really ran out of ideas, half of me wanted to wait for the sprint while the other half kept telling me not to. So at 1km to go, I went really hard, just to get swallowed up about 300m from the line and I finished last in the group. Really good experience, but just not enough effort to win the MTB...oh well..

More on the elite race: Travis Meyer won the race with a courageous attack on the hill on the last lap. He was really thrashing himself and fighting to the end with a 21sec gap. What a rider and it was really inspiring to see all the other elite pushing themselves to the limit. Mick rogers was a disappointment, just sat in, waiting for something to happen, oh and did I mention that the winning break went from lap 2 of 16 till the end? Seems like early breakaways are the in-thing now.

Ok I'm tired now and don't feel like writing anymore. Miss eating coconut bun.

Surprise!

Hello friends, this is my first post and I have a lot to share=). I can't blog alot as there is a limit to internet usage here, so bear with me.

Anyway, the trip here was not a very smooth one. We got delayed 2 hours, yes 2 whole hours at Changi Airport, lost some precious time with THE family and friends. Then due to this delay, at Brisbane, we missed our transfer to Avalon, Melbourne. We thought we were finished for a moment. We had 2 options: 1 was to take a flight to Tullamarine (80km from where we want to be compared to 15km from Avalon) which Qantas offered for free, the other was to fly by Jetstar which we were suppose to but pay 120AUD. We decided to go for the latter, which was a blessing in disguise bcos the lady at the counter took pity on us and decided to give us the tickets for free! Oh it must be blessings from somewhere...

Finally, met David at Avalon and we drove to pick his room-mate aka German guy aka Klaus (will blog about him sometime soon, as you all should know about Thomas...) from Baum Cycles and guess what? Met Mr World Champion aka Cadel Evans and took a pic with him. I walked in and my eyes fell out when I saw the fella sitting there, it was so unbelievable. We then went on to watch the men's criterium and some guys called Aaron Kemp won it. Nice violent sprint finish=). Robbie McEwen was pretty impressive but he dropped out of the race, bcos he was constantly working as no one wants to close down any breaks and he decided to stop.

Yesterday we rode 3 hours, David brought us around, nice cool weather but sun was scorching hot. David got a puncture and we stopped by the World Championship Road Course, some random hill and I saw a rainbow jersey guy cycling by. It was none other then Cadel on his BMC racing, not looking so lean but somehow the rainbow jersey makes him look good anyway. We went grocery shopping and bought a whole cart load of stuff ( copy calvin and lem).

Rode 5 hours today to the beautiful-jaw-dropping-Torquay Bay and then the World Championship Time Trial Course. Very tough with some climbs. Adi bonked.

Ok thats a mouthful but I'll update again guys! In the meantime, to all my teammates, train hard and eat well! Am going to do the 2hours ride as long as you can on the road course for the Nat champs tomorrow. Wish me luck!

To my love ones and family, I love and miss ya'll especially mi amore. Love you always. Ciao.







This is the world champ and the no champ. World's apart?No just 2 inches=).