Category Archives: Racing

Italy cyclocross photostream stream of consciousness just drown in the beauty of it all

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There are no words. Literally.

SONY DSC SONY DSC SONY DSC SONY DSC

But fabulous images. From Italian photographer Raffaele Paolucci

I want to bookmark them all. Don’t let them get away!

The series goes from post number 752 to post number 770.

Like so:

Another year older, and what have you done

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New 'road' wheels for the CAADX ... they are Hope hubs, Velocity rims, 28 spoke, built by Emma. They were on her Cotic Roadrat, but they seem to be right at home on this bike!

New ‘road’ wheels for the CAADX … they are Hope hubs, Velocity rims, 28 spoke, built by Emma. They were on her Cotic Roadrat, but they seem to be right at home on this bike!

(To misquote John Lennon)

We’ve battled through another year of Briztreadleyness. Some good parts, some sad parts. Some new friends, which makes it a good year. A (dodgy) podium in a gravity mountain bike race, which was pretty damn awesome at the time. Twice as many cyclocross races as last year, so that’s a plus as well.

And a new bike, and a fond farewell to an old bike.

But the big ticket item this year for Briztreadley has been the Sunday Spin, on ABC Digital radio on Sunday afternoons. I’ve had lots of fun with Phil Smith learning how to be a regular on the radio, and I hope to make it work even better into 2013. What do you want to hear on a radio show about cycling in Queensland, and in Australia? Let me know.

The CAADX is now all set for road rides, and mostly ready for some CX adventures as well. I upgraded the brakes to Paul Minimotos (they had free shipping in November, what can I say). Emma had a set of wheels which would be perfect for the CAADX, and a need to sell some bike kit to fund other stuff. So the result can be seen above. It’s very sweet, and the freewheel on the Hope hubs clicks away like a Campag hub from the 70s.

 

Follow-up Friday: A new name for the Sunday Spin

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I know it’s Monday, but we (Phil Smith and I) recorded this last Friday. And it went to air Sunday. And now it’s Monday.

And the reason it’s the last Sunday Spin ever is in fact some really good news.

In 2013, Phil has been asked to start his statewide Saturday Breakfast stint at 5 am instead of 6 am. And he has proposed back to the ABC powers-that-be that the first hour could be the Mens Shed and Sunday Spin segments that he already records with regular guests on Fridays. And it seems like that is good to go.

So from late January we will be back on the air with 30 minutes each week on statewide ABC at 5.30 am on Saturdays, and on the digital ABC across Australia at 2.30pm on Sundays.

We’re going to need a new name … what would you call it? (The Spinsters??)

Kristy Scrymgeour: modest, unassuming, but plain awesome

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Good piece on the Velonews site about Kristy Scrymgeour, the head honcho of Specialized-lululemon, the top-ranked women’s cycling team in the world.

Some of the highpoints:

“What we need to do now is create sustainability in women’s cycling,” she said. “We try to pay our riders really well, but a lot of riders still need to put in hours in other jobs. It’s hard.”

The common thread running through Scrymgeour’s career in the sport is her passion for women’s racing. She views the success of her Specialized team as a building block in her bigger project of raising the profile of the sport. It would be easy for her to sit back and celebrate her team’s many victories, but Scrymgeour is not content to wait for someone else to do the work of building the sport. It’s a job she is determined to do.

“The big goal is to grow women’s cycling,” she said. “That’s what we need to do. I keep reminding myself that. It’s hard; it’s not an easy thing. Sometimes you wake up and think, ‘are we going to get anywhere with this?’ But there’s a lot of positive energy around it, and that’s definitely what we have to focus on.”

All that and the sweetest kit in the peloton, men or women. By a country mile.

Go and read the whole thing yourself. Good stuff.

KFC, nice bikes, and more nice bikes

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  • Katie freakin’ Compton tangles with Sanne Cant, falls off on her own a couple of times, fights back and catches Sanne van Passen in time to duke it out for the win in the CX World Cup race at Roubaix yesterday. Watch the video!

 

A Batman mask and a (coral) pink bikini

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Good fun with people I like. That’s pretty much the definition of mountain biking. Yesterday I “raced” in Sunday solo section of the 3plus3 at Old Hidden Vale. Went out there with Imogen, Emma and Rick, so that was already good.

If you were alive & somewhat conscious yesterday in south-east Queensland, you already know it was hot. So I cranked out a massive four laps in my three hours. So did Rick and Emma, Imogen is a gun so she did five before saying ‘enough’.

The trails were as dusty as the dustbunnies under a bachelor’s bed. And that was at the start of the race and all they did was get churned up and dustier throughout the morning. After three laps I had a substiantial break, and worked out that I had time and probably enough legs to do two more laps. Emma had left our tent about 10 minutes before me … I waited for Imogen to come in again so I could cheer her on to do some more laps.

So out on the course and into the dustbowl. And about a third of the way through the lap on a downhill section, there’s Emma, one side all covered in brown/black dusty dirt, being attended by a St Johns First Aid woman.

Of course I stopped and waited to see how she was. A cut on the knee was the outcome of losing grip on the front wheel and crashing. So after Em was patched up we completed the course together.

Results are here (Imogen and Emma both on the podium in their category). But the main reason for this post is to be able to use the photo above, of AnnaB spraying water over Emma. Anna is actually wearing a Batman mask (I know that all you saw was the pink bikini).

Practice makes (someone) perfect

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So I’ve just completed, this very morning, a six-week MTB Skills course, the ‘Beat The Heat’ masterclass held every Wednesday morning bright and early at Gap Creek reserve.

Ky demonstrating the ‘flick forward and transfer weight back’ technique of un-weighting the front wheel over obstacles.

And whenever I spend money on something bike-related that is not a tangible thing, I always find myself questioning the value-for-money angle. My self-justification is that because I work for Bicycle Queensland, that anything bike-related is professional development.

But it is really true that by gaining more skills on the bike I can better represent the needs and aspirations of most cyclists? There could be a discussion about that, but it’s not really the point of this post.

But at the end of this course, I would rate it a solid 8/10 in the value for money stakes. A small group of six riders, we had the same teacher throughout the course, and although he (Ky) wasn’t a vastly experienced mtb instructor, he did have mastery of the techniques he was teaching, and he did have broad knowledge of mtb technique and the background, both experience-based and physics-based, to explain why certain techniques work (and others don’t!)

So, as a result, I’m looking up the trail, chin up, the cape is flowing from my shoulders, I’m working on the flick and weight transfer to un-weight the front wheel (rather than pulling up), and I’m working on my flow, and the timing of my flicks and pumps in downhill sections.

What the ‘Beat The Heat’ sessions have given me is some new confidence about my technical ability, and some things to work on. Practice will make me better, but mountain biking is an imperfect art. That’s what I like about it.

So if you’re up for a mtb ride, let me know. Cos I need to get out there and practice as often as I can.

My friends are kinda awesome (part 1)

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Congratulations to all who even attempted the Flight Centre Epic yesterday.

Flyboy Dave smashed it to a top 20 in old boys half-Epic (50 km).

AnnaB won the 20-29 Womens half Epic by the length of a very long street.

Imogen had a tough day with mechanicals and crashes and still finished 5th in Elite Womens in the full Epic. Nothing on the blog yet, but i think there might be a story or two to tell!

And Floody (28th) and Dr Geoff (31st) had a battle for supremacy amongst Daisy Hill Wednesday Morning Crew in the 30-39 mens Epic.

But the killer result was Blackjack Al Grant, who won the mens 30-39 full Epic in a time that would have got him third place in Elite mens.

My admiration for these efforts of all these people knows no bounds. And I’m not really sorry that I couldn’t race yesterday. The Epic is hard.