Check ‘em out from 1:50 on this clip. Emma and Eleanor, goin’ head to head. They’re both awesome.

The sound-track playing in my head is Jim Croce …

Also:

• Eleanor’s post on the event

An imagined Twitter conversation. Inspired by actual events.

—- 9pm —-

Freckle: Chillin’ on a Friday night. Hey what’s happening everyone? @spartacus @niceguysfinish2nd @shutuplegs Tomorrow we ride?

Spartacus: Sure thing Stuey. Just washed my hair … lookin’ Hopkins, man.

NiceGuysFinish2nd: OK to ride, but not on the flat … @shutuplegs goes too hard, too long, too much. I’m not super super at the moment.

ShutUpLegs: Just put my 7th daughter to bed, only the triplets to go now. Then have a date with @MrsJensy, woohoo! Andy, you are such a girl.

Freckle: OK lads, will check in the morning, but 6 am at the cafe, OK?

—– 5 am —-

NiceGuysFinish2nd: raining at my place. Dunno. Might be slippery on those hills.

Spartacus: Not raining here. Roads are wet tho, and some drunk vomited on my driveway. Yuck. @freckle, whaddaya say?

Freckle: Not really raining here, but doesn’t look good on the radar. Team Doona looks appealing. @shutuplegs?

ShutUpLegs: Unbelievable. You guys need to ask yourselves a question. WWLLHD?

NiceGuysFinish2nd: WWLLHD??

Spartacus: WTF?

ShutUpLegs: What Would Les ‘Legs’ Hewett do?

Freckle: Ok, then. Let’s ride!

It’s getting hard to organise events in Brisbane, when its always like this.

Going for a ride myself? Well I can fit that in from time to time. But Bike Week is going to do it tough.

Not the race.

The cyclosportif.

Fourth time for me, once in the car doing support, and I have ridden it twice before. My mate Ernie isn’t coming along this time, but in his message of support he mentions his Grafton-Inverell memories …

Magnums, carb loading , sat morn pumping tyres in dark at motel, Mann River, The Hill, The Top, the support crew, The jail, the westerly, Glen Innes sangas, The funny named place just outside of Glen Innes that Andrew and I make a joke about each year, WIRE GULLY – keep some powder dry for this, and the ultimate last downhill into Inverell – its on the drops and up out of the seat stuff!

I mean, how Furracabad can it be?

Anna is pretty good at finding the words which express how we experience cycling. This is from her short piece about the Australia Day ride up Mt Nebo (& back):

John and I turned up the pace and launched the rest of the descent in the dog, smashing it (and each other!) down the hill. It was a gleeful pain, and one you really have to want to inflict upon yourself, but awesome fun nonetheless.
via Caffeine Fuelled Cyclemania: Australia Day Neebzles.

My ride was something like that too. And that’s why the ride back down Nebo is just as hard as going up, but in a different way. Anna and JohnP and a couple of others rolled into the cafe at The Gap a few minutes after my group, and Anna sure looked like she had done some work! JP, on the other hand, always looks fresh as a daisy.

A great morning on the bike.

Me, Emma, Ant, Shane & Les, at the finish of the Midnight Century.

Often, looking back on a good experience, it’s hard to know where it started, or where the idea came from.

On Sunday, I did the Audax Midnight Century, a 160km ride which starts in Ipswich, and goes through Yamanto, Rosewood, Grandchester, Laidley, Forest Hill, Coominya, Fernvale, Glamorganvale, Marburg, Rosewood (again), Thagoona, and Walloon, returning finally to the start.

And the idea came from Emma via a text: “I’m going to do the audax midnight century on the 27th, have u done this ride before?”

My instant response was: “Never done it, always wanted to. Can I tag along?”

And so Emma and I and about 50 other mad cyclists, all decked out with masses of reflectivity and bikes ablaze with lights and back-up lights, gathered in the car park of a leagues club in Ipswich just before midnight on Saturday night.

I knew Les and Shane from my South Bank bunch would be there, and I knew there would be a group from Epic Cycles, where Emma works. But as well, in the crowd, there were sometime SBB riders Wes and Rob, my old football mate David King, a rider named Grant, who Ernie & I rode with on the ‘Wonders of Glorious Mee’ a couple of years ago, and mtbdirt forum friend Troy.

I wish I had taken a picture of Troy’s bike, which had amazing fibre-optic glowing cable along several tubes of his touring bike’s frame.

So I was busy greeting people left and right all over the car park.

Emma said, with a tiny hint of sarcasm: “Andrew, you know everyone.”

So event organiser Dino gave us a quick briefing, and off we went. My plan was to keep an eye on my SBB friends Les and Shane, but I was always going to ride with Emma. By the way, Emma doesn’t presently own a road bike, so she was doing the event on her single-speed commuter bike!

The peloton of 50 was altogether through Ipswich, and briefly onto the Cunningham highway, before the turn-off to Amberley. I was right behind Les and Shane, and talking to David King. I was pretty sure that Emma and Anthony (one of the Epic crew) were right behind me.

But I was wrong. I looked over my shoulder a few minutes later, and realised that the bright headlight behind belonged to somebody I didn’t know. Emma and Anthony were a few second further back, so I rolled along till they caught me. We made good time towards Rosewood, occasionally picking up riders who were dropping back from the front group.

Rosewood to Grandchester we added a few to our group, and by the time we hit the climb of a small range between Grandchester and Laidley there would have been five or six of us.

Somehow, I’m not sure how, Emma powered over the range on her 42×16, and was only a few metres behind me at the top. Into Laidley and we picked up a few more riders.

I should mention at this stage that Anthony, who is a chirpy kind of character, was doing an awesome job of being navigator for our group of three, and anyone else who was tacked on with us. I had looked carefully at the online map before heading off, so early on I had no great need to look at the cue sheet. But Ant was calling out every turn, as it was written.

We got to Forest Hill, for the first rest stop after 56 km, about 2.15 am.

I was enjoying the experience of doing a long ride at night, something I’ve never done before. Probably the longest night ride I had done until this one would have been two hours at the most. At night, on the country roads, with the Ayups piercing the gloom, it felt like we were going quite fast, even when we were just spinning along. The evening was cool, and a couple of times I wondered whether I should have brought along arm-warmers or a vest. But I hadn’t, so it was just a case of keep riding to get warm.

We milled around at the Forest Hill rest stop. Les and Shane were still there, taking photos and posting to Twitter. So when we rolled out, they were with us, making a group of five.

But everyone else must have rolled out of the rest stop as well, within five minutes of us. We picked up a group or two, and others tacked on the back, and pretty soon a peloton of 25-30 riders was rolling along, red lights blinking everywhere. Les and I were setting a tempo on the front on nice flat roads, as we crossed over the Warrego Highway at Plainlands and headed towards Coominya.

With such a big group, Les was keen for people to take turns, and when that happens, the pace varies quite a bit.

Suddenly I got a loud call from Anthony: “Andrew! Emma’s dropping back from this group.”

So I pulled out into the right hand lane, and the three of us went to the back of the bunch. Emma of course protested that she was fine, and would be happy to ride on at her own pace. No doubt true, but it was also the case that Ant and I were happy riding as a group of three. So for a while we sat on the back of the big group, but eventually after one surge at the front we let them go.

After more than three and half hours in the saddle we were through Coominya and we hit the t-junction to turn east onto the Brisbane Valley highway. Emma had a 3-hour battery on her Ayup head light, so we stopped for a battery swap at the corner.

I ventured the opinion that from this turn-off to the Wivenhoe dam wall it was all downhill. Anthony had a different view. He was right and I was wrong, but the road did trend downwards overall for quite a few km. Really.

Fernvale came into sight around 4.30 am, and with it the gentlest shower of rain. At the Fernvale rest stop, Dino’s crew had put on a chicken & pasta and vegetable soup so thick you eat it with a fork. Just the perfect thing at that moment.

The Fernvale stop is 106km, with less than 55km to go. Once again, Shane and Les had waited for us, and this time they decided to ride with us till the end. I think the lure of Anthony’s navigating was the main reason.

We were averaging just over 25km/h for the whole ride, which on a single-speed is a lot more than respectable … its bloody awesome.

Emma on the singlespeed, 40km to go

The road from Fernvale to Glamorganvale is a bit up and down, and it has a dead chip-seal surface. The sun was coming up on our left shoulder as we rode along. Les and Shane were on the front of the group, and Emma and Ant and I sat in behind them. I kept an eye on Em to make sure the pace was right. But Les is very experienced at keeping things cool, and anytime he sensed a gap opening up, he would moderate his pace straight away.

There’s one good hill just before Rosewood. Shane charged up the hill – there was a lone rider ahead of us to chase! Emma’s normally strong on hills anyway, and yet again I was amazed at how she handled what was quite a testing climb. It was Anthony who was off the back of the group at the top.

We re-grouped in Rosewood for the final run home. Les and I jumped on the front, and I will admit that the last 25 km took us well less than an hour. Everyone’s legs were hurting but as the finish line approached more attention was focussed on navigating our way home and on the impending breakfast.

And so we made it. Photos were taken, a very hearty breakfast was consumed, including several people having bowls of Froot Loops after the hot food.

On the way back to Brisbane, Emma and I had an eventful time which included an RACQ tow truck, but that’s not a story for a cycling blog.

The Audax Midnight Century was a wonderful experience. Firstly there’s just the strangeness of the whole idea. It’s not something you would ever do in the normal course of events, stay up all night riding your bike.

Secondly, there’s the communal aspect. Audax riders are hardy, experienced riders, quite often slightly eccentric. And huge bike nerds. I can’t entirely exclude myself from some of those descriptors.

But of course, finally for me, I can’t separate the experience from the people I rode with. So to Emma, Anthony, Les and Shane: thanks, that’s a memory that will linger for a long time.

… these numbers reflect, in my opinion, an overall lowering of the performance level in the Tour compared to the last 2 decades. And this is a positive sign that doping control measures are having an effect.

that’s Ross Tucker, from Cape Town, in his blog The Science of Sport: Power outputs from the Tour de France.

I put forward the opinion a few months ago that the unpredictability at the Giro d’Italia, with riders losing big chunks of time, and even strong teams being unable to control the race, was a mark in favour of the idea that there’s less doping. And Ross puts up the numbers that seems to show performance has worsened. That’s a good thing.