sunday 14th sept - cyclo-sportif, york (spr team 01)

race report by peter.

as far as racing in perth goes, nothing can come close to the popularity of the cyclo-sportif events. however, as the organisors will tell you, it is not racing but a participation event. as such, the different format today gave others an opportunity to see how a real road race is run. instead of the normal team time trial format, this event would be a grand fondo mass start event. well mass enough to head off in groups of around 40 – 50 riders with 2 min between each group. as such the “no drafting between groups” rule was not in effect likewise the “stick together as a team rule”. this meant that we could form big groups and work together as well as drop team mates and not have to slow the whole group down to allow them back on. not that we were going to do it deliberately, but there would be other groups that would dictate the pace.

so, getting ahead of myself a bit again.

the event was to be held at york which, from previous experience, meant open roads with lots of crosswinds. it was not forecast to disappoint. the course would take us north to spencers brook before turning west towards toodyay, but not quite hitting the toodyay shire border. there is a bit of a dispute with the toodyay shire after they stuffed around the cyclo organisation earlier on in the year. it seems that 600 cyclists with supporters is an inconvenience to a town. the toodyay event this year was moved to lancelin. because of this, the advertised 108km event would be shortened to just under 100km.

so, as this event was not being run like a team time trial, we opened it up to anyone that we normally ride with as opposed to the normal race team. we were also keen to get a few riders into the 70km event so that they get a taste of racing rather than just coffee rides. at the end of the day we had a team of nine in the 100km event and a team of six in the 70km event. lorraine’s version of events for the 70km race have already been posted below, but well done to those guys and girls as for all of them it was the first event of this type they had been in.

in the 100km event along with myself, were, mark , mike, dr jerry, michael, dr mark, doug, ben and carlo. it was the latter four’s first time at a cyclo event and it would be interesting to see how they held up.

as we were a new team and had previously been riding under the rio tinto jersey, the organisors did not know our form and as such put us in the last group to go. i did a bit of negotiating and managed to get us into the third group alongside the current rio tinto riders. it would be interesting to see how this event would play out with such a wide range of skills present in each group.

we headed to the line and i noticed how tight my quads were. i had spent the entire previous day building a play-bench for ben and was now paying for the constant squatting and drilling and cutting wood. it was not a good sign for the start of a race but i was hoping that they would get better as the day wore on. pretty soon we were off.

our group was quite big and probably contained about 50 riders. with no real organisation the group was all over the place from the gun. mike suggested that we do single turns at the front and peel off, but i was keen to see how the rest of the group would actually work before i committed our team to dragging everyone around.

so, what happened instead was riders would go hard at the front and start to smash the group apart. we were guilty of that also and slowly but surely we dropped riders from our group and picked up others that started two minute in front of us. after about 10 kms i decided that i we needed a bit of control. we had already lost doug, dr mark and ben to an earlier surge up a undulation and they got caught in the back of the group. we had lost all the rio team except jens who had stuck with us on the surges. the majority of the group was made up of our spr team and a team from southern river bikeforce.

as i said i eventually got sick and tired of the chaos and rolled to the front and started yelling at people. we got a roll through happening. mike was concerned that we were chasing down carlo and jens who were currently up the road. i said that it was way too early and they would not stay away from here, so we will pull them back and just maintain control for now. some of the other teams were concerned that we would roll through too hard, but i reassured them that we would just do this to keep out of the wind.

it was all going fine, although some people needed a reminder every so often when they would not hold a wheel properly and let gaps appear. also, whenever something out of the ordinary (i.e. railway crossing or corner) appeared, the group would lose it impetus and have to be reminded to roll through again.

after the left hander at spencers brook, we came across a railway crossing that was at an angle. the rider next to me swerved to avoid the guy in front who had turned to get his wheel perpendicular to the tracks. the guy next to me had his front wheel slip out as the track was damp from the light mist that had been present all morning. he came down with a thump and jens narrowly avoided riding straight into him. we looked back briefly, but kept going.

we were now riding almost straight into a headwind and along the way we dropped a whole bunch more riders. pretty soon it was the southern river guys and us along with maybe a handful of different individuals that had lost their teams.

about halfway along this stretch, mike took off. not a deliberate attack, but i think he broke away on a small hill and just kept going. carlo soon bridged across to him and the two stayed out front for a while. now whenever a southern river (or ss riders as that was their race number) tried to move off the front, mark would just swing off with them causing the group to snake along the road. when asked why he wasn’t doing a turn, mark replied that he had teammates up the road so he wasn’t going to chase them down.

this continued for a while and i thought that it was a good opportunity to exploit it and try to bridge across to mike and carlo. i was on the back so sprinted to get around the group and managed to gap them as they were still stuffing around. i got about halfway across the gap and looked back to see jerry on the front of the pack, chasing me down. i sat up as i didn’t want mike and carlo to be caught. i asked jerry what he was doing and he asked me why i was chasing down my teammates. i said that i wasn’t as i had a gap and was trying to bridge across but he was the one that was dragging the rest of the pack along. we drifted to the back and had a talk about tactics. it was decided to just leave mike and carlo out there and see how they did.

from then on it was up to the ss boys to do the work, so we left well alone. they did an admirable job and mark commented how they didn’t once complain that we had stopped working. as we approached the turn around, the other two groups in front of us came blasting back along the road. that tailwind looked good and i couldn’t wait to taste it.

just before the turn we got to see how far ahead mike and carlo were, and the gap did not seem too great. at a right hand corner, one of the ss boys went left for some unknown reason, so the rest sat up to wait for him. i tried to take advantage by attacking to see if i could get across to mike. mark also made an effort, but when i looked back, they had started to get organised and where chasing. i sat up again and found my place at the back of the pack.

the tailwind turned out to be not quite a tailwind. as the road turned the wind came from every direction but mostly was blowing across the road. our group was strung out trying to get a draft and the ss boys were doing a good job of forcing us into the wind or risk riding on the other side of the road. i think we lost a couple more riders along this stretch and it was not surprising. if you didn’t get in the prime draft position, it was a hard ride.

after the turn at spencers brook, michael dropped to the back and was bouncing his back wheel in the tried and true method of checking whether it was flat. i had a look and it was pretty soft from what i could see. i bid him farewell and he stopped to change it… three times.

the remainder of the race was pretty much the same. the wind was now coming across from the right and was quite strong. the group echeloned across the road, but that really only gave protection to the first 4 or 5 riders before the rest of us had to line out behind. this meant that we were exposed to the wind for the rest of the ride.

mark had got around that problem by joining the ss boys in doing some turns at the front. he wasn’t chasing but gave a hand to set the pace and i allowed him to stay out of the wind.

i had no computer as i was still on chris’ bike so i didn’t know how far to go. it was probably the last 15 min or so that my legs began to cramp up on a small rise and i fell off the back. i was in damage control mode for the rest of the ride and just did what i could to get to the end. luckily i was picked up by a couple of total triathlon guys for the run into town and they gave me a nice draft home.

so, as is the format of cyclo-sportif, we all headed to the town hall for lunch. with over 600 riders, the logistics of getting everyone fed is quite a job, but they manage to pull it off at each event and I have never known anyone to go hungry. a few awards jerseys are given out for the bravest, strongest and stupidest riders as well as a bunch of raffle prizes.

so at the end of the day, the results were based on the combined time for the first four riders. I had missed the briefing as I was chasing down carlo to give him his race number and didn’t hear that bit of info. luckily for us mark and jerry stayed with the group and with mike and carlo up the road, my time didn’t matter. however, as we were actually competing against all the teams, not just the ones in our group, we probably should have just all worked together and may have got a better overall time. we will know for next time.

sunday 14th sept - cyclo-sportif, york (spr team 02)

race report by lorriane.

Well, for the first time team SPR would have a second team competing in a Cyclosportif event... A number of brave/foolhardy/adventuresome souls from the group had volunteered, succumbed to peer pressure or been shanghaied to join our merry little group of 6!

Despite a nervous sleep on Sat night I was up early on Sunday raring to go. With Lisa navigating (with numerous maps) Declan managed to find his way to Darlington, pick me up and make great time up to York. Once we got within 30k of York it was obvious from the convoy of cars carrying road bikes that it was going to be a BIG event! With registration, day licenses and team briefing complete all that was left was to eat chocolate brownies, make yet one more trip the toilet, saunter up the start line and wait nervously for our 9.13am start.

Our team were the last in a of a group of 4 or more that headed off and we easily passed a slower team without much effort. The pace out for the first 5k or so was pretty easy but it was obvious that the head wind for those up the front would be the biggest hurdle of the day. At this point our inexperience and miscommunication became our downfall and we ended up passing the CRT team in front of us and heading out on our own at a pace well in excess of our comfort zone. The next fatal blow was the sight of Declan's computer hitting the ground and him swinging around to retrieve it. The horrible wind and mix of abilities meant that we didn't last long with our foolhardy manoeuvre and less than 10k out our little team (no longer merry!) had scattered to the four winds!

%$#@!!! Think I... I know we didn't have to stick together for the Fondo but had not anticipated us breaking up this quickly. With Ronny and Melvyn somewhere out in front and everyone else behind me somewhere I was out in no-man's land on my own trying to cope with the wind. By the sounds of it most of us found small groups to tag onto and fend for ourselves as best we could. A couple of accidents (one with a group Melvyn had joined onto) on the way out were reminder to ride safely, especially with riders you don't know.

I can't describe the relief of turning round the cone at the 35k mark and finally feeling a tailwind...magic. So nice to finally be able to crank up the gears and have a fairly effortless 40k/hr+ ride for a while. At this stage I realised I must have passed Melvyn (at the the accident) as I saw him coming up on the other side of the road. I was enjoying the relative ease of riding when I saw the SPR "A" team cruise past me... "jump on" yells Pete. Damn right I thought, especially as I saw Melvyn had grabbed a lift too. Yee hah... Now this was more like it and I sped along for a good 5 min with the "big boys"... until the first little hill. Adios "A" team... it was nice while it lasted! On my own again... naturally! As I contemplated how tired my legs were starting to feel, out of nowhere appears Neil... Great! A familiar face to work with. Further ahead we saw that Melvyn had dropped off the "A" team. His legs were cramping up and he urged us to keep going. We got about halfway back before Neil also told me to keep going and I took off on my own... Again!

The rest of the ride was uneventful except for the return of a nasty crosswind and a spattering of rain. I crossed the line a little over 2hrs15 which, considering the wind and that I was was on my own for much of the time, I was pretty happy with. Ronny had been the first of our group to finish. He had found some good groups on the way and this, combined with some strong riding, had brought him home in just over 2 hours. We were closely followed by Neil, Melvyn, Declan and Lisa. Lisa had put in an amazing effort considering that she was suffering from considerable back pain on the day.

6 people out and 6 people back.... all still managing a smile on their face. A good measure of success I'd say.

Once we had collected our raffle and meal tickets we headed off to the town hall and met up with the rest of the Rouleurs for a very well deserved meal and rest. With over 660 riders plus all the support peolpe the place was packed. Well fed, prizes awarded and announcements made we meandered back to the cars, said goodbye to friends and team mates and headed home.

As my first Cyclosportif event, I must say I thought it was a great experience. Thanks to Peter for encouraging and organising us and thanks to everyone in the B team for getting involved and representing the Rouleurs.

Onwards and upwards... When's the next event??????

cyclo-sportif

ok, so what is cyclo-sportif. well details can be found here, but i will give you the quick run down.

what is it?
it is racing, but it's not racing. generally it is a team time trial but you can't drop riders, you must stay together and you must all finish together. if one person gets a flat, you all stop. if someone is struggling on the hills, you all slow down. there are no winners and the final times are not even listed in fastest to slowest, rather just in the order that the teams departed.

like a team time trial, the teams head off at intervals and you cannot draft from other teams if you catch them. there are some very competitive teams out there, but the main aim seems to be to have fun riding with the people you like riding with. it is because of that, it has become the fastest growing club in australia. the last event at pinjarra had close to 600 riders and that was even with quite a few opting to do the proper wacf race on at the same time.

the next race.
the next event at york is a "grand fondo". this is a different format and is a cross between a saturday group ride and the great perth bike ride. basically, they will seed the teams and set them off in groups of about 40 with a couple of minutes between the groups. the way this differs is two fold. firstly, you are allowed to draft off the other teams, and secondly, you do not have to stick together in your teams. each person is given an individual timing band and their own time will be recorded.

how much?
well money is always going to be an issue and in this case a single race is going to cost a bit if you don't already have a licence. each event costs $40 and for this you get a meal and a ticket in the raffle. if you already have a racing licence then that is it as your licence will cover your insurance. if not then a day licence is available for $18. if you think that you would like to do the next race as well, then you can in fact join the cyclo-sportif club and get a licence (non-racing - i.e. can be used for cyclo-sportif but not wacf events) and i think if you join this late in the season, they may have a deal on.

what about spr?
well we are going to enter a couple of teams if possible. there are three distances (108km, 70km and 40km). the usual race team will enter the 108km and anyone is free to join us if they wish. if we get enough interest, then we will enter a team in the 70km distance. if there is not enough for a team (5 min, 9 max) then those people can enter as individuals.

how to enter.
well for now it is pretty simple. if you have an south perth rouleurs jersey and want to play with us then send me an e-mail with the distance that you would like to ride in. southperthrouleurs@hotmail.com
entries need to be in by tuesday 9 september 2008, 10.00pm wst so i will need to know by the end of this coming weekend so i can organise teams.

it is generally a good day out and you will be amazed at how many other cyclists there are out there and how many thousands of dollars worth of bikes can be found in any one place. it would be good to get a bunch of spr riders out there to show off our colours.

cyclo-sportif - swan valley

race report by peter.

so today was the first cyclo-sportif race that didn’t clash with any other wacf race and we took advantage of it. it was nice and close and would be the flattest course available across the season. last year this race was both a success and a disaster for the organisors. they had their biggest turn out with over 600 riders, but it was also the day one of the worst storm to hit perth happened. rain was belting in sideways and a few people were blown off their bikes. this year they had over 800 riders register and the rain that did hit was nowhere near as cyclonic as last year. starting at the velodrome in midland, the groups first had to roll out to the actual course which was over the other side of the roe hwy at herne hill. once there, the circuit required five laps for us to complete the 78kms. it was unfortunately not just a nice rectangular circuit but had a number of left and right turns that would complicate things during the race.

but before we jump ahead to far, how did we get there. well we had a team of eight riders registered. this was great as the maximum allowed was nine, so we would have enough people to share the load. the team consisted of the usual race boys; myself, michael, chris, mark, ryan, jerry, stan and bruce. by saturday arvo i had received a text from bruce saying that he would not be available to race. on the way to the venue i received a call from stan saying that as his wife was due this coming friday, he was not coming either. so we were down to six. since our south perth kits had not yet arrived, we raced under the old rio tinto colours as this is who we raced for last year, and i could get enough jerseys to make sure the team was all wearing the same.

the intermittent showers that sprinkled us on saturday, persisted into sunday and the radar showed a number of them heading our way. they were not too bad though and would pass quickly. we registered, kitted up and headed out to the real start point. with over 800 rider in over 100 teams, they needed to start the teams at 30 second intervals.

maybe i should explain just what cyclo-sportif is and why it is so popular. it is touted as participation not racing and as such is structured so that there are no winners. the format is basic team time trial, but you must finish with all the riders you started with (barring injury or serious mechanical). so if someone is slow on the hills, you wait for them; if they get a flat you wait for them. this format is so very popular as anyone can enter and you get to ride with the people you like rather than a basic group race. times are posted, but not ordered and you actually need to import them into excel and reorder them to see how well you did. it offers all abilities something and hence it’s popularity has grown.

the core of our team had been doing these types of races for three years and it took us a while, but we finally got it together to learn to stick together. this meant pushing weaker riders up hills and a lot of yelling to make sure people knew what was going on. our strategy was simple. single file, 30 sec to a minute on the front, then peel off and jump on the back. this allowed us to go the fastest, and people could regulate their time on the front depending how buggered/fresh they were. it also meant that even if you did a 10 sec turn, that was a rest that someone else was getting.

the teams are ordered, based on their previous performance. as we had not raced this season, the organisors would not have any idea where to put us, but as we were a rio tinto team, they would probably use the other rio teams previous time. we ended up mid pack about eight minutes back from the other rio team. this was good and bad for us. good, cause i didn’t think that there would be any other teams that would pass us as most of the really good teams would start last. bad, cause we would not have as much clear road ahead of us.

our race number was “kk”. it starts at “a”, completes the alphabet, moves to double letter, then moves back to numbers. for the other distances (60ish and 30ish) they use different coloured numbers. what it really meant was a lot of congestion.

at the start line, gary suckling did the race commentary and introduced the teams. in three years he has never been able to pronounce my name properly. i mean, it is only three letters so it can’t really be that hard, but i have never heard him say it the same way twice. soon, we were off.

the cold that my young lad had given me on thursday was being held at bay by the cold and flu tablets that had formed part of my healthy breakfast. i was feeling good and ready to go hard. we past the team that started 30 sec ahead of us before we even hit the first corner. picked up two more before the back straight and kept passing teams the whole way around the first lap. i was totally unsure of the wind direction as we seemed to doing over 40km/h up the rolling hills of the back straight. a couple of the boys had the early ride struggles and we had to back off a bit but were still going relatively hard. the first lap was really just to get to know the course as i had not done it before. i really was not expecting so many corners and had not really researched the race too well. very unlike me.

we were being held up on many of the corners as it was unsafe to try to slip by some of the less skillful teams with the damp road conditions. there was a lot of yelling going on as we had to warn a lot of teams that we were coming past. as approached the finish of the first lap, i saw up the road that they were still starting the shorter distance teams. damn, there were a lot of people riding today.

sometime on the second lap, it started to rain. it also brought about a change in the wind as it picked up to throw the rain in our faces. it became a crosswind on some of the straights and we had to echelon across the road in order to maintain speed. this proved difficult in two respects. we had to continuously pull back into single file to pass other groups, especially those that were all over the road. and the constant corners and changes of direction meant that we had to form off to the left, then the right and back again. this meant a lot more yelling from the bunch to make sure everyone was in the right spot.

halfway down the back straight, michael informs us that his rear tyre is going down. protocol required us to all wait for him as he changed the tube. he suggested we treat it more like a criterium and he will sit out a lap and we can pick him up next lap. fine with us, we powered on.

more teams were overtaken and it was hard to know where we really stood as no-one was catching us. on the back straight of lap three we past the other rio tinto team who had an eight minute head start on us. we had expected to pass them but it was a good gauge of how we were going. a little bit later we picked up michael from the side of the road.

lap four began to not feel as good for me. the first three laps were ace. i wished i felt like that more often. the only memorial part of lap four was mark putting his head down when on the front and missing a marshal indicating for us to turn. we all turned, he sent straight. he didn’t get far before realising his mistake, but he was hammering along before the corner. we all thought that he was going to take it too fast.

at the start of lap five, the final lap, we caught group “gg” who looked like they had stopped for a mechanical. we past them by but not long after they past us back again. with a full complement of riders, they were fresher than us and managed to keep on going. ryan wanted to pass them back, but i was on my limit and some of the other guys were not going to go any faster. he was very disappointed, but he was not feeling what my legs were feeling, which was pure crap.

the final lap involved a lot of yelling to slow down as my quads had started to cramp if i got out of the saddle. i was having trouble holding a wheel and was really running out of steam. the final couple of km’s were an absolute struggle and ryan had to drop back to help me. we ended up riding two abreast to block the wind and get everybody home. we finished in 2hr 06min according to my clock and had cover 80kms at an average of 38.3 km/hr. the official results had not come out yet, so this may change.

a slow ride back to the velodrome where we at least get changed out of the rain. the track racing was well under way and there were stalls from all the major bike shops in town. as we were passing through, josie had her wheelrace heat and her boyfriend, cj sutton was pushing her for the start. we watched her race then grabbed our meal and sat down to watch the rest of the events. in the final of the wheelrace the scratchmen were both riding for european pro teams and cj buried himself to lead out graeme brown back to the main pack. brownie had an enourmous turn of speed and past almost everyone except one new zealand rider who hung on for the win.

so we will only be available for three of the races this year and our first was quite a good hit out. next race we will be riding under the south perth rouleurs banner and i hope to get a few more of the guys involved across a few teams so we can get our group out there.