Ride 4 review

Ride number 4: Sunday 26th August, 8am


Attendees: Cara, Cate, Celia, Jacqui W, Kirsty, Michelle
Distance: 20kms. West End to Dockside and back.

Mostly flat with a hill at the beginning and one at the end.
Some less meaningful stats:
Start elev: 18m
Max elev: 41m
Gain: 75m

Firstly - what a turn-out! It was like being in a peleton... well kinda. Well done to all of us for sacrificing our Sunday mornings to be there.

So: The weather was one less thing to worry about yesterday as we embarked on our ride uphill under a cloudless sky. Here we all are at a suitable photo location down at Kangaroo Point:

We were mucking about trying to hold the camera and get ourselves all in shot until a kindly runner came to our aid and took the shot for us... thanks Michele! While she was taking our picture, a guy appeared out of nowhere and offered to take our picture with Michele in it...

It could have gone on all morning. But we still had some kilometres to pedal so we had to leave the posing and get back on the road.

Congratulations to Kirsty who surprised herself by making it up Hoogley and Ganges streets in one go. And on that old mountain bike! Michelle was sporting a new (for her) road bike courtesy of Jacqui's sister and led the field for pretty much the entire ride. Nice work, Michelle - and also nice work holding up the more serious cyclists on the path near the cliffs. That's two near misses. Next week: the trifecta. Thanks to Cate for squeezing our ride into her busy Sunday schedule and well done getting back to your car in time to get to your stuffsmith workshop. And then there were 5.

Here's us on the way back from Dockside. What a day for it!

We had intended to stop at the VW van for coffee again but it wasn't there so we pushed on through to GoMA. 2 teas and 3 coffees later, we headed for home at a relaxed, chatty pace.

Kudos to Jacqui and me for gearing up in not-so-cool lycra shorts. That padding is starting to pay dividends. Congratulations to Celia who not only managed to complete the whole course but even had time to stop off and give a bit of emergency medical advice to a cyclist that had been in an accident. She's dead handy, our Celia.

And so to the home straight. I must admit to being a bit devilish with Victoria Street uphill for the last push but we completed it no problem at all. I can see I'm going to have to make things more interesting.  Let me know if you have any route ideas.