AAC Training Part 4 - A Pain in the Arthurs

Lest anyone imagine I never do any training at all, (and because I've been struck by a bad case of "writer's blog" and can't come up with anything more imaginative) I'll recount a moderately recent training ride (meaning any ride undertaken since the last edition of the Alpine Classic: for AAC tragics there are only two types of ride - the AAC itself, and AAC training rides)

Although you might have called this one a training ride for an Alpine Classic training ride. Let me explain.

A few years back, some friends and I decided that after 10 or so outings we had exhausted the possibilities of BikeVic's Around the Bay in a Day as an AAC training ride. This followed the ATB's notorious Big Wet edition (ie it rained all day long - remember that rare meteorological phenomenon anyone?), and as far as the AAC was concerned we struggled to comprehend many "training benefits" in queuing for ferries at Queenscliff getting soaked to the skin in a howling gale with the mercury hovering on about 10 degrees, shivering uncontrollably while our brown paper lunch bags rapidly disintegrated. (Not that the AAC lacks opportunities for extreme discomfort, but it's generally discomfort at the other end of the Celsius scale.)

So we decided after much discussion to drop the ATB from the AAC training calendar and insert an alternative ride which we very imaginatively titled the NATB (there's a prize for the first person to decode what that stands for and email the correct answer to i_guessed_it@not_around_the_bay.com ). Without divulging the patented secret ingredients of the NATB's composition, I can say it is over 200km and involves more hills than the ATB, and that the chances of finishing it in any sort of fit state with little or no training in the legs (ie my usual ATB preparation) are correspondingly lower. So much lower in fact that I usually feel the need to train for this AAC training ride.

Thus I found myself rolling out one late September morning headed along the Bay for Arthur's Seat, which (I was told) is a smallish hill outside Dromana. Our cartographic expert had informed the bunch that the distance was "about 140km", which I felt I might just manage given a long enough lunch and coffee stop at Dromana and strict avoidance of anything that looked remotely like the front end of our group of about 12 riders.

Once we'd got the racers in the group under control and informed them that any "easy pace" didn't mean anything (just) under 40kph, the kilometres clicked by fairly smoothly, although I was a bit surprised when 70km came and went and we didn't seem to be anywhere near the turnaround point. Still, I never was that good at maths.

We finally rolled into Dromana with the bike computer showing something like 80km and the pangs of a caffeine craving asserting themselves vociferously. But before that dragon could be slayed there was the trifling pimple of Arthur's Seat to be despatched.

Well if Arthur's Seat is a pimple I would hate to see a full grown boil. This "smallish hill" outside Dromana may not rise quite as many vertical metres as the least-huge climb in the Alpine - Tawonga Gap - but it does so in well under half the distance. Without getting into the advanced trigonometry of all that, take it from me that it is STEEP. And after 80+ km on untrained legs, IT HURTS. The resident racers in the bunch rapidly disappeared around one of many hairpin bends leaving the resident laggards to grovel in their wake. It was immediately clear that this was excellent AAC training indeed - learning to overcome that overwhelming urge (which generally strikes me about 1.5km up Buffalo) to stop being a goose, turn around, and point the bike the way the bicycles were intended to be pointed - downhill.

And even when the pain of the up had finished, there wasn't much joy in the down. The steepness and hairpins mean the best that can be said about descending Arthurs Seat is that it's a good test of your brakes and the heat resisting qualities of your chosen wheel rim material.

Once this was thankfully all over, with something like 90km on the clock to this point, my craving for caffeine was approximately equal to Paris Hilton's daily craving for yet another shopping-cum-photo opportunity. Luckily the rest of the bunch were at last happy to oblige. Then after a suitably long and restorative coffee and carbs break it was back in the saddle for the return to the big smoke.

As we rolled out of Dromana and I pondered the calculus of what shortcut could possibly get us back to Melbourne inside the specified 140 km total ride distance, I became aware of another part of the anatomy protesting with equal stridency to my weary untrained legs. The pain of Arthurs Seat had now transferred itself to my seat, and I was being cruelly and constantly reminded that preparation for the Alpine Classic's day in the saddle requires toughening up a lot more than just the legs.

It's probably best if I now draw a discrete veil over the balance of this so-called training ride, except to say that:

• I was entirely successful in my ambition of avoiding the front of the bunch


• there is a shortcut enabling a return journey from Richmond to Arthurs Seat with only 140 km of riding. It's called a "train". (Had I been out solo I might well have tried it, but out in a group the thought of losing any remaining credibility as a cyclist outweighed the Nike-like shrieks of "Just do it!" from my nether regions)


• I now have a pretty good idea of how that "small pimple" outside Dromana got its name. The story begins something like this: "Once upon a time, there was a lazy untrained cyclist named Arthur .." And finishes with ".and after he'd avoided sitting down for a week or so, they all lived happily ever after."

AAC Training Part 3 - Doing Our Bit Against Global Warming

Everyone else is banging on about the Greenhouse Effect so I don't see why I shouldn't as well. We Alpine Classic riders have a very direct interest in this after all: I don't know about you but I certainly don't fancy the thought of climbing Tawonga Gap in 45 degree heat. At 6:30am.

And I'm sure Phil and his fellow AAC Committee members want to avoid difficult decisions like shifting the event to Queen's Birthday Weekend, or relocating the whole shebang to the freshly de-glaciated mountains of Greenland.

Even our previously ultra-sceptical PM has been heard talking about climate change in public!

I actually have a theory that John Howard has known about global warming all along, but that he wants it to hurry up and defrost those icy Canberra mornings that keep threatening to freeze his bits off as he power walks around Lake Burley Griffin. Who cares if Lake Burley Griffin dries up over summer? - Parliament's not sitting then and our PM stays well clear of Canberra. And last time I looked there was still plenty of clearance between Sydney Harbour's high tide mark and the ground floor level of Kirribilli, so nothing to worry about there either.

Now, we might have got a different point of view and some earlier action out of Johnny H if he'd become a convert to cycling and entered a few recent AAC's. (But I'm not sure the sight of our PM decked out in cycling gear would have done a lot for the sport's image, if his choice of power-walking clobber is anything to go by - just imagine him wobbling along dressed in an Australian cricket team tracksuit and an early 1980's stackhat)

No, I think this is a case where we cyclists have to take responsibility for our own self-interests, so I've been doing some intensive research into how we can introduce a bit more environmental responsibility into our training for the big event, and come up with the following ideas:

Cycling To Work

Obvious you might say, but the real attraction for me was when I realised I could count the 10km ridden to and from work as "AAC training", instantly trebling or quadrupling my weekly totals, even if the biggest hill is a 5 metre pimple. Only problem is it can get a bit hot for riding around this time of year, compared with the air-conditioned car.

Which train of thought led me to a more hair-shirted suggestion:

Turn Off The AirCon

Apparently air-conditioners use lots of power, which results in lots of CO2 emissions, which accelerate global warming, which causes more air-conditioners to be installed! This must be one of those positive feedback loops the climate science pointyheads go on about. Now, turning off that aircon would be uncomfortable, especially if you're on the indoor trainer 'cos it's too hot for riding outdoors, but perhaps it would actually give us an acclimatization opportunity for the next AAC!

I'll let some of you folks out there try it this year and if it seems to work, or at least doesn't kill you, I might even have a go myself sometime in the future.

Wind Generation (I)

Some crowd of deluded greenies has installed a forest of windmills not far from a coastal road where I (very occasionally) train, completely wrecking the bucolic rural views. Damn shame they let them build it there if you ask me. However by a process of word association, wind generators made me think of wind trainers and the brilliant idea of connecting one up to a generator to power the household while I'm training! We could even look at going totally off-grid. But I wonder how my family would feel about getting only one or two hours of electricity per month?

Wind Generation (II)

This one occurred to me as I pondered my dietary and carbo loading strategy for the Classic. I had earlier read in the appropriately named Stern Report that methane's impact on global warming is about 220 times worse than poor old CO2, which clearly doesn't deserve the bum wrap it receives in the press. It struck me that as the early morning posse of Alpine Classic riders heads off for Tawonga Gap each year, all fortified with as much high carb food as they can eat, global methane emissions must go through the roof. Clearly some of the princely budget of 0.000000005% of GDP that the government has allocated to greenhouse strategies could very usefully be directed away from low emission coal and into low emission carb research.

Cycling to Bright

You've all seen - been part of even - the cavalcade of high powered, expensive and mostly imported vehicles headed up the Hume to Bright each Australia Day weekend. Some of the cars those bikes are mounted on are pretty flash as well. And as I reflected on the greenhouse impacts of all this driving, I recalled an arresting image after one recent AAC of seeing a lone, grey-bearded rider plugging gamely up the road to Wangaratta the following day, complete with tent and camping gear on his bike. "Of course", I thought, "Phil and the committee should make it mandatory for all participants to cycle to and from Bright for the Classic."

And it would also modestly increase the event's degree of difficulty, something I'm sure many riders have been yearning for immensely.

Carbon Offsets

My final flash of inspiration arrived after I'd spent a hard day reading about "carbon sequestration" and "carbon emission offsets" as ways of combating global warming. I thought I'd relax by perusing the pages of a glossy cycling magazine, poring over pictures of bikes I can't afford. Then I realized that we cyclists all have the perfect way to offset the unavoidable CO2 impacts of our daily activities: Just go out and buy a new carbon fibre bike every year!!

Tie up in that new frame the same amount of carbon that you contribute annually to CO2 emissions, and bingo, you're carbon neutral! And as you parade that flashy new machine before friends and family you can say that you really only bought it for the environmental benefits. Everyone's happy!

I got really excited by this idea until I did some calculations and discovered that:

a) my shed (let alone my budget) isn't quite big enough hold 1,500 new bikes every year; or

b) I'd have a fair bit of trouble pedaling to the top of Buffalo on 13 tonne bike. Even one made of carbon fibre.