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."
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