Yarra St - Boxing Day

Yarra St, that sharp little hill off the Yarra Boulevard that we usually ride past, or we ride once in a while to remind ourselves that the other hills are easy.  As a one way street there is no simple loop that takes in the full hill (turning at the roundabout doesn't count!), the best loop around the back blocks that takes in hill is 1.25km.

So now there was a loop - now many could we do? "How many in a day" was the first question - 30, 50, 100, 200(!) were the estimates.  I think everyone I asked went and did a few secret loops, then revised their estimates... I did five after work one night, that was enough. 17 in one hour a few weeks ago after a Saturday crit was called off due to rain.  The start/finish is at the park on Sir William St - I've got ideas of making a morning/arvo/day of this loop for a group.  Costco style bulk food set up in the park, and we just loop all day and see how many we can do - or sit around in the park eating, the latter sounding more inviting.  The event would have to be unsanctioned, underground, and not involve CSV if it was to run smoothly.  Just like our secret TTs on the boulie (yeah, nobody knows about those hey?).

Anyway, thats the back story.  Today I had a new pair of shoes to test pilot from Luescher Teknik and one serving of Christmas pudding to work off, so Yarra St it was.

Lap 1 was sunny. Lap 2 and 3 raining. The rest were ok, with my iPhone headphones having a few problems with the water.  The Garmin was set to auto-lap on location so I just had to keep rolling around and looking down when it beeped at me with the stats of each lap.  3:10-3:25 laps was the sweet spot, not smashing the climb and not ripping through the stop sign back onto the Boulevard.  I didn't keep a track of the time, just the laps.  Not a lot people out this afternoon, but on lap 30 I was chasing another roadie up the climb who then stopped and collapsed on the grass at the roundabout - he was ok, just bad pacing.... I didn't mention to him that stopping to die at the roundabout doesn't count.  He wasn't there on the next lap, so he had ridden off or crawled to Vimy House and checked in.

Lap 48 I was out of food and water, and almost hitting three hours of seeing the same things over and over again.  So two more fast laps before I would have to check into the Kew Lunatic Asylum and I was done.  50.  No stops, an extra km or so on lap 30 while having a snack away from the up/down bits, and the last two were the fastest and under 3 minutes - so 50 isn't the answer, but it still hurt a hell of a lot.

50 Laps:
Duration: 2:50:54
Work: 2322 kJ (Real kJ From WKO, the Garmin reports 3,481!!)
Distance: 63.657 km
Elevation Gain: 2102 m

And the shoes that I stomped on all afternoon, nice!

So, a training ride that made today different from every other day.  I think 100 is a possibility.  Only one way to find out..... who's in?