Shane & Von's Excellent Adventures - October/November 2012.

Von looking cute, me looking like a crazy.
Bright TT course - Post Alpine CC TT.

A lack of updates hasn't stopped the traffic hitting this blog. The CyclingNews article about my oceaniacycling.com domain ownership and people snooping past race results prior to the Tour of Bright is keeping the traffic up..... So here is a mixed update of things with a lot of photos. People love photos!

After the Masters Nationals TT SuperVon (my fiancé) and I have done lots of riding, lots of travelling, and a bit of racing. Von has done the Goldfields Tour, women's crits, and more training than me. Here is the rundown of my past eight weeks:

• Grampians Audax. Our yearly return to the hills after the Masters Nationals TT. 100kms, 2600m of climbing. From 30deg in NSW a few days prior to 2.6deg, it was a tough day! Strava Linky.
• Grampians Vets 46km Handicap: Off scratch. Almost taken out by a rider falling on the 12km corner. Lost 5mins helping him change. TTed like mad on the front for 34km. We caught nobody. Great to finally race with this club after years of following their races/results. Von and I will be racing with them whenever we get back to Horsham. 
• The Brackenbury @ Creswick. Eureka Vets. Technical crit in the center of town for the festival. Was great to meet a few new faces and scoot around town with them on bikes! 
• Seymour-Broadford CC 2012 Mountain Goat Classic. We missed the winners by 45 sec. Close! I managed FT with a little finish line kick. SBCC run road races and handicaps in summer. Keep an eye on their calendar if you want to race something other than crits! 
• Eastern Vets Wednesday Crits - Kew. Snuck in an early morning race. I let someone else make the move at about 20mins in, I bridged, worked with them to stay away, rolled in 2nd.
• Had a good crack at Tony Reeckman's Mt Buffalo Challenge. PB and 2 mins faster than this time last year. The not-so-secret diet of eating less is working. It just takes time and lots and lots of kms.
• Kelly Country Classic at Sam Miranda. 105kms with the Wangaratta locals and a few others to support Northeast Health. Marty Tobin once again leading the way in running cycling events in North East. Great day out.
• Coburg CC 'FlashMob TT' in Bright. Wandi 16km TT course. Great prep for the Tour of Bright after 130km in the morning. 1st place, with SLane in 2nd.
• Alpine CC Monday Night TT. The awesome 16km Wandi TT. Headwind out. Lightening fast home. 1st and a new PB on the course. Bring on ToB!

Somewhere in all the mix the wedding planning is happening. I've also been working with a few people to improve their time trialling too. Can't wait to see their improvements in 2013.

It will be a pretty busy few months coming up. As always, keep an eye on my Twitter feed and Facebook for other shorter, and sometimes more emotionally charged updates.....

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Heather Mills has her own public loo in St Arnaud.

Jimmy the dog.... trying to open his own Facebook account.

SBCC Mountain Goat 2012 - Fastest Time.
Photo by Jo Upton Photography

Snake Valley main street. Fully sick.

Von warming up at Snake Valley. Goldfields Tour stage 4.

Von and Emma - B Grade Goldfields Tour Superheroes!

Mt Buffalo Challenge - 1/2 way.

Mt Buffalo

Trainer-ception. Twice the resistance?

Post ride story telling at the Kelly Country Classic.

SLane at the top of Hotham.

Eurobin Falls - Mt Buffalo. Magic!
I had to take my bike shoes off and rock-hop up here for this shot.

Artsy shot of my 'Wiggo' front wheel on the TT course.

Support during the Alpine CC TT was awesome!

Post TT warm-down with Von.

Yeah, I got arty. Saw this somewhere and made my own.

Northern Combine ITT Championships 2012. Wildwood ITT - Coburg CC. June 2012

Northern Combine ITT Championships 2012. 23rd June 2012.

Even with detailed Google Maps and in car navigation, nobody can find Balliang. If you're within 20kms of the race start and you see a car going the other way with a bike on the roof, keep going, they're lost. To keep it as easy as possible, I've always driven through Bacchus Marsh to get there. This route is handy for a quick course recon as this is the out-and-back road the TT is held on. I stopped for a few minutes at the 12km turn point on the Bacchus Marsh - Balliang Rd to see how windy it really was..... and it really was... 30-40km/h WNW. An epic cross wind with nowhere to hide.

The standard banter at the start of a windy TT is "Do I run a rear disc or not?". The rear wheel doesn't steer a bike..... and with about 40-50kgs+ placed on top of it when you're riding, it takes more than a little wind to disrupt it. The front wheel on the other hand is where things get interesting. There is a reason we don't run front discs on the road, and a reason we don't use shallow rims either. The best wheel to use on the road is somewhere in between. The trick on race day is to guess which front wheel is best to use given the conditions. My selection in order of 'windiness' is a heavy 50mm clincher, Zipp 404 50mm, or HED Stinger 90 90mm. The selection process isn't very scientific. Check the wind, and ride what you can hang onto, the Zipp 404 it was. Tyre pressure is a whole new topic, in summary it comes down to two road surface types 'rough as guts' or 'pretty smooth'. Bacchus Marsh - Balliang Rd is somewhere in between. Cross winds and TT helmet selection is also something that I'll tinker with once/if KASK or another brand get the AS/NZS certification on their short stubby helmets (Team Sky TT helmets). Equipment selection sorted... that was the hard part of the day over.

What it feels like riding in a cross wind.

I was defending the title from last year, meaning I was off last chasing everyone. Nick Squillari was my minute man and was on a pretty good ride out to the turnaround. I'd pulled him back to within 20 seconds as we were approaching the turn. One last glance up to see where I needed to start braking and I see Nick sliding across the road. I wtf'ed for a moment and saw the corner marshals scrape him off the road as I hit the turn. It looked like when he got off the TT bars approaching the turn a gust of wind had its way with his front wheel and sent him flying. With the majority of the work done for the day we could switch to cruise mode with the mostly-tailwind home. I had a few catch-and-releases on the way back to the line to help keep the tempo high.

29:55. 46.something km/h. Enough for 1st place ahead of Mitch Cooper (Charter Mason Drapac Development), and Nick 'I take TT tips from Andy Schleck' Squillari who bounced back up onto his bike and lost next to no time on the return leg..... and who had also given his BMC TT bike a new bloody paint job!

Custom paint job!

Balliang was one of my first TTs on an almost real TT set up back in 2006. It was a 32km ITT back then, and I was schooled by Jake Sutherland by over 2 minutes. I'm still chasing those 2 minutes.

NC ITT Championships - Balliang. 2006

NC ITT Championships - Balliang. 2012.
Photo by Michael McRitchie

Elite Men Top 5:
1     Shane Miller       Coburg        29.55    
2     Mitch Cooper       Brunswick     31.33 +1:38     
3     Nicholas Squillari Geelong CC    32.29 +2:34     
4     Stephen Lane       Coburg        32.34 +2:39     
5     Luca Giacomin      Brunswick     32.55 +3:00

Full Results
Pics by Jo Upton (Facebook)

The Giant Celtic boys posted a nice write up of the TT over on their site too: http://giantceltic.com.au/2012/06/the-test-of-truth-in-a-testing-wind/

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Wildwood ITT - Coburg CC. 16th June 2012.

With little notice Coburg CC created and held a very successful flash-mob ITT. $5 entry, same course as round #1 of their Summer ITT series, and one hell of a northerly wind. 25 riders across Aero, Restricted, and Women's Restricted categories. With such a small charge for entry, I put the offer on the table to cover 4 people on the day, this offer was snapped up. More people, all good! I just had to do well break even.

It has taken me three time trials on this course to figure out you can't ride the first 14km pacing yourself off power. The first half is just too rough, too hilly, and the climb from 10km-11km is a leg drainer. With the head wind and climbs the first 8km was done at only 33km/h, at the same power that'd usually mean 46km/h+ on a wind-free flat road. Even though the bike speeds were low, the wind speed was a 35km/h northerly, effective wind speed = 68km/h. Tough conditions.

A hard slog out to the 16km turn, almost side swiped by a ute driver trying to 'teach me a lesson'.... who missed me, prick... Then a quick spin to the finish line with the roaring tailwind. I planted a pedal at the 22.5km turn but thankfully it didn't lift a wheel.... then I had an encounter of the grandma kind in the final few kms when she passed me and slowed behind another rider. As I went to overtake them both, nana plants her foot and drifts into me. 'Ol purple rinse kept me on my toes!

Aero - Top 5:
1 Shane Miller    36.20
2 Stephen Lane    38.31 +2:11
3 Nick Squillari  38.41 +2:21
4 Gerard Donnelly 39.01 +2:41
5 Martin Lama     39.39 +3:19

Full Results: Coburg CC Facebook.

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Random Visuals

Guess who's back?....
"Carvia"? Put some effort in you crazy bastard!

March Madness Weekend 2012. Crits, TTs, Crits, lots of kms in the car...

Lots of kms in the car.

This weekend was jam-packed with racing which saw most of Team Kosdown racing two or three events over the weekend. There is a team round-up over on the website here, below are a few tales from the three events I pinned a number on for....


Coburg CC Criterium Champs 2012. Saturday, March 24th 2012.

12 riders and damp conditions at National Boulevard. Kosdown had the numbers but as a club champs it was a gloves-off affair, team mates against team mates. Kos Samaras was active early on. Chris Naumovic (TopGear) was looking sharp in a skinsuit, a clear sign he was there to race hard, or that his more-acceptable-for-a-crit knicks and jersey was still in the wash. Adrian 'Chewy' Chew (TopGear) also kept very active near the front making sure the Kosdown colours didn't dominate proceedings.

A break of four riders formed at around the 20 minute mark. Sam Lilley, Adam Katsonis, Chris Naumovic and myself. Naumovic was out numbered and was in a tactical tough spot. He didn't need to roll turns, was ridden off the back, and on the receiving end of some tactical shit-talk. To his credit he didn't crack or feed the trolling, and we were soon back with the two leaders. After Naumovic started rolling through and contributing to the break, Lilley attacked him three times in quick succession. While those two boys were playing attack-sies and Katsonis was a few lengths back, I jumped away solo.... and got away.

After 31 minutes solo I was never out of sight on the main straight. I thought I might be in for a chance. It wasn't to be. The the catch was made with 3 to go. The sprinters in the group were more than happy to go neutral on bell lap as A Grade came past. We resumed 'racing' with 800m to go. I kicked from the bunch but wise old-fox Peter Ferrie didn't let me go anywhere, giving the others a nice ride onto my wheel. 500m out and another acceleration went, without me. Lilley, Samaras, Ferrie, and Katsonis took off to contest the win. I watched them spin away... and a few riders watching my wheel missed the jump. Lilley took the well deserved club champion title, Samaras 2nd, Ferrie 3rd.

Doomed solo attempt...

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Wangaratta CC Winton TT. Saturday, March 24th 2012.

A 2pm start time meant I could get up to Glenrowan for the Wangaratta CC time trial in the afternoon. A 20-26km TT (depending on where the marshal put the turn around), on a relativity flat course that ran parallel to the Hume Freeway, with a little berg in the first and final 2km to contend with.

The turn out was pretty good. The local BikeHub boys all there including Lyster and Reeckman, along with a few familiar faces from other TTs, including Martin Lama, and Liz Randall on her shiny new Trek TT bike. Tomarsh Loki was on the rego desk for the day and had already assigned me #1, putting me off last, and estimating I'd be hitting an average of 47km/h. Not with the hill we had to contend with! 45km/h was my estimate. An unknown interstate rider was also in the mix but had missed his start time and was sent off behind me, a fatal error as the corner marshal thought I was last through and had packed up once I'd passed.

Lyster was my minute man and it took me 13.8km to reel him in. This was his first TT since the Tour of Bright so was having a pretty good day on the TT bars. The short sharp 7% rise was the evil twist in this course after the 51km/h return leg on the super-fast road... Then an all-out effort the longer gentler 4% onto the freeway overpass before the downhill to the line. My 2 minute man was caught on the overpass as I targeted the catch-and-release just as we crested the last bump.

1st place with 25:18, 45.6km/h on the Garmin for the 19.2km course. $20 for the win was a welcome fuel money bonus for the day.

A Grade Results
1. Shane Miller 25:18
2. Tully Lyster 26:59
3. Allan Thrum  27:24
4. Martin Lama  27:25 (1 second!)

Full results are up on the new Wangaratta Cycling Facebook page. Their next TT is on April 28th on the Warby Range course.

Few pics showing that you can never underestimate the weaponry people use in country club TTs. It is wallet warfare on the start line! (Cheers to http://www.tonyreeckmanphotography.com/ for the shots.)

Heads down thumbs up, 2012 edition.

Full result list. Tomarsh's handy work. Spot on!

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Cycling Victoria Masters Criterium Championships 2012 - Hosted by Castlemaine CC. March 25th 2012.

Castlemaine CC had prepared the tight street circuit well this year. Hay bales everywhere for hungry horses, and for any riders who wanted to overcook the corners. MMAS1 showing no signs of participation improvement over previous years, had only 3 riders, so we were again crammed in with MMAS2 (10 riders) for our 30 minute + 1 lap blast around the 700m course.

30 minutes isn't a lot of time to mess about in a race. So I went from the gun. The only other rider to respond get across was Haydn Bradbury (DeVer), a MMAS2 rider. Everyone had to chase this move. They tried and held us at about 50m for a lap or two before a hesitation in the chase bunch meant Bradbury and I were out of sight. We swapped one lap turns and knew the move just might pay off when the bunch wasn't closing back to us. We ended up lapping the field at the 13 minute mark and getting to sit on for a few laps. All we needed to do was mark any attacks or at least keep them in sight... oh, and keep away from the hay bales.

Shannon Johnson (Kosdown) MMAS1 went on a solo mission off the front, not long after that a MMAS2 rider followed but never made contact. The bunch accelerated and closed both riders down. In the final few laps Bradbury and Johnson rolled off the front and nobody chased. I let them go, Bradbury MMAS2 and not in my race, Johnson MMAS1 but no time to take a lap. At three to go I jumped solo to see if I could bridge across but came up short as Johnson got in a pre-NAB Showmans Crit sprint to the line. Cam Woolcock (ABOC) MMAS2 took the bunch kick to the line.

MMAS1 Results:
Gold   - Shane Miller (Coburg CC)
Silver - Shannon Johnson (Preston CC)
Bronze - Chris Zielinski (Southern Masters CC)

MMAS2 Results:
Gold   - Hayden Bradbury (Blackburn CC)
Solver - Cam Woolcock (Hawthorn CC)
Bronze - Gary Wearmouth (Geelong CC)

The racing this year, while still short, was a lot better than last time around. The course is made for a huge normalised power number, as seen on my Twitter feed. You're either stomping up the main straight into the hill or coasting down around the two final corners at speed. It was a similar race story for MMAS3 and above, small groups, or single riders getting clear and just stomping away from their fields. Even with the thin numbers in the Masters fields the hard-man (and hard-woman) racing made up for it. Top work Castlemaine CC!

See the Castlemaine CC write up of the day here: Linky

Given #2... punishment for winning MMAS1 last year....?

Start line... 1..2...3....

Attack...

Just about onto the back of the field...

State MMAS1 Crit Champ 2012. A good finish to the weekend of racing.

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Coburg CC - Evolution Cycles IRTT Series - Round Three. March 4th 2012.

Humevale road surface.

Coburg are banging out TTs faster than Bakers Delight bangs out their Hot Cross Buns after Christmas..... Round 3. Humevale. 2.5km flat then 7km of bone shaking hill. Not a very steep hill, big ring all the way, the 'gotcha' is the dodgy road surface. Calling it "rough as guts" doesn't do it justice.

It'd been a while since I'd ridden the course so I was out there last Wednesday for a roll around. 37 Watts more up the hill and 28 seconds slower than my PB back in 2010. I was hoping the go-fast bits on race day would help out.

The competition: Jono Lovelock (Genesys) was a notable absentee with team commitments over in Tasmania (Mt Wellington Challenge). Stephen Lane (Kosdown) was exited to be on a goat-ish course that suited his skinnyarse stature. 1988 Australian Ironman winner, Gerard Donnelly (Giant-Celtic) is defying the age gods and keeping us honest. Gerard brought along team mate BIG John Cain to flatten out the bumps on the road before we raced up it. Nathan "E DOG" Elliott (Charter Mason Drapac) was a last minute entry in the non-aero category, making that field a little nervous.

The pre-race pit stop in Whittlesea was amusing. It looked like someone had murdered a Ninja Turtle in the public toilets. I've no idea what this was and holy hell it smelt bad.

WTseriousF is that!? I can still smell it now. #upchuck

Not many people out on course for a warm up. I rode my warm up with James Singleton who'd come out to the event to see what it was all about before taking the plunge and becoming a CA member so he can enter some TTs and test himself against the clock (and his power meter). That was a good 20 minutes of chatting and cleaning sticks and junk off the road (not only was the surface bad, there was crap all over it too!). A few others were doing the same further up the climb.

The race: I'd opted for the road bike with clip-ons. A gamble between lightweight, being somewhat aero, and dealing with the rough surface and corners. I'm still not sure this is the optimal choice. With little variation in the course it was a case of pegging the watts to a number and holding on! All went to plan for the first 10 minutes then I dipped a little. With no sign of my minute man I lifted the effort a few % in the final km and managed the win. SLane had his best TT yet, coming in 2nd place. Simon Welsh (Kosdown) stomped to the line making it a full Kosdown podium in the aero category!

Aero Category:
1  Shane Miller    17.54
2  Stephen Lane    18.18  +0:24
3  Simon Welsh     19.03  +1:09
4  Gerard Donnelly 19.36  +1:42
5  Stephen Bick    19.47  +1:53
6  Jose Areta      20.06  +2:12
7  Tom Donald      20.17  +2:23
8  Martin Lama     20.50  +2:56
9  John Cain       20.54  +3:00
10 Von Micich (F)  24.58  +7:04
11 Gavin Wright    25.10  +7:16

Full Results: Coburg CC Facbook Page. E DOG took out the non-aero category with a storming 19:00.

Pics thanks to Mrs Rod Upton (again):

BIG John Cain.

E DOG putting out the massiffff power.

Simon Welsh after a catch and release.

Finish line cheer squad. Good turnout.

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And in other news...

"Cycling Victoria Announce the Club Teams Premiership" - Linky

A yearly three-round series for all Victorian clubs to participate in. Two track events, one road event. A nice way to help promote club event participation. An incentive for clubs to enter teams for these CV events. A good thing all around..... 

BUT

There is always a 'but'. This was announced a week AFTER the first two events had already been run! Clubs who didn't participate in the State Teams Track events are out of the running for 2012 already. Not exactly fair on all of the clubs under the Cycling Victoria banner is it? You just can't invent something as prestigious as a "Premiership" series after 2/3rds of the events have already been run. In the inaugural year of the premiership, the value of the win is watered down. Not ideal.

The solution? They should have kept this one under wraps until November. Announce it for the 2013 season onwards just as the track season was getting underway for 2012-2013, giving clubs enough time to inform their members, pick teams, train, and enter.

Coburg CC - Evolution Cycles IRTT Series - Round Two. Feb 26th 2012.

Third TT for the year already. 24km from Cottlesbridge to Strathewan. Out and back. This is only a club TT, so rock up on the day and just ride hard? Yeah right. Lovelock had me in his sights chasing revenge from Round #1. I had some pacing and form demons I had to slay.

This isn't just a club TT. This is war in skinsuits!




Race prep:

• Course recon two weeks ago on the road bike. Mapping distance, elevation, corners, power. Getting familiar with the course landmarks, lines around corners, and road surface...... And guess who I spotted doing the same? The enemy. Lovelock.

• I created a course segment on Strava (linky) and uploaded my time. This was subsequently smashed by a few others, including Stephen Lane on his TT bike knocking 4 minutes off. (The Strava segment is a little shorter than the official course to stop the stationary start/auto pause problem.)
• More study of the course profile to work out the best pacing to use.
• Back out to the course a week later on the TT bike for recon #2. Time was around 6 minutes faster (also 50W more power). Course study worked.

Both attempts done with a 15km/h southerly. The hot 25km/h northerly on race day was something we all had to factor in at the last minute.

The roller coaster.

After arriving early enough for a good warm-up, I was again chasing Lovelock 30 seconds up the road. Everything went pretty well. It was too hard to calculate the time gap at the turnaround. At 19kms in I could see the little whippet and calculate a rough time check, I was 10 seconds up. Same gap at 21.5kms and with only the final 2km downhill to the line coming, I knew it'd be another close one. It was.

Aero Category:
Pos  Name            Time  
1    Shane Miller    34.34
2    Jono Lovelock   34.46 +0:12
3    Gerard Donnelly 36.46 +2:12
4    Thomas Donald   38.20 +3:46
5    Stephen Lane    38.39 +4:05
6    Daniel Hopper   38.45 +4:11
7    Richard Harvey  38.47 +4:13
8    Jose Areta      39.03 +4:29
9    Stephen Bick    39.16 +4:42
10   Wayne Gebert    40.24 +5:50
11   James Love      42.40 +8:06
Full Results Linky

The battle has been won. The war is never over.

Round #3 this Sunday at Humevale. 2kms flat, 7km up. The preparation for that? I stopped eating two weeks ago. :)

Pics thanks to Mrs Rod Upton:

SLane looking good while getting Shiv'ed by a bad pacing strategy.

Me... looking very un-aero at the top of the last climb.

Rod Upton and his non-aero category mates slogging up the final climb.

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Random Visuals

Giant Celtic Racing Team TT helmet vs Hilux modification. Non UCI legal! 

lol!