Saturday, September 27, 2008

Hell ride back at full effect

As Jason mentioned, there is something coming up that has us both out on the bikes as much as possible, but I'll post about that shortly. Firstly to hark back to thursday night just gone, with rides growing in numbers as the weather fines up, I found myself at Tour De 'Burbs with a collection of other mountain bikers but specifically fellow Ascend/Nightlighting rider John Claxton. Descending down Foote Street out east, we were bombing down a steep dip in essentially darkness and using the descent to carry our speed up the other side. About halfway down and over 70km/h, John hit a pothole and had both front and rear tyres explode....

Sudden deflation is enough of a fright standing beside the bike, but with a bunch in excess of 100 riders, in the dark, over 70k's on a steep decent, it would be fair to say we all shat! Chaos ensued, John kept it upright and slowed to a safe stop, we all regained our composure whilst people not aware of what happened yelled about riders stopping on a descent, oblivious to one very white Claxton!! Check out his version of events at his blog, tell 'im we sent you!

SCARY!


Anyway, hell ride this morning - its big. And getting bigger... And fast too! 55kph along the flats was the standard there and back, and I'm doing my level best to stay in the mix, but it was all without incident and it was happy days. The above photo was as the bunch rolled out at the start, but they extend about 2/3rds of the way to the corner in the photo - hard to see but it was a large bunch! Average of 37kph for 87km, none to shabby I thought, but cycling is in no danger of dying out! There was SO many riders out on the beach this morning, it was almost enough to send a bloke into the hills!

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