Training around the Moorabool

Today I decided to ride much of the course that will form my Moorabool Mayhem ride next year. The concept of the ride is that it largely follows and crosses the Moorabool Valley in a number of places. This provides the opportunity to do a number of short sharp climbs with plenty of recovery in between. Several of the climbs are in excess of 10%.

 Across a valley

I generally rode at a cruisey pace (22 kph average over the whole ride) not wanting to breakdown the body too much as I slowly increase my base of endurance. Average HR was only 135 but I did peak at 180 bpm on the final climb before I resorted to walking for about 100 metres.

My Garmi GPS told me that I had gained over 1800m in elevation over the ride so all in all a solid day of training.

My course today. The ride next year will finish in Bannockburn

The elevation profile. Note the valleys.

A few of these signs on the ride

Gales East of the Prom

This entry comes over a week after completing the majestic ride from the South Gipplsnd town of Foster, down Wilson's Promontory to Tidal River then looping around to Walkerville then on to Tarwin Lower and Fish Creek before a climb up Falls Road and a descending ride down O'Grady's Road back into Foster. Checkpoints on this ride were at Tidal River, Waratah North and Tarwin Lower.

 Road to Tidal River, Wilsons Promontory

The ride started at 7am and I managed to finish just before 3:40pm.  My moving time for the ride was 8h 3m. The GPS showed 2000m of climbing had been achieved. There was a little bit of rain around for the ride but in general I missed most of it. Riding through Fish Creek there was evidence that there had been some very heavy rainfall prior to my arrival. The day was generally cool and it got fairly cold on the longer descents of the ride. It was good to see in excess of 20 riders undertaking this winter ride which can have a reputation of being very windy. Fortune would have it that the wind was not a major factor on the day unlike last year when it took me a bit over 10 hrs to complete this ride. Well done to Stephen & Kirsty Chambers for putting on this ride. The warm soup at Waratah North was delightful!

 At the rotunda start/finish point with Stephen Chambers