SO I trundled up to Illanbah, aka: the hill of certain death—having not ridden the new bike, or indeed any 26" bike, or geared bike, for months. I really didn't know what was going on! For the first lap, I managed to keep Jodie in my sight till I binned in. The first time. Then there was the second time. Yes, it was a truly muddy cesspool of grossness at times out t
here. My legs...were meh. There was nothing special going on there.
Lap 2/4 I kepped at it, chipping away...when I binned it some more—what was wrong with me? A dude rushes past me, putting me in a tree, then off the side of the track with my saddle 120 degrees around from where it should be. I am wrestling it like a python in the Amazone, when Kylie toodles past me (always a smile there—awesome!), and as I continue to wrestle my saddle my motivation slips away.
I felt like this bloke:
I kind of just roll around for the rest of the race. I wanted better than this—but if there's any consolation, I stopped crashing when I took it easy and rolled around, AND I am over my lifelong fear of Illanbah. It's not too bad at all...as long as I'm not acutely hypoxic and thowing my bike down the hill. With some more intensity MTB TT's to figure out how to keep it upright when i'm at 92%, I will be right...right?
Anyway, on a nicer note, I did toodle up Nebo on the dirt yesterday, something that I avoid because I think it's quite boring. And boring it is, but it's only around an hour up riding quickish tempo, and then you can pin it down really fast, so it's a good day of climbing.
One thing that's really hard to get used to with the gears, is spinning up climbs. I am sure it's far slower, but it does prevent combustion. I would much rather pin it DOWN Nebo in the big ring the whole way and just muscle over the climbs SS style.