Gettin Fit

The title says it all.  The last few weeks have mainly been concerned with restoring my cycling fitness.  It is just over four weeks until I go on my Bicycle SA tour and I have been increasing my ride distances with the aim in covering about 70Km in under five hours including refreshment stops.  This is what an average day on tour would be like.

To this end I devised a loop around Tewantin which I rode last week.   Starting from my house I rode up the main road to Cooroy then headed north to Pomona at 20Km where I stopped for coffee and a cake.  Next I headed east towards Boreen Point before heading south back to Tewantin.  The ride had a couple of big hills and is never really flat.  When I got home I had covered 55Km, my longest ride since my accident in 2000.  I was reasonably fresh at the finish so decided to extend the ride a little and repeat it again this week which I did yesterday.

I took the Gydnier Drive instead of the main road and joined the Cooroy at the top.  This added a couple of Km and also removed the dangerous section of road as it climbed the hill around Mount Timbeerwah.  This has a passing lane but the slow lane has no shoulder for a cyclist.  As the slow vehicles are mainly trucks who don't give any clearance for cyclists it is a hairy couple of Km.  I followed the same route as before except that I cycled into Boreen Point and sat by the lake while feeding my face with bananas before riding home,

The route is shown below:

The map has been produced using http://www.geocontext.org/publ/2010/04/profiler/en/ 

This also produced a ride profile:

 

 As you can see the ride starts with a steady climb from about 10m to 140m over the first 4Km as it rises over the first step up in to the hinterland and is never really flat for the whole ride.  Yesterday was also very windy.  I stopped in Pomona at about 25km ( the big dip in the profile) and had a coffee stop before a tough little climb followed by a terrific downhill back down the range to Boreen Point at about 44Km and my bananas.  From there it was a bumpy ride into the wind back home and just over 65Km by my bike computer which tallys  well with the profile distance.

I took it easy on the ride but still made it home in under five hours so I am on target.  I hope to to the same ride each week until my holiday in about four weeks.  This coupled with my club and shopping rides should mean that I will be able to cope with my holiday.

Apart from this I have been busy at MOW and my computer club.  I appear to have regained my faculties and have had no little dizzy spells so life has returned to near normal.

Louis visited the Vets today and is doing well.  He will be fit enough to go into kennels when I am away.

I have booked my airfares to Adelaide and am assembling my camping gear as I really believe that I will make it!