Hey all, Thanks to those who from the lists who sponsored me and my colleagues for the Melbourne Summer Cycle - we were riding to raise money to support those living with with MS and supporting research into MS. Today's ride was very busy, and I was a little concerned about the distance - more on that in a bit. The sponsorship has been fantastic - personally I've been pledged $340, my team of 4 raised $1680, and the event as a whole has raised over half-a-million bucks for the cause. So thank you all for your generosity.
So to the event itself - it was approximately a 40km (25 mile) ride around the inner suburbs and CBD of Melbourne. There were THOUSANDS of people out on the road, most of whom behaved well and followed the road rules. As always there were a number who don't know what "single file", "keep left" and "obey the road rules" are, but I saw no serious crashes and everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun. You can see my GPS track here as proof of the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/25175064 So, on to why I was a little concerned about a mere 40km - yesterday I did another fundraising ride to help out the regions so devastated by the bushfires of Black Saturday, 7th February 2009. As with last year's ride which was in May, we started in the town of Marysville, which was to all intents and purposes wiped off the map last year. To get a scale for it, here's the town before the fires http://tinyurl.com/yf66b86 and after http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200902/r339008_1539848.jpg , and this was only one of the towns destroyed. The Marysville-Lake Mountain Challenge does a tour of the region, culminating in (an optional...) climb of Lake Mountain, which is one of the steepest climbs in the state - 3.5km of 10-11% gradient at the start, and pretty solid 4-6% the rest of the way. So I had 160km of riding under my belt from Saturday (a bit over 7 hours in the saddle) and was rightly concerned that I was going to be very very sore for today. But I actually pulled up pretty well and because I was escorting friends who are considerably slower than I and we were in a lot of stop-start traffic most of the ride, I didn't have to work too hard today. Here's Saturday's GPS track for comparison... http://connect.garmin.com/activity/25072020 Now I have to concentrate on my final preparation for the 3 Peaks Challenge in March - 230km with an awful lot of climbing... Thanks again to all who sponsored me. Charlie. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
