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3 Day Tour 2013

Day One - 60km road race in Lancefield

First stage started out at a very sedate pace for the first lap, with the only bit of action being for the KOM points. I knew I didn't have climbing legs on so just held on to the pack. At the start of the second lap, the pack slowed as people couldn't decide who was going to do the work.

Of course, that meant I decided to push just a little bit, to see who was interested in riding. After 10 seconds of effort I looked back to see daylight, and kept my head down for a little longer. At this point I looked down to see there was still 28km to go and wondered whether I should just sit up immediately, but figured I might as well see what happened!

After passing women's A grade, who then repassed me as they had attacks going on, only for me to repass them heading along the slow uphill drag to Don's Road. At this point I had a gap of maybe 30 seconds, but that's when the road started getting steeper, and my cold legs started blocking up.

I was caught by Nick Liau just after Don's Road started, but was surprised that no-one else was there. We worked together through Newham, but his stronger climbing left me dropped as we made our way back towards Lancefield. The next 8km were spent gradually clawing my way to his back wheel, only to be caught by the rest of the field at the base of the final KOM.

I clung to the back of the group and was sat towards the back as several riders decided the right hand side of the road was the best way to get towards the front of the pack, nearly collecting oncoming traffic in a couple of instances. As we made our way to the final left hand corner, I kept my nose out of trouble behind a few other riders, but as the sprint kicked off, riders ended up out on the grass to the left and all over the right hand side of the road - and a gap had opened between the rider I was sitting on and the back of the bunch. Despite trying to close that at the end, enough of a gap was left to the rider in front that a separate time was recorded, which given the strung out nature of the bunch was a full 8 seconds since the lead rider had passed!

Given I had no thoughts of a GC position I didn't really care at the time, but the first rule (well, I'm sure one of them - I'd never ridden a GC race until then!) of GC riding is to not get caught out by splits at the finish...

• GC Position: 22nd @ +16 seconds
• Approx distance in breakaways: 20km
• Swear words: 2

Day Two - 6.5km TT in Kyneton.

I've never ridden a TT before, and this was probably one of the reasons I wanted to do the 3 Day Tour - how would I go? I'm not a big guy, but as most of my riding for the past 12 months has been on the flats in the wind of the western side of Port Phillip Bay, thought I might be able to get into the top half of finishers (around 15th).

Even though TT bikes were banned, several riders turn up with aero bars and TT helmets (Derek!), enough to make me think that top 15 was going to be tough. Reading last years' result of 50kph winning speed made me wonder what the course was going to be like - and the first 300m downhill made me optimistic. But then it kicked up, then went into a headwind. I later found out that the course last year was on a different road, but at the time it made me think they must have had a hell of a tailwind, or huge thighs...

The good thing about it was that it was long straights, which meant I could see the rider ahead of me (30 second starting gap). And I could see that I was gaining, which was a great psychological boost. After I passed him around 5km in I was approaching a bridge at about the same time an oncoming car had decided to pass a group of cyclists returning to the start point. A touch of brakes and a few swear words later I pressed on, with a bit less momentum than before.

Not to worry, up the short rise to the finish in 10:29 - a time that would hold onto 5th on the stage! Super stoked with that - 30 seconds down on the winner, but only 14 seconds down on Chris Anderson who I ride with regularly, and is probably the strongest rider in D grade.

• GC Position: 7th @ +39 seconds
• Approx distance in breakaways: 20km
• Swear words: 4

Day Two - 84km road race in Kyneton

A big roll around a frozen loop north of Kyneton. No action to speak of until the KOM point at 25km, which had a few guys chasing points and pressing over the top. Once everything regrouped, Chris decided it was time to sit on the front of the race, which aside from a few turns from myself and a couple of other SKCC guys, he would do so from 28km through to 68km.

It wasn't an infernal sprint, but fast enough that everyone was working very hard to keep up, especially through a series of rollers heading back towards Metcalfe. Just as we came out of Metcalfe, the bunch once again slowed as it appeared that everyone wanted to sit on Chris' wheel. The whole right side of the lane was open, so I moved up the outside with the idea to help set some pace leading into the main climb on the way back. Got to the front and gave a couple of pedal turns to get some pace moving, and there was a gap. A few more to see what would happen, and I heard a voice saying "go go, we've got a gap". Nice! Not alone this time - Trent McCamley had bridged up and was willing to work. Soon after Nick Liau joined us on a short riser and we were clear by 10 seconds.

Coming into the final climb, I knew Nick was capable of climbing faster than me (based on his efforts the day before), so I went to the front and set my own tempo, hoping both guys would be happy to ride at my speed instead of being on the front. They left me on the front the whole way up, which meant I never had to make a surge effort, and still had legs at the top... In the end we climbed faster than the chasing group anyway!

We then had a 3 man TTT to the finish line - with the complication of passing women's A grade along the way, made doubly complicated by a car trying to overtake them but not making a move despite a clear long straight of road! After using the pause to take a deep breather, we put our heads back down and hammered through to the finish, with a gentleman's agreement to work together until 500m to go.

Nick came through for his turn, and gave a kick hoping to catch Trent out after he rolled off. I hesitated following just a bit, and Trent jumped to take Nick's wheel. I followed Trent when he went around Nick, and pushed around the outside of him (just managing to not cross the centre line!) to beat him by a half wheel with a bike throw. Woo!

• GC Position: 2nd @ +28 seconds
• Approx distance in breakaways: 44km
• Swear words: 5 (though in this instance, it was after the race)

Thanks to Matt's partner Sharon Ridgway for the photo!

Day Three - 40km road race. Pastoria Loop

Having never ridden a GC race, I had no real plan of how to approach things, other than that I was going to try and attack. After fog cut the race from 60km to 40km, it was going to be even harder to break the race up and get 30 seconds.

Things stayed together until the main climb at the end of the first lap, with the usual KOM burst dragging riders out. Chasing over the top split the peloton a bit, but I had picked up a shadow wearing a yellow jersey! The chase continued through the first kilometres of the second lap, at which point I started making some sharp digs on some of the risers to see if things would break up - but my shadow seemed glued.

Once we turned onto the more wind exposed north-bound end of the course, I had some help from fellow SKCC rider Derek Trikarso who was happy to sit on the front of the bunch. Hoping to get Trent off my wheel, I tried leaving a gap to Derek, which Nick (only another 17 seconds behind me) would then jump after to try and break away, forcing Trent to close the gap. I then tried attacking over the top of them both. Again though, a combination of wind and a super strong Trent meant that the attack didn't stick.

After a couple more attacks as the road headed back to the climb at the end of the lap, I had resigned myself to not being able to shake Trent, and worse, I knew my legs were going to struggle keeping pace up the climb with the repeated efforts in the wind. With the last charge up the hill I was sitting reasonably comfortably until the last steep bit with 500m to go, which saw my calves on the verge of cramping, and a gap slowly forming between myself and the leaders. This kept slowly growing to be almost 15 seconds by the top; it felt like an eternity covering the last 100m. Zipping down the far side I could almost count the distance to the leaders in my head, and crossed 14 seconds down - initially good enough to hold onto second overall by 2 seconds. But after time bonuses were added in, Nick took the spot by 1 second!

• GC Position: 3rd @ +39 seconds
• Approx distance in breakaways: 46km
• Swear words: 5

So - missed out on second, but did so in pursuit of the win! Was great to ride with Matt De Neef in a race situation - a few more and he'll be unbeatable on hilly courses. All in all a great weekend - good hard riding, and some reward for attacking. Hope to make it again next year!

Have problems with SilverStripe and lowercase mysql table names when going to Linux? SS3.0 has code in place that will fix it, but to run dev/build, it actually tries to check the database beforehand. Temporarily patch the following from Controller.php

public function init() {
    if($this->basicAuthEnabled) BasicAuth::protect_site_if_necessary();

    // Directly access the session variable just in case the Group or Member tables don't yet exist
    if(Session::get('loggedInAs') && Security::database_is_ready()) {
        $member = Member::currentUser();
        if($member) {
            if(!headers_sent()) Cookie::set("PastMember", true, 90, null, null, false, true);
            DB::query("UPDATE \"Member\" SET \"LastVisited\" = " . DB::getConn()->now()
                . " WHERE \"ID\" = $member->ID", null);
        }
    }

    // This is used to test that subordinate controllers are actually calling parent::init() - a common bug
    $this->baseInitCalled = true;
}

and add a false statement to make sure the Member table access doesn't occur

public function init() {
    if($this->basicAuthEnabled) BasicAuth::protect_site_if_necessary();

    // Directly access the session variable just in case the Group or Member tables don't yet exist
    if(false && Session::get('loggedInAs') && Security::database_is_ready()) {
        $member = Member::currentUser();
        if($member) {
            if(!headers_sent()) Cookie::set("PastMember", true, 90, null, null, false, true);
            DB::query("UPDATE \"Member\" SET \"LastVisited\" = " . DB::getConn()->now()
                . " WHERE \"ID\" = $member->ID", null);
        }
    }

    // This is used to test that subordinate controllers are actually calling parent::init() - a common bug
    $this->baseInitCalled = true;
}

#php #silverstripe

#cycling

What documentaries should everybody see? : AskReddit

#watchlater

#steak

What is blood doping?

This run-down by Science of Sport is probably the best article I've come across that explains what the blood passport is and how a person's blood parameters represent what has gone on. It also relates it back to what was happening in the tour for various time periods through climb times and average power outputs.

Another Science of Sport article:

The Science of Sport: The Biological Passport: Legal, scientific and performance views

This article with Michael Ashenden is a great read to get a practitioner's opinion on a specific case (Contador's) and what he saw in the bloodwork (and wasn't able to present at Contador's CAS hearing!). So this is a specific case-study of the general science talked about in the first link.

One of the key things with the blood passport is that it's not a single suspicious value that triggers a 'positive' reading - it's something that goes on over a long period of time and is tuned in such a way as to avoid false positives, meaning that some people can get away with blood doping even though they're being actively tracked. It's as much about containment of doping as it is about prosecution of dopers.

In relation to Armstrong, Ashenden is on record as believing that Armstrong's passport showed blood doping. Not to mention his thoughts on the 1999 samples...