Preparations in January/February.

26 Feb.

Nearly the end of February now.  In a couple of days it will be only nine weeks to departure.  The preparations continue at a satisfactory pace.

Riding

We have stepped up the ante a little on the riding front.  Mondays Thursdays and Fridays we do a ride around the lake after work, for me that's 30-40km for the day depending on whether I've been elsewhere on the bike.  These rides are done on the 'town' bikes, Pete's Kona and my Giant hybrid.  Saturdays we head out for a training run with bikes loaded up and try to emulate a hard day on the ride, with 25-30kg of gear on board and a route that takes us up and down as well as along.

Recent rides include:

Out from Campbell along the Monaro Highway towards Cooma, at the top of a long 4km climb equivalent to only about 1/4 of the climb we may face out of Cairns, we turned left at Royalla towards Queanbeyan where the photo above was taken, tea being the object of the stop.  Then we continued along past the Burra turnoff, before descending into Queanbeyan down the winding narrow road where half-witted tradesmen in utes think that the 3-4 secs they lose in waiting until they can see the road ahead clearly is just tooooo much for their primitive egos to bear.  After a stop at Sue's place to fix the video leads (multi-tasking) we headed back to Canberra and did a lap of the lake before finishing up.  The total distance was around 85km and the degree of difficulty was probably as high as we will face anytime in the first two months.

Another ride of close to 90km from Campbell was a loop out along the Federal Highway to the Sutton turnoff, where we turned left and through Sutton towards Gundaroo.  We stopped for the old tea break at the corner of Dick Smith's (a sponsor of the ride) property in the shade of some pine trees.  From there we headed west along the road to Muurumbateman and after about 15km we turned left again towards the Barton Highway and Hall.  The ride is a good balance of hills and undulating country, and another good test of our stamina.  Thankfully, although we were tired after the ride, by the next morning we could have done the ride again.

This last weekend (Sunday 24th) we did a standard ride from Campbell to Lake George and back. On the way back a diversion through Sutton and Majura Lane to assess how the bikes would handle a dirt road with corrugations and potholes.  Total distance was 78km for the day, and with the steepness of the old Federal Highway hills, a stiff crosswind most of the day, and a full load, it was a good test.  The highlight of the day was finding a Royal Gala apple tree laden with crisp ripe apples on the side of the road.  We left the tree with a few less kilos on board!  The day was fairly relaxed and altogether we were on the road for over 7 hours, which is probably typical of the pace we will set on the ride proper.

Equipment

Pete has settled on the 4 panniers configuration for the trip up the east coast, while I have continued down the trailer path.  Altogether I am carrying around 28 kilos, made up of about 20 kilos of gear, 6 kilos of trailer and the bags and panniers weigh another couple of kilos.  Travelling up steeper slopes sees the speed drop to as little as 8km/hr, but the loaded bike with trailer is a comfortable push along the flat at about 20-23km/hr.  The average while actually riding is 17-18km/hr apparently, according to the speedo. 

Pete is travelling about 4 -5 kilos lighter and this translates to about one km/hr faster on the hills, but no difference to speak of on the flat or downhill.  For more info on Pete's preparations visit the http://www.ausbycycle.com site