Canberra Weekend Training Rides

Pete, Ric and Andrew enjoyed a fantastic weekend of training in Canberra 12- 13 March 2011. Apparently Dom enjoyed wine tasting in the Hunter Valley!

The boys also had the opportunity to meet up again with Alan and Julie, and to meet for the first time with Brian and Terry - our key support team members.

Andrew and Pete drove down to Canberra on the Friday night, with Ric following them down early Saturday morning. We rode away from Alan and Julie's place in Hawker a little after 10.30 on the Saturday morning. There was great excitement in seeing Pete and Andrew's new Specialized mountain bikes - and particularly their "brains".

We headed out to the Cotter camping grounds via Uriarra Crossing and enjoyed some nice quiet roads - Canberra was enjoying a long weekend.

It was a little more "undulating" than we expected, so our lunchtime stop at Tidbinbilla was perfectly scheduled. We tore through a few of Julie's sandwiches and then rolled out towards Tharwa in the early afternoon. The turns at Tharwa proved momentarily confusing. After asking a couple of semi-local roo shooters and consulting the map functions on our iphones, we finally resorted to calling Alan and asking "left or right"?

The next 10 or so kms were really enjoyable and, as we turned off the main road for the campground at Honeysuckle creek, morale was high. Thinking we only had about 5kms to go, and it would be a gentle roll into the campground, we were instead pole-axed by a steady to steep and twisting climb of 9kms. After a few walk breaks, some cursing of Alan for selecting an elevated campground, some cursing of ourselves for not checking the camp ground selection, we eventually arrived pretty buggered and out of water. You can see the Saturday ride here.

We each swallowed a full bike bottle of water before slipping into something more comfortable (than lycra). Settling into a few strategically placed camp chairs we then enjoyed a cold beer and a glass of wine. Julie knocked our socks off with beef tournadoes rustled up on a camp stove and then Alan treated us to crepes suzette! All this was well complemented by Terry's wine catering.

As we tucked into our dessert, we were surprised by an old school mate Andrew "Russ" Campbell who had driven all the way out to Honeysuckle Creek to catch up with us. It was great to see him again, and in particular, to meet the lovely Nic. We hope we didn't bore her too much with stories of CGS circa early 80's.

After a pretty good night's sleep in our new swags, we were up a little after 7am. A delicious breakfast of muesli, bacon and eggs and a leisurely chat with Brian and Terry set us up for an easier day in the saddle.

What we rode up on late Saturday afternoon had to be descended first up on Sunday. WooHoo. We shot down the 9kms and loved every minute of it. We spun back through Tharwa and then continued into Southern Canberra before stopping for a coffee at Kambah shops. The last hour or so took us up along Lake Burley Griffin and back to Alan and Julie's for a well-earned shower and a bite to eat. You can see our Sunday ride here.

All in all, a great weekend. The new bikes were brilliant. It was great to meet up with most of the gang that will come along on the adventure in a few weeks time. And, the catering was superb!