The dichotomy of autumn

The beeping before 6am is your alarm, struggling to wake you into the darkness and cold of a autumn morning, you ask yourself if it's worth it.

Your bike is adorned with lights against the darkness, your body clothed in layers against the cold, the question echoes through your mind "is it worth it?"

As you work your way through the quiet suburbs, the sun starts to lighten the sky, but the temperature refuses to rise. Onwards you ride, into the hills, the cold numbing your face into a mask.

Mist occupies the valleys, icy dew clings to the grass blades, you work your way into the first feature climb of the day accompanied by only the sound of your own breathing.



The solitude, the peace, the clarity of purpose. The cold morning delivers you stunning beauty and it comes you like a revelation. It's worth it.

The small bakery in the little town draws you onwards, over the roads wet from the low hung clouds. Your mind now clear of it's doubts you relax and joke with your companions and dream about coffee.

It's definitely worth it, and in your heart you knew it all along. It's always worth it.

Calculating Optimal Sock Length Ratios

If you talk to Darren he'll be happy to debate crank lengths and saddle set backs. He can reference a whole swag of published articles, anecdotal evidence and proven theory, all based around making you faster.

I also want you to be faster, but feel there is an issue that modern cycling media has ignored. Sock Length (yes it deserves double capitalisation) can be the factor that makes or breaks an race, it really is that important.

Many European Pros would have you believe that the only important factor in determining the right sock for you is colour, they must be white. Don't be fooled, these athletes are trying to protect their secret weapon, quite frankly they don't want you to know the secrets of Optimal Sock Length.

So here we are, minds open, eager to weigh up the pros and ams, and really get to the bottom of this important issue.

So we all know that socks can and will make you faster. Many novice cyclists opt for ankle socks, I know I did, and as a consequence was quite slow. Many top level riders are sporting 3-5 inch sock cuffs and could tear the legs off a thoroughbred horse. This leads us to speculate, does more length equate to more speed? Well this question has been answered for us.



The answer is no, many mountain bikers and generally crazed cyclists have tested this theory for us, and the evidence is over whelming. There is a point where as Sock Length increases, performance decreases. This leads us to the realisation that there is an optimal length sock, but is it a one size fits all situation or does the individual nature of our legs dictate different (pedal) strokes for different folks?

Through extensive experimentation I have calculated that my own optimal sock length is a 5" cuff. Now my shin bone is 20" long (ankle to knee), the simplicity of this ratio (4:1) leads me to believe it is a divine ratio for calculating optimal sock length.

More research on this magical 4:1 ratio is needed, so try it out yourself and let us know your findings.

Sorry sir, it's a private function.

Some rides have to be done, regardless of how sore the legs are, or how fast the other riders are.

"The Invitational" was alleged to be one of those. I can attest that even though the ride did have some of Australia's Off-Road cycling elite, and I did posses some of the most beaten pre-ride legs, that I'd do it again if asked.



Meeting in the cold air of Mothers Day morning we donned blindfolds and drove to an unknown location. What could be better than secret training on secret trails?

The trails secrets were soon revealed to us, they were hills of both the up and down variety, fire roads, single track and rocks, boy were there rocks! Many of the descents were littered with fist sized ones. Just big enough to take your eye off the line ahead and lose your poise on the bike, big enough to cause your wheels to skate around while you tried your best to keep it rubber side down, big enough to make the adrenalin flow.

Not since the muddy epic that was the 2006 Ballan 6hr have I laughed so much about bikes being out of control, James Kennedy even managed to get completely turned around on a climb. With his helmet cam rolling, his bike and he went careening past, the look of fear in his eyes brought mirth to ours. Here's hoping the video that eventually makes it to YouTube will feature the riot of laughter that followed his progress.



Like all good adventures it was about the journey and not the destination. It was about riding with people, rather than riding against them. Our first detour was up a long sandy fire road, towards the top it became strewn with rocks seeking to bounce you off line, to make you unclip. Once bested we stood for a moment, reflected on the stunning view, and bombed straight back down the way we'd come.

The next section was another detour, out to an old mine, over the infamous mesh bridge. It spans a small washed out creek bed with a 2"x2" mesh, apparently held in place by star pickets and the collective fear/hope of the riders crossing it.



Crossing back across a few of the lads set the whole thing in motion, the wave that hit me towards the end felt like a good, old fashioned, double bounce! :)

While I didn't ride as well as I'd like, at the end of the day you can't beat heading out into the unknown for a ride with good people.

Let's go club racin'

My first exposure to racing was in the valleys of the Victorian alps. Club races run by Team Mount Beauty and the Alpine Cycling Club, through the kind of bracing air that keeps a 14 year old boy from wanting to get out of the car until it's a choice between staying warm or starting cold. The memories are visceral – decaying eucalypt bark smell, A-graders pouring into singletrack as if through an invisible funnel, impossibly fast. Huge start-line nerves catalyzed into a battery-acid taste and the kind of scary-good thrill that's enough to predispose a youngster to a lifetime of scar collecting and velo-financial ruin. And always afterward – religiously – the high speed aero tuck down the road back into town. It was careless, hands-free fun, faces blush with cold wind and spent effort tumbling into the warmth of the bakery, drawn by the smell of home made treats.

My ambition in those races grew from not taking the DFL crown (beat the kid who had a mid-race asthma attack), to stepping up to B grade, to not taking DFL in B grade to trying to win pizza vouchers and tubes. I learned, under the mentorship of an ex-roadie Canadian, to lust after things that whirred and flashed through the forest on two wheels.

Twenty-six years later, more or less to the month last Sunday, I toed the line and botched the start of the GMBC's winter series first round. Drove into singletrack with stupidfun abandon, cartwheeled my rainbow-socked self over a stump and into the dirt and got up smiling. Lit fires in my quads and got served on the downs by opponents I thought had been safely put away during technical climbs.



Club racing is good racing. It's good for riders and good for the sport. It's full of kids and dogs and post-race pisstaking, sponsors whose names aren't just on flags but whose staff are in the rego tent, coffee wagons and cold autumn air.

I'm making a point this year, returning to racing with a parenthetical "Senior" against my name on the place sheet and a two-foot-nothing companion to educate, to hit up the club races; to end up in towns and to scuff a few small-town bakery floors with cleated soles.

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In the comments:
What are your formative racing memories?
What makes club racing better? What makes it crap?