Road Crit

A guy from work rides road crits on a Thursday evening and he talked me into having a crack at one. So last Thursday I went along to have a ride. I was a little apprehensive because although I've been doing a lot of riding it has all been on my mountain bike.

I got there with not much time to spare, threw the front wheel on my bike, payed my money, forgot to put my water bottle in the bottle cage and before I knew it I was racing. About 10 minutes in I was regretting not having any water and since I was racing D grade there was someone barking instructions at me, anyway they went and got water for me. When I got the water, I had a drink, felt like I was going to vomit, this is when I got spat off the back. I spent the rest of the race just cruising around the track. I actually started to feel good towards the end and actually started to catch people.

After trying this I realised a few things. Mountain bike fitness is different to road bike fitness, I still find road riding boring and I could probably get good enough to stay with the guys I was racing with but I would rather concentrate on getting out on some sweat single track and go hammering up switch backs than jumping on my road bike and clocking up big miles.

A new Challenge

Well having completed Around the Bay in a Day I was looking for a new challenge. I liked cycling but was getting bored of riding on the road, mountain biking was the obvious choice. I already had a mountain bike, but it wasn't quite up to the task, I used this bike on my daily commute and it was showing signs of wear. I found a bike shop that would let me take bikes for a test ride, www.mymountain.com.au and I decided it would be fun to take a duel suspension bike for a spin. I told them the sort of riding that I liked to do and they recommended 2 bikes for me to try, a Garry Fischer HiFi and Felt Virtue. I fell in love with the Virtue and as you can guess from the picture this is what I bought.

Now it always good to have a goal so I entered the BMC Classic. This is a 100KM event, with 2000m of vertical gain. So I'm really going to have to do some serious training for this one. At the moment I'm doing a mid week ride and 2 rides on the weekend, but this is going to have to ramp up. I'll keep you posted.