I skipped the opening sally that all three rides take in – I’m very familiar with Mount Porepunkah Road, which climbs on smooth tarmac out of Bright, before giving way to rough chipseal and then outright gravel. On the day, that will be a harsh wake-up call for the riders, up to Quins Gap. After that, the routes go over Tom Briggs Road overlooking Porepunkah. I’m also pretty familiar with that section, so skipped it on my reco. There’ll be a lot of burning legs on the day by the time riders curve around the western tip of Tom Briggs and start heading downhill for the first time.

The riders then sneak around past Porepunkah’s water treatment lakes and onto Roberts Creek Road. 13km riders will throw a left here and head back to Bright via the Murray to Mountains Rail trail. Everyone else will turn right into Porepunkah and cross the Great Alpine Road at Porepunkah Bridge just near Buckland Roundabout, where the dirt -and the climbing – starts again.

There’s a short nasty firetrail climb up into the pines right after the road, which can be bypassed in quite a fun way by some singletrack that winds through the pines to its left, look out for the entry to the singletrack on your left, it’s quite enjoyable. Riders will then drop back down towards Buckland Valley Road before taking a hard left onto Longly Road. It’s all gravel from here until the 38km riders get back to Bright, or until the 53km riders reach Wandiligong, so get settled in.

There are some rather nice views over Buckland Valley from here, if you care to look back. Depending on how you’re treating the day though, you might be head down, smashing towards Royal George Road.

There’s some more climbing here, and at the top a slightly confusing left turn downhill. Don’t turn hard left and head up the crazy steep bit – instead roll downhill a little way and take the switchback downhill. Even with the GPX file running on my bars, I nearly messed this up and my Garmin didn’t tell me until I’d slogged a decent distance up the steep climb.

You’ve got a few pleasant downhill kilometres now until the next corner, which is much more obvious on the GPX file, leading to some more down-then-up action taking you eventually to Dingo Ridge Road overlooking Buckland Valley. Now you’ve got an easy time of route finding until you reach Moran Road, where all riders will turn left and head up to Clear Spot lookout. I believe there’ll be a support station here with water and food, which will be a welcome sight indeed.

After Clear spot, the routes Diverge again. The 38km riders will drop down off Clear spot by retracing their steps to Dingo Ridge Road, doubling back around Eagle Peak and turning right to descend into Bright, where they’ll emerge onto Bakers Gully Road and Ireland Street, and from there back to the Brewery for a well deserved beer.

The 53ers, however, will continue left after leaving Clear Spot along Moran Road to Demon Ridge Track, which is followed until you spot a sign for Stans Road and Wandiligong. Fork left here, don’t continue onwards or you’ll be pedalling a lot longer than you need to.

A nice brake-boiling descent into the valley ensues from here on, and you’re soon dropped back onto tarmac at Morses Creek Road. The parched may stop at Nightingales produce store for some apple-related energy top-ups here before hopping back on and heading towards Wandiligong proper.

Unfortunately, the official route doesn’t take you to Wandi Pub, as you turn left on Centennial Avenue before you get there, however clued-in locals will know about some extra gravel trail from Royal Bridge Track just after Wandi Pub, via the Chinese Bridge to rejoin Centennial Avenue near Alpine Park. I’ll be tempted to go that way after a refreshing ale at the pub, if I’m not worried about losing time.

At Alpine Park, we head left up a short steep pinch to join White Star Road. Local MTBers will be familiar with the trails around here and might optionally throw in some singletrack. We then go under the road and follow Morse’s Creek back to town via the Caravan Park and join the other triumphant riders for a post-ride beer.

My recce ride wasn’t particularly quick, but took 3h40m. I stopped for a fair few pictures and treated it as a pleasant afternoon out rather than a suffer-ridden slog. On the day, it should be a bit quicker. Those on mountain bikes will likely be a bit slower than dedicated gravel grinder owners. A road bike capable of running 30c tyres or larger should cope fairly well, though the final descent of the 53km might be a little hairy. I’m running my road bike on 28c tyres for the Tour of Beechworth in July, but I don’t think I’ll be risking that setup for 5zero. I’ll most likely be on my 29er hardtail for this one.

There’s still time to get entered for the event, so sign up now!

The embedded strava ride starts out of Porepunkah, which is home, and takes the Rail Trail towards Roberts Creek Road, a slight uphill that features in the Tour of Bright TT course. It continues over the bridge and along a short stretch of gravel to a short, sharp tarmac climb up towards the crest at the start of the Apex walking track and the junction with Mt Porepunkah Road.

There’s a nicer start to this, if there’s no logging or maintenance activity, taking Tom Briggs road over the shoulder, which brings you out at the same spot – the foot of the Apex walking track. If there’s logging or maintenance activity going on, I’d strongly advise staying off that trail though. If you’re coming from Bright, you can get to the same spot via a steep road climb, ending on gravel, by turning off Back Germantown road at Mt Porepunkah Road.

At this point, you head Northeast and downhill along Mt Porepunkah Road for maybe a kilometre before the climbing starts. From here it’s a fairly constant 15km climb through the backcountry. There are no real pinches or challenges, but the climbing is fairly constant. Eventually you’ll pass a signposted junction with Smart Creek Track, which would take you down to Kancoona Road and offers a possible return route to Tawonga Gap – a ride I’ve got my eye on for later.

At about 11.5km from the Apex Track junction, you get a sharp, signposted left turn that continues upwards, and at about 14km from Apex, another left turn allows you to head either up to the bushfire lookout tower, or head downhill to the finish. I’d advise heading up to the tower, because there’s a lovely view across to the Mt Buffalo plateau and a good spot for a break and a bit of a munch (you did bring some food, right?).

From here, retrace your steps back to the junction, where you turn left and start down a good old fashioned rocky downhill. On my first expedition, I met with a couple of 4WD vehicles on this descent, so take care with who you meet and how you ride – don’t go blind into corners, because this road is used by vehicles, especially in the summer months. Eventually you’ll pop out of the trees onto One Mile Creek road, which heads down and meets the Great Alpine Road and the Rail Trail.

If you turn right here, you’ll find Boynton’s Winery. If you turn left, Ringer Reef winery – both are great places for a post-ride snack and a glass of wine – and thence to Porepunkah, completing the loop.

This is a splendid little afternoon out on the gravel – not too challenging, not too long and not so far from civilisation that you’ll need to pack a ton of kit. If you’ve got a few hours free and feel like some firetrail rolling, I’d say check it out.

This route starts in Porepunkah, though obviously you could start down the road in Bright. It crosses the bridge opposite Punkah pub, and takes the riverside track upstream. It’s a fun little ride, taking a nice flat gravel path aongside the Ovens, over a suspension bridge and onwards, emerging at the Porepunkah roundabout and onto the Rail Trail. This is followed to the Bright info point. From here, we hop onto the Great Alpine Road for a bit, then turn left at Fraser’s Lane and follow the Canyon walk into town. From here we head out to Wandiligong. The route isn’t hat important, but on this occasion I followed Wandi walk up Morse’s Creek through the (frankly packed) caravan park and into Pioneer Park

At this point, you’re officially into Mystic Mountain Bike Park, and there’s a plethora of possible routes out to Wandi, ranging from the road, the bike path or firetrail and even tricky singletrack. I mixed a few up, starting on The Highway, then Flying Solo, then a little firetrail which dumped me out onto the bike path, which I followed into Wandi, then round Centenary Avenue to Wandi Pub.

Opposite the pub, you turn onto Growler’s Creek Road, which is where the ride proper starts.

I called this ride “Banjo Country”, for no other reason that riding out along Growler’s Creek Road from the Wandi pub and vanishing into the bush does feel a little… backwoods. You follow that for a bit over a kilometre until you reach Hillsborough Track on the left. This is the beginning of the proper climbing, about 350m (or thereabouts) of it, from about 400m above sea level to a little over 700.

In the early part, you cross a couple of creeks and start climbing in earnest. On the evening I rode it, the lower part was a little sticky from a short spell of rain, and the track had obvioulsy been churned a bit from 4WD traffic, and there was definite evidence of heavy machinery, which made going a bit rough and slow. The humidity was fairly punishing too, but this would be fantastic on a drier, cooler day. You climb steadily until just under half height, at which point you find the first of a series of hairpins which zig-zag you up to about 650m elevation. This was probably the smoothest going of the ride, as the very last section, after a hard left turn, brings a less consistent gradient and some decent-sized loose rocks, which made climbing a little tougher. However the gap soon appears ahead of you and it’s a last blast to the junction with Wet Gully Track and the Reliance Track, which is the chosen descent.

Bit warm out.

Reliance Track is pretty steep, and with a fairly loose surface, which would make it very tough going in the opposite direction, but heading down is fun. I guess it’d be more fun with full suspension and 200mm discs. I did it on my XC hardtail, so kept the speed down to avoid boiling my brakes too badly, but in the lower sections the surface firms up, the gradient evens out and there are some fun waterbars to catch a little air from, before you fly happily down past the Bright Storage reservoir and onto Great Alpine Road.

From here, turn left and then shortly afterwards head right onto Old Harrietville Road for a quieter road experience.

Once at the end of Old Harrietville Road, you have the choice of turning right and then left onto Back Germantown Road, which will take you back to Bright, or just taking the main road into town for refreshment. In my case, I hopped onto the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail and followed that back to Porepunkah Roundabout, at which point I reprised the Porepunkah riverside path back to the bridge.

This is about 40km round trip – about 30 if you start from Bright, and takes in a nice middle-sized climb over the ridge back into the Ovens Valley. There’s an alternative version of this that starts further up Morses Creek Road from Wandi, and drops you out at the old Harrietville Cemetery, but that’s a story for another day. And besides, it may be better ridden in the opposite direction, so I’ll save that one.

So that’s what I got up to the other night. More to come later.

When last I blogged, I was still trying to find my feet again after some time off the bike. I had officially declared I was quitting road riding, and was working with a psychologist to try and mitigate some of the worst effects and try to get back on the Mountain Bike at least.

It worked, partly. I rode one MTB race (retired) and did a few Zwift races, but there wasn’t enough momentum. I was still not where I wanted to be, though I was in a better place than I had been when I declared my retirement

As things turned out, mid-year I was offered a new job – and this proved to be the turning point I needed. This particular job offered remote working options, and so a plan began to form. A cunning plan. A plan so cunning, you could pin a tail on it and call it Mr Fox.

In October, it all came together, and I left Sydney altogether, and moved into the glorious Ovens Valley, NE Victoria.

Yes, I now live at the foot of Mount Buffalo, right in the middle of 7 Peaks country. Specifically in Porepunkah, a dormitory village for the neighbouring town of Bright, the famed cycling and tourist mecca.

Since I got settled in, I’ve been riding more often, in more scenic surroundings, with safer roads and nary an argument. I’ve had the grand total of one moderately close pass from a driver but – get this – it didn’t bother me in the least.

I haven’t hit the mountain roads in earnest yet (notwithstanding one ill-prepared, spur of the moment assault on Buffalo), but I’ve been riding the MTB on some amazing trails and doing a lot of flat-to-rolling road. I’ve been up and down the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail enough that I know every bump and ripple between here and Gapsted. I’ve thrown my hardtail down the one-of-a-kind Hero Trail, encountered snakes, magpies, kangaroos and wombats and generally had a great time of it. I’m slowly dropping the weight back off, and transitioning (again) from couch-potato-who-used-to-ride-bikes-a-few-years-back to masters racer and MTB explorer.

You might say I’m back.

Not being much of an early bird, I haven’t yet managed to get out for the famous 6am Bright bunchies, but it’s a new year and the mornings are clear, so that’s going to happen soon. I’ve met a few of the locals, I’m getting familiar with Mystic MTB Park and I’m planning lots of rides on the long local mountain trails, some sensible, some on the adventurous side.

And the blog? Well, I might blog a few local routes, and maybe get some picks at the upcoming Audax Alpine Classic, but I’ve also got a new project in the works, which I’ll announce here soon.

Lastly, for those readers who I know in person – I know some of you exist. Yes, I have spare rooms. Come on down!

I was sick of spare wheels cluttering up the place, so I knocked up a wheel rack out of spare handlebars. (@gcntweet #hackorbodge) pic.twitter.com/ZU3ymoQ4Vr

— The Crankset Blog (@thecrankset) January 28, 2017

My house is not large, but it’s dominated by two things. Things that will be obvious when you walk through the door.

The main one is bikes.

Followed closely by guitars.

But mainly bikes.

There are bikes and bike components all over the place. There are at least four complete bikes, two bare frames (one broken, one waiting for a rebuild). There’s a large set of shelves full of random components like cassettes, stems, seatmast caps, seatpins and saddles. There are a couple of packing crates full of old cranksets and derailleurs. There are tools everywhere. Plus workstands, turbo trainers, rollers, bottles and all the other ephemera of the mid-life cyclist.

So I decided to fix the problem, using the problem.

The wheel rack you see above is the beta version of what I think will become a permanent fixture. A means of hanging spare wheels up off the floor, to stop them being leaned on my sofa or left in the middle of my coffee table, or cluttering the bottom of the stairs. It consists of:

• One set of 90s-era Club Roost IDB150 mountain bike handlebars
• One set of more recent RaceFace NextSL carbon-fibre MTB bars (slightly too narrow for a modern 29er, so retired)
• One Scor (BMC components) short MTB stem. Too short for a tall bloke’s XC bike, so retired.
• One pair of 90s-era X-Lite stubby pro bar ends.
• One rubber shim, nicked from a light mounting kit, so that the Club Roost bars fit the steerer end of the stem
• A wooden backing plate, nicked from a cider crate
• A couple of zip ties
• Some woodworking clamps

The clamps and wooden backing plate allow me to temporarily fix this to the steel beams in my house’s frame*. The zip ties hold the ClubRoost bars to the backing plate.

The eventual design will be to fix the stem directly onto the backing plate, so the other bars aren’t needed and can be re-used to make a second rack, and the woodworking clamps will be replaced with a backing board and picture frame, which will be fixed more permanently to the wall. For now, this allows me to try out whether it’s actually a useful rack or not.

* I live in a converted warehouse, which was once a piano key factory. It’s basically a steel shed converted into a large (ish), open, somewhat bohemian living space. I can literally ride a bike around the living room. When I clear up the bike parts and guitars, that is.
The guitars live on the stage.
Yes, I have a stage. 

Of course, using software so often means I’ve started to become a bit of a Zwift power user. I’ve got tweaked configs and third-party add-ons like ZwiftMap. I also run Zwift on multiple computers depending on where I am and which version of The Paincave I’m using, and because I’m a techie I reinstall my Operating system a lot, and doing that manually is a complete pain.

So I wrote some PowerShell code to automate Zwift and make my life a bit easier.

Well, I had a bit of free time last night, so I packaged it up, added some enhancements and uploaded some of it to GitHub as PowerZwift, free and Open Source, for other Zwifting techies to use.

It allows you – at the moment – to:

• Download and install Zwift
• Download and install ZwiftMap
• Start Zwift and ZwiftMap from one command
• Toggle startup music on and off
• Switch easily between circuits (“Worlds” in Zwift-speak).
• Create Windows Shortcuts to start Zwift in a specific World with one click.

If you’re on Windows, you might find it useful. If you’re on Mac or iOS, sorry, but this won’t help you much – but there are lots of hacks for you nonetheless.

Let’s start with the oldest pic I could find, from 2014. This is not my first paincave, but it is from a point where indoor training was becoming a serious part of the menu.

Here we see my Trek Domane on my old, borrowed Tacx mag trainer, with newly fitted aero bars. This would have been a short while after my 2014 crash and shoulder/elbow injury, where I had trouble holding posture on the bike, so resorted to an aero position to try and take some strain off my left side. It helped, though the intensive physio was probably the thing that got me back on the bike ,really.

At this point, the bike was almost stock-standard, ran no power meter, and all interval sessions (Sufferfest, natch) were run off perceived exertion and heart rate data on a Garmin 500, and Analysed with Strava premium.

Next, from Feb 2015. Observe the pool of Sufferlandrian Holy Water beneath the bike:

The aero bars are back on at this point, as the shoulder problem has been recurrent, however there’s now a power meter on the bike, Zipp 60 deep-section rims, and some other little tweaks. On the back is a stock Bontrager wheel kept in reserve just for the trainer, which in this pic has a Schwalbe Durano cast-off on it. Note also the “Knight of Sufferlandria” decal on the top tube. I did my Knighthood quest in October 2014 in this very paincave configuration

It’s still on the old Tacx trainer, though. Old Faithful put in a lot of kilometres. In fact, it’s still there in this shot from late 2015:

As you can see, I’ve moved house at this point. This is my warehouse, in a rather minimalist mode. No desk or monitors in place, just a laptop, the bike, old faithful and me. And the welcome mat from the front door as a makeshift front-wheel riser

The tile floor takes abuse a bit better than the previous wood floor, it must be said, and there’s a lot more space. The bike is now on a longer, more aggressive stem length and the aero bars are gone, but the pain cave is still fairly unimpressive.

Aha! A first shot of the rollers. These are CycleOps Alu rollers, with the optional resistance unit, and the bike is my BMC Speedfox 29er. Objects of note here: Race numbers for motivation. Workstand to the left as a little confidence booster in case of crashing off the edge of the rollers while not paying attention. This was during a period where I was struggling a lot with motivation, anxiety and general fitness problems – see my post on Quitting The Road – and trying all manner of things to try and get back into the groove of things. I tried several different configurations during this time, but the nice casual nature of an MTB on the rollers was a very good thing to have. It’s very stable, and if you want t get used to rollers, you could do worse than to start with an MTB.

Buy noise-cancelling headphones though.

Back to the road bike, and this is July 2016, during the Tour de France. The new trainer is a Minoura VFS-150R gravity-frame trainer, with both Fluid and Mag resistance. The bike is pointed at the TV area, and there’s a tour stage on the screen even as this picture was being taken. That’s a home-made wooden riser under the front wheel. I didn’t used to need one until the long aggressive stem went on the bike, but nowadays it’s essential. My current trainers are slightly higher off the ground than old faithful, too, which doesn’t help.

Not long after this pic was taken, I managed to destroy the Minoura trainer during a hard push up the Zwift Epic KoM. The effort twisted the resistance unit in its housing, bringing the housing into contact with the flywheel and exploding hard plastic casing all over my paincave. There were shards of sharp plastic turning up for weeks afterwards, and the trainer was dead. Properly dead.

Oh well…

Here’s where things get interesting.

By the time of this pic, Zwift had hit the scene big time, and I was experimenting with Zwift on rollers. For optimum safety, I set up in my laundry doorway. There are only two doorways in my house, and one of them is at the top of the stairs, so the laundry was the only choice. The rollers are in place, set to a sensible resistance level, and the laptop is on a repurposed music stand. To either side are a pair of barstools with towel/bottles etc, and a fan. I used this setup on a few occasions and found the rollers gave a nice smooth power curve, and a good real world feel, and also didn’t aggravate my ongoing shoulder niggles like a static trainer did. So this became my favourite setup. It’s rather tough on tyres, but as you can see I’m using my favoured race tyres, Schwalbe Ultremo 2.3 on there in the test. Not exactly ideal but at this point I was short on spares and in desperate need of some kilometres.

And here we see the roller configuration in its more permanent home. Wall on one side, multigym on the other. Fan and laptop stand. A neat little solution and really nice for recreational Zwifting. I also don’t need to fiddle around changing wheels and skewers if I don’t feel like it, and the multigym is right there if I feel the need to exercise my still-dodgy shoulder. I can even see the TV from where I am, so boredom is not a problem. Not pictured is the Flag of Sufferlandria, which was flying just over my left shoulder as I was taking the picture.

It’s not particularly easy for me to stay properly hydrated on rollers at the moment – though some people can make omelettes while up there – so I also run an Elite Qubo fluid trainer in another part of the warehouse, facing my standing desk, for Zwift races and hard Sufferfest interval sessions. My desk runs twin monitors, ostensibly because I’m a techie and a power user, but actually so I can Zwift at the same time as watching old episodes of QA or recorded bike races as I roll. The pic was taken just after a Zwift KISS Americas AM race, where I classified third second in grade.

There’s much less chance of crashing on a static fluid trainer than with rollers, though I have in the past managed to crash a turbo trainer in my own house. If I remember correctly, I was doing about four hours or so of Sufferfest intervals and went sufficiently deep on a long interval that I lurched off to one side and tipped the trainer over entirely. Which was nice.

Anyway, thank you for indulging my paincave nostalgia and feel free to post your own setups over on the Zwift.community thread. I’d be intrigued.

Well, the start of the new year formed a convenient, if arbitrary watershed to try and re-establish some old, good habits. I’m now attempting to follow a structured training plan from The Sufferfest, though I’ve had to build in some very generous variations due to things like work/on-call commitments and wanting to actually ride outdoors occasionally. Nevertheless, some weight is dropping off and some watts are going on. I’ve had two “new threshold” notifications from Training Peaks in January so far, and my Smart Scale has been congratulating me occasionally. Who would have thought* swapping a quiet beer for an hour of sweat on a bike would be so effective?

Zwift.community has been launched by a good friend of mine and I’ve come on board as an early adopter and admin

In news of actually turning some pedals, I’m racing again two months earlier than expected. Thursday saw me enter a Zwift KISS Race on the spur of the moment, because that’s a thing now, and Saturday saw me racing on dirt for the first time in… ages.

KISS Down Under runs on Thursdays and this time round it was on the London 8 course, two laps past Buck House and over Box Hill, finishing a mere skip and a jump from Pudding Lane, whence the Great Fire of London began.

Self-grading for KISS is easy as pie – My extra poundage dropped me in right at the sharp end of D grade, at just under 2.5W/kg, and as you’d expect from the numbers, I finished on the podium in a relatively small classified D-grade field. I’m hopeful by the next KISS Down Under event I’ll be just nudging over into the bottom end of C-grade, and if I hit my training targets for January and February, I should be into B grade before March.

This slightly unplanned entry into some kind of competition was spurred on my the arrival of my shiny renewed-after-a-break MTBA racing licence, and the realisation that the first available outdoor race of the season was on Saturday 14th, at Western Sydney MTB Club’s Yellomundee circuit. A four-hour lap race, it was exactly my targeted format for this year so seemed like a great idea. I got my entry in and sorted some stuff out.

Turns out a year or so off from racing does nothing for your logistical skills. I managed to forget my eyewear, and didn’t plan a nice cool eskie for my drink bottles. It was well above 40 degrees C when I arrived at Yellomundee for what was billed as a twilight race, and though it did cool down a bit, the heat did some serious damage in my opening laps. My water bottle was hot. Not just warm. Hot. Actually coffee hot. I was sweating far too much. I’d probably started dehydrated – and hadn’t even properly warmed up – so for the latter half of lap 1 and all the way through lap 2 my legs were non-existent. I had no power when I wanted it, and even if I did manage to get a spurt going, I faded so quickly it was laughable. I do not deal well with hot conditions. Adding to that, a slight mechanical issue from a crash at Mystic MTB Park a week before had knocked my front brake lever out of its alignment and I was struggling to brake properly, meaning my speed was down and before long I was heading for the back of the field. I felt like the bike was controlling me, not the other way around.

To add stupid onto stupid, I’d fumbled my Garmin at the start, so my data was all wrong and I had no idea of what lap times I might be doing.

In the latter part of lap three my legs started, slowly, to come into condition, but by then my shoulders were starting to get sore from fighting the bike. Nevertheless I got a little quicker in the corners, and remembered “Oh yes. You usually need a warmup lap or two to dial in leg power and cornering for these races, don’t you?”.

Duh. Two warm-up laps. Yes.

By this point, I had no idea where I was in terms of laps or time, having messed up the Garmin start, and as the head of the field started lapping me in earnest, I hit a mechanical. Downshifting on a slight uphill, my chain snagged, the derailleur whipped round and the chain snapped entirely.

Hmmm. Probably should have put a new chain on.

So I walked it in, arriving at the race centre around the 2 hour mark. I had my spare bike in the van, but at this point I was encrusted in salt and aching quite badly. I debated flicking a new quicklink onto the chain and continuing, but on reflection snipped off my race number, knocked over two bottles of warm water and called it a night.

So, that was the first IRL race of 2017, a bit of a clusterfuck, to say the least.

And to add to that, on getting the bike home and giving it a clean, I discovered the little chain disaster had chewed a decent chip of carbon out of the rear triangle and bent the dropout quite badly. If I’d opted to continue, the derailleur would have gone right into the rear spokes and possibly taken out the wheel, so it was the right decision. The bike is currently in bike hospital undergoing tests and the doctors remain hopeful of a recovery, though I’m rather anxious.

The outlook for this week? Tour Down Under is on, so there’ll probably be a reasonable amount of Zwifting in front of the TV, and I’ll probably try and take the spare bike out for some shakedown kilometres. There’s a non-zero probability that the hardtail is either dead or going in for carbon repair, so it’s sensible to get the FS bike up and humming for the next race. There’s an HMBA XC round at Awaba MTB park on the 22nd, so if I have a race bike by then I may be driving north, and there are a few Zwift races I have my eye on, so fingers crossed for a decent week. Failing that, the next realistic MTB race slot is WSMTB’s third round of the summer four hour on 19th of Feb. There’s a six-hour and the JetBlack 24 in the meantime, but neither are serious prospects given my current state of fitness, so it’ll be Zwift, Zwift, Zwift for the next couple of weeks.

I’ve been working with a psychologist for the last few months, and with some changes of routine and a decent reset, I’m starting to get some kms done on the road bike again.

Gratuitous commute pic

A photo posted by Jason Brown (@thecrankset) on Dec 19, 2016 at 2:46pm PST

So, what are the key factors here?

Well, number one, working with a psychologist allowed me to identify specific triggers that were causing me problems, and either sidestep them or work through them. In the last couple of months I’ve become better at controlling my anxiety situation and not letting hyper-awareness drive me into fight-or-flight states. While doing that, I rode a bit indoors, and took the mountain bikes out off-road a bit, and rode extremely low-traffic cycleway routes for commuting on the MTBs only. An MTB is more stable and relaxed, and the slower speed makes me think differently about route choice and road positioning, during the short unavoidable stretches on road.

I’m also saying a big thank you to The Sufferfest, whose yoga routines dropped into the training app in November. Between the breathing exercises and the stretching, I can now be calmer and more comfortable on the bike, and when you’re not tense, you ride better and you ride calmer. I’m making a vague attempt to follow the 10-week MTB XC training plan, but being December I’m allowing a lot of flexibility in how I follow it, and swapping intervals for road, road for Zwift and Zwift for rest pretty much as moods dictate, with the overriding maxim “Keep Riding“.

I’m still not all the way there by any means. As with all things there are ups and there are downs, but taking care over a few keys things has really helped

1. Committing myself to do a 150km two-day gravel-grind with Vanilla Cycles, putting some measures in place to make sure that actually happened, and then actually going for it properly when out there was a really good curse-breaker. Riding in a supportive bunch and have a proper suffer-ridden first day with everyone running out of water and having a genuine Aussie epic really kicked me back into gear. Sure, the corners were a bit nervy but it wasn’t a race and nobody got hurt. And the bunch was supportive and fun to be around.

2. Getting on the rollers a bit more – both on the MTBs and the Roadie – allowed me to have a more natural ride feel indoors, which meant when I went outdoors, I was more comfortable on the bikes and therefore felt more control over my environment.

3. Choosing a lot of low-traffic alternatives like Sydney’s Bay Run and Cooks River cycleways let me get some minor kilometres down without fear of traffic, and recognising when I’m overly tense let me stay in control of how I start and end rides – don’t start anxious, don’t end anxious.

4. Finally taking the road bike out and riding to Olympic Park in thunderstorm conditions was another proper curse breaker. I hadn’t taken those roads for a long time, and getting out there in adverse conditions was oddly satisfying.

I’ve also switched bike clubs and will be riding with Parklife CC from January on, and more importantly, renewed my MTB racing licence with a view to taking on some Marathons and 4/7hr races in the new year. Having off-road goals, I hope, will help smooth the on-road kilometres out a bit and let me stretch myself away from cars once in a while.

Anyway, long way to go yet, but nice to be on the way back…

I announced this via Twitter, but didn’t write a blog post immediately, for reasons which should be apparent from the tweet announcing it.

I think I’m officially quitting road cycling. I’d blog about the decision but the degree of anxiety I feel from even explaining it kills me.

— The Crankset Blog (@thecrankset) October 9, 2016

Even as I’m writing this, about twelve hours after I made the decision,  I can feel my chest tightening and my hands shaking, but I think I need to explain this decision in detail.

And to do that, we need to go back in time a little bit.

In 2012/2013/2014 I was doing a lot of riding, often well over 400km a week, as my Strava record will show. Around this time I was hit, while commuting, by two drivers in the space of a fortnight.

• One was a driver crossing leftwards through a bike lane and over a solid white line, without indicating, into a parking space, cleaning me up. She claimed it had been her right of way, and tried to blame me.
• The other was an aggressive bogan hoon who didn’t think I deserved any space on the road, close passed me – clipping my handlebars with his wing mirror – and ended up spitting on me for my troubles.
  The police did nothing. Didn’t even send me an incident number as promised.

After that, something started to change. My kilometres dropped. I stopped feeling any enthusiasm for heading out. My weekend rides, which were routinely over 100km and often over 200, got smaller, and started to disappear. I started to feel anxious every time I got on the bike. I bought a Fly6 rear-facing camera and backed the kickstarter for the Fly12 front light/camera combo, thinking this might help get some confidence back together

I tried to rekindle the enthusiasm and on Sept 25th I headed out to do a bunch ride with my club… and crashed on wet, slippery paint before I even got to the start. I broke a rib and have had recurring, expensive shoulder problems ever since. My shoulder is painful right now, two years later.

Every time I got on my bike after these three incidents, I’ve felt more and more uneasy.

The Fly6, I decided, wasn’t helping me at all. It’s not an accident prevention device by any means, and will only modify driver behaviour if they know they’re being filmed -which may very well be too late.

I came to realise much the same about bike helmets – they don’t project a magical force field which will stop a truck rolling straight over me, though they will certainly prevent a given subset of injuries if I do crash. Sure, I may have fatal crush injuries to my torso, I may lose a leg or an arm. But I might not be on the stats sheet for head injuries.

Comforting thought.

Every time I strapped a helmet on from there onwards, it was a reminder that what I was about to do is considered by the Australian Government to be so dangerous, so outside of the norms of normal human activity  that there’s mandatory head protection required. I’ve tried fighting against the feeling, tried motivating myself in different ways, but every time I get on the bike and hit the road I feel a deep-seated, crushing anxiety. And every time another idiot driver close passes me, or drifts into my bike lane because they’re too busy texting to watch where they’re going, or aggressively tries to squeeze past me on a road that’s just flat-out too narrow, I’ve reacted more and more negatively.

This kind of fear often manifests as anger, and I’ve verbally lashed out at drivers and fellow cyclists alike for their attitudes towards safety, especially texting drivers and even texting cyclists. I’ve begun to obsess over things that are seen as “safety” devices but only really aid you after you’ve been scraped off the road by the paramedics, like Fly6 or RoadID. I’ve had angry, incandescent conversations on social media about Australia’s use of mandatory helmets as a surrogate for better infrastructure, better education for road users and, frankly, some sane policy and investment around cycling. I’ve been a very, very angry person on a number of occasions. Most recently, I quit my cycling club after a probably-inevitable blowup – the second of its kind – and ended up unfriended by a rider I respect and would have liked to keep as a friend and peer.

I stopped using the Fly6 camera routinely well over a year ago, because turning it on was an admission to myself that I might be mown down by a hit-and-runner, and the only thing that might bring them to justice would be the video evidence. Everything became an unavoidable reminder of a probably-overblown but still totally unnecessary level of risk inherent in the Sydney riding experience. I stopped seeing the Fly6 as a safety device and started thinking of it as death insurance. A chance to avenge myself on the driver who killed me. On the rare occasions when I did switch it on, I stopped even reviewing the footage, because I could spot things I hadn’t even noticed when riding – like red-light runners charging through intersections behind me. Reviewing the footage, even of innocuous routine passes, would make my heart race and my palms sweat.

Things like Fly6 may eventually cause a generational change in driver behaviour – or not – but I won’t benefit from that if I’m dead and buried due to the driver of a garbage truck who thinks I deserve a punishment pass. A RoadID – or a mandatory ID card as proposed by NSW’s execrable and entirely sub-competent Roads Minister –  will mean that at least authorities won’t have to resort to dental records to identify me.

But I’d still be dead.

And yet things like this are held up as “safety” devices by well-meaning cyclists who presumably aren’t being constantly needled mentally by anxiety, doubt and depression.

Worst of all, Australian policymakers are on record claiming Australia is a world leader in cycling safety solely because we have mandatory plastic hats, not realising for a second what a child of six could tell you – that a helmet will not stop a car driven by an ignorant texting P-plater from mowing you down and maybe maiming you for life. Or just killing you outright.

Above all, the anxiety was driving me insane, on and off the bike.

I’ve tried cameras, I’ve tried denial, I’ve tried changing my training targets. I tried a training weekend away with a trusted bike shop crew. I’ve tried riding only on “quiet” roads and I even tried to take a week off and head to another state for a riding holiday in the Victorian High Country. The anxiety put paid to that particular plan before I’d even started the car.

So today,  on World Mental Health day, I called it quits.

I will cease riding my bike on Sydney’s roads until such time as I can throw my leg over a top tube without fear and doubt being my overbearing emotional reactions.

I’ll probably continue to ride in Zwift, and I’ll try to get out on the mountain bike – off road – occasionally, and I may – may – even participate in some closed-road events. But I won’t be out on the public highway any time soon. I almost certainly won’t be completing the Everesting that I’ve been hankering after for so long.

And yes, I will be talking to a psychologist. I would urge anyone else having mental health issues to do so too.

And if you’re still riding, which I presume most of you are, here’s the last word.

Stay safe.